nucmednet Chapter 23 Important Day
Chapter 23 Important Day
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Today is an important day.
With the help of craftsmen from Guangzhou, the first batch of molten iron was produced. Liang Xiaoming was very nervous, and so was Liu Ye. In ancient steelmaking methods, the only way to determine whether the produced material was steel or iron was after it had been removed from the furnace.
After the molten iron cooled, an experienced craftsman determined with the naked eye that it wasn't steel. Undeterred, Liang Xiaoming tapped it with an iron rod, and sure enough, it was pure iron with a very soft texture—the heat hadn't been controlled properly, and decarburization had been overdone!
Liu Ye, who knew nothing about steelmaking, could only comfort Liang Xiaoming: "It's alright, it's alright. Failure is the mother of success. We have enough pig iron this time. If we ruin one batch, we can start over."
Even so, my heart is bleeding. Not only has a huge amount of money been spent, but the key issue is that pig iron is very difficult to buy and is purely a consumable. Developing local iron mines in Qiongzhou must be put on the agenda.
Liang Xiaoming considered the process flow for a moment, then circled the open-hearth furnace again and again. Liu Ye didn't dare disturb him, and the other craftsmen, unaware of what he was doing, remained silent.
After a long while, seeing that Liang Xiaoming still hadn't stopped, one of the craftsmen mustered up his courage and said, "Master, smelting wrought iron is a delicate task. When we were in Guangzhou, we used small furnaces, smelting a maximum of two or three hundred catties of pig iron at a time. Generally, it takes ten to eight catties of pig iron to smelt one catty of wrought iron. Now, with such a large furnace, hundreds or even thousands of catties of pig iron are put in at a time, making it difficult to control the heat. It's better to use a small furnace and work slowly to produce fine results."
Everyone agreed that this was the way it always was in smelting wrought iron; the smaller the scale, the easier it was to control the heat. Although the method of frying steel had appeared in China as early as the Han Dynasty, large-scale steel smelting by the private sector was not allowed by the government, and government-run workshops might not have passed down the frying steel technique. Over time, few people mastered the large-scale frying steel technique, and small-scale smelting of wrought iron in small workshops became the mainstream, which was time-consuming, laborious, and inefficient.
Liang Xiaoming stopped abruptly and retorted, "Smelting hundreds of pounds of pig iron into dozens of pounds of wrought iron at a time is too slow. How much wrought iron can be smelted in a year?"
He looked up at the open hearth furnace and recalled the key process of ancient steelmaking recorded in relevant books—heating pig iron to a liquid or semi-liquid state, and using methods such as blowing air or sprinkling in concentrate powder to oxidize silicon, manganese, and carbon, thereby reducing the carbon content to the range of steel and wrought iron.
Currently, there's no concentrate available, so we'll have to use forced draft air to oxidize the silicon, manganese, and carbon with oxygen from the air, avoiding the shortcomings of the previous single-stirring method. Without experience with the single-stirring method, excessive stirring time can lead to over-decarburization. By combining forced draft air with stirring and reducing the time, we should be able to succeed.
There wasn't enough time to build a water-powered blower, so they used traditional manual labor. After another batch of pig iron was added, a dozen strong apprentices took turns using a traditional iron-smelting blower to blow air into the furnace, while workers on top of the furnace simultaneously began stirring. By the time the second batch of molten iron was tapped, the sun was already setting. If it didn't work this time, they would have to try again tomorrow.
After the molten iron cooled, everyone's eyes were focused on it. A sharp-eyed craftsman spotted the gray finished product and exclaimed, "It's done! It's wrought iron, not soft iron!"
Liang Xiaoming tested it with an iron rod, which produced a crisp metallic sound. It was hard and had a certain degree of toughness, unlike both hard and brittle cast iron and soft wrought iron. According to metallographic interpretation, it was neither cast iron nor pure iron, so it was steel, and most likely low-carbon steel with relatively good plasticity, the most suitable material for making a flintlock musket!
Liang Xiaoming hugged Liu Ye and shouted excitedly, "We did it! We succeeded! We can now mass-produce low-carbon steel!"
Producing more advanced alloy steel on a modern steel production line is clearly not as fulfilling as forging primitive carbon steel by hand using rudimentary methods. A sense of accomplishment filled Lin Weiye's chest; an emotion he couldn't experience in his old time permeated his heart.
In later generations, although he was an engineer, he was just a cog in a huge production line, insignificant to the entire steel production line. Here, he was able to achieve large-scale steelmaking on his own, and suddenly felt a heroic spirit to fight against heaven and earth. He suddenly understood Liu Ye's ideal of opening up a new world - We have come, we have seen, we will conquer and change this old world!
Liu Ye breathed a sigh of relief. If they could smelt steel, they could make muskets. Wasting a furnace of pig iron was worth it. He hugged Liang Xiaoming, patted him on the back, and shouted, "Mingzi, well done!"
After the initial excitement, Liang Xiaoming maintained his professionalism. He worked with the craftsmen to determine the key operational points of the entire production process, and then recorded them in writing to create a production manual.
In this way, the craftsmen in charge of the entire process will only need to follow the production manual. Even if someone is replaced, they will not have to slowly explore and master the timing. This is the essential difference between ancient production techniques and modern industrialized production. Ancient craftsmen regarded their skills as their livelihood and never passed them on to outsiders. As a result, advanced techniques could only be passed down orally, which made them easy to lose and also hindered the promotion of large-scale production.
The craftsmen present witnessed firsthand how several thousand kilograms of pig iron were smelted into wrought iron in one go, an efficiency several times higher than their usual method of smelting ten kilograms of pig iron into one kilogram of wrought iron! Some of the more shrewd ones had their eyes gleaming, wondering if they should remember this method and sell it for a good price in the future.
Liu Ye didn't understand the craft, but he knew management. He gave the craftsmen present a dressing down: "This craft manual can only be kept in the factory and cannot be circulated. But even if it does, I'm not afraid. Don't think about making money from this. No one else has such a large-scale iron smelting operation besides mine. Even if they did, who would they sell all that wrought iron to? The government would punish them first. Besides, you work for me, and you get your resettlement allowance in full, plus better wages. Where can you find a better place than here?"
Before starting the ironmaking, Liu Ye announced to everyone that the steel plant's compensation system would be similar to that of the Bofu shipyard, with grades and a competitive mechanism, and bonuses calculated at the end of the year based on the total amount of iron and steel produced.
Upon reflection, everyone agreed that this made sense. Guangdong was a region with a highly developed iron smelting industry, but no other ironworks had the audacity to smelt tens of thousands of kilograms of pig iron. Moreover, the wrought iron produced was generally used by the government to make muskets; everyday agricultural tools and ironware still used pig iron. Therefore, even if one brought this technique to Guangdong, it would be a "dragon-slaying skill"—impressive but impractical. In addition, the wages here were much higher than in Guangdong. To learn the technique here and then return to Guangdong would be like picking up a sesame seed and losing a watermelon.
The craftsman who had just reminded Liang Xiaoming took the lead in responding: "The master is right. This method of iron smelting was the master's idea. We are paid to do our jobs, so we should just do our duty and not think about those other things."
Seeing that this person was quite cooperative, Liu Ye asked, "Are you from Guangdong? What's your name?"
The man quickly replied, "My name is Zhang Wei, a local from Guangdong. I've been working in the iron smelting workshop since I was a child, for thirty years now." He had been immersed in this industry for many years and was very senior. The craftsmen implicitly regarded him as their leader.
“Very good. Master Liang doesn’t have time to stay here every day, so you will be in charge of the iron smelting for the time being. If you do a good job, you will be the manager in the future.”
Zhang Wei never expected such a good thing to fall into his lap. He had already landed a foreman position before the ironworks even opened, and he immediately agreed without hesitation.