In a large workshop on the north of Xiyang City, on the banks of Santai River, a hydraulically driven roller is rotating. A "scary" sound comes from the roller, as if many hard objects are constantly colliding in the roller.

The clock and pointer on the side point to four o'clock. At this time, the sun was on the west side. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. A craftsman pulled down the wooden pole next to the roller. The sound of the roller started, and the roller gradually stopped rotating.

The craftsman held the roller slowly and turned it, turning the cover to the bottom, then opened the lock with the key and opened the cover. After a loud bang, a large number of metal disks rolled out at the bottom of the roller and fell into the wooden groove below.

The wooden trough was equipped with wheels at the bottom, and the craftsman pushed the trough out of the yard and turned it under another yard pergola where several people were ready.

They wore cloth gloves and picked up the heated metal disks from the wooden trough, observed them carefully, and placed them on the bamboo basket on the table in front of them. Then they picked up the pen and wrote the words on the recording book.

In the busy time, two people walked into the yard and came under the pergola. One of the young men was strong and wearing "work clothes" and spoke with confidence. They were Lin Youdi, the manager of the workshop.

Another man was wearing a Taoist robe, looking over forty years old, with a slightly gray hair and a curved back, but his complexion was very good, and he was also confident in speaking. He was the master of Liu Yang and Liu Guan of Wuzhuangguan.

They came to the wooden trough, put on cloth gloves, and each picked up a metal circle from the wooden trough and looked at it carefully.

These metal discs are called "Experimental Coins". Their size is the same as the size of the copper coins circulating on the market, but they are solid and yellow and white: like a yellow disc inlaid in a white ring.

The yellow metal material is like gold and the white metal material is like silver, which looks like gold and silver inlay. The production process of this yellow and white two-color coins was developed through the traditional craft of "gold and silver error".

Gold and silver mistakes are said to have been in the pre-Qin period. This process can decorate gold and silver on bronze ware, so it is called gold and silver or gold and silver. It gradually evolved into a fine metal decorative technique and has been passed down to this day.

These two-color experimental coins have patterns on them and the words "Yi Mo" are printed. Lin Youdi looked at the metal plate in his hand carefully and found that the patterns on them were seriously worn, while the words "Yi Mo" could barely see clearly.

However, the yellow core and white rings are embedded very firmly. According to statistics from the inspectors, none of the three hundred experimental coins have fallen off because this is not simply inserting a brass core into the white copper ring.

Seeing that the wear resistance test was successful, Lin Youdi couldn't help but say joyfully: "Master Liu Guan, thanks to Guan's idea of ​​how to adjust the hardness of brass and white copper, otherwise this two-color coins would really not be made with the wrong gold and silver technology."

Liu Yang looked at the two-color experimental coins in his hand and nodded complacently: "That's right, that's it. It took several years to figure it out, and it's not easy..."

"But the wear resistance is still a bit poor. Although the brass and white copper have not separated, the patterns printed on it are worn too much. If coins were minted in this way, I am afraid that the patterns on these two-color coins will be worn out beyond recognition over the years."

Faced with Lin Youdi's sigh, Liu Yang was not so pessimistic. He, his disciples and fellow Taoists used the spectrometer to discover the magical world and discovered many secrets of "metal elements". Whether it is white copper or brass, you only need to try the formula repeatedly to find the best alloy ratio.

Liu Yang, who has been in Xiyang for six years, looks much better now than he did back then. Although time has left a mark on his face, Liu Yang, who has achieved a little success in practicing the "chemistry method", has already seemed to be reborn.

The Wuzhuang Temple, established with the strong support of King Xiyang, created an excellent "experimental environment" for Liu Yang and his colleagues, where they can devote themselves to the research of "chemistry". Over the years, they have achieved remarkable results.

These include the improvement and application of "Doing Gold" and "Doing Silver".

The technique of gold-drawing is an alchemy that Liu Yang himself thought of. Using this method of copper as gold, he relies on the amount of scattered gold to earn a meager income to support his great alchemy career.

It was not until he met Yuwen Wen that he realized that he had gone astray. The one who pointed out the gold technique was not gold, but copper-zinc alloy, called "brass".

The "chemistry" door opened by Yuwen Wen for Liu Yang gave him discovering a new world and the motivation to continue to live.

At Wuzhuang Temple in Xiyang, Huangzhou, Liu Yang used the magical spectrometer to attract fellow alchemy fellows from all over the world to exchange experiences with each other and also collected a large number of alchemy recipes, including the "Silver Pointing Technique".

The so-called silver dot technique, also known as white atractylodes, uses realgar or arsenic to turn copper produced in Danyang into silver. In the view of Liu Yang, who has studied chemistry, this is the "chemical reaction" between arsenic and copper alloys, making it turn into white copper, which looks white and shining, but is actually not silver.

This kind of white copper was named Arsenic copper, and it was also found that Arsenic copper would turn brown after being left for a long time. This should be because of the volatility of arsenic elements in the alloy. This is also true, Arsenic copper is toxic.

When a large amount of arsenic copper is melted, the arsenic-containing gas produced will poison small animals, so be very careful when using it.

Arsenic white copper is not safe. In the experiment day after day, Taoist priests of Wuzhuangguan discovered another type of white copper, which is to add a certain amount of lead to bronze (copper-tin alloy) and adjust the tin content, which will make the new copper alloy appear white, like silver.

Such white copper is not as toxic as arsenic white copper.

With brass (so-called gold), and white copper (so-called silver), these two copper alloys are inlaid with gold and silver (yellow and white) two-color currency.

In this way, the difficulty of making counterfeit coins will inevitably increase significantly, and no one can even imitate them. This is what King Xiyang thought. It took Liu Yang several years to achieve it in a few simple sentences.

The two-color gold and silver coins made today barely passed the wear-resistant experiment. The experimental coins kept colliding with each other in the drum for three consecutive days. Although they were bumpy, the gold (brass inner core) and silver (white copper outer ring) were not separated.

This means that the gold and silver craftsmanship jointly developed by Wuzhuangguan and the workshop has surpassed the traditional gold and silver craftsmanship, and is better than the blue.

Then the next key goal is to make the patterns and texts on this two-color currency more wear-resistant, but no one can say when they can achieve the expected goal. This may take several years to achieve, but the King of Xiyang can afford it.

Lin Youdi had already taken away the sample coins of the Shuang-colored coins to the palace Sima Zhang Dingfa, who rushed to the head of the Lang's tent, and now, he was staring at the Shuang-colored coins in his hand in a daze, and the same was true for Liu Yang beside him.

Liu Yang is thinking about technical issues now, while Lin Youdi is thinking about cost issues, because cost issues are the key to determining whether the two-color coins have practical value.

Lin Youdi knew that the cost of making (minting) a two-color coin exceeds 500 ci, and it will definitely drop below 500 ci in the future. However, the Langzhu Yuwen Wen's requirement for the two-color coin is that the face value is not greater than 100 ci.

In other words, we must find ways to improve the process and reduce the cost of coining to less than 100 ci. Only in this way can the two-color coins be practical. Otherwise, if they really want to be used to mint coins, the more they are minted, the more they lose.

This requirement is too harsh, and Lin Youdi really couldn't understand why the Langzhu didn't set the value of this two-color currency to 500 or 1,000 (consistently). In this way, the cost issue is not a problem, and he can even make money by minting coins.

The Langzhu made such a decision, and Ou Langzhu must have considered it. Lin Youdi decided to do it himself. As the manager of the workshop, he actually did not need to worry too much about this matter. He had a special "technical research team" to improve the new gold and silver craftsmanship to reduce costs.

The production process of the two-color coins was practical. The period given by the Langzhu was very loose and almost none. Perhaps he did not give up too much hope for this, but Lin Youdi would not give up so easily. He would do his best to do what the Langzhu told him to do, regardless of whether it could be completed in the end.
Chapter completed!