The blast furnace is located at the upper reaches of a river not far away. The locals call this river Meihe, with a very good name. The lower reaches are Meihua Lake, which is a lake near Zijin Mountain.

The blast furnace is three meters long and is piled up according to the requirements of Hao Fenglou. In order to prevent heat dissipation, Hao Fenglou ordered people to build a half-meter-thick refractory brick inside. Therefore, the furnace is extremely large. When halfway, people piled up stone houses along the furnace wall, and a lot of coking coal was piled up in the house.

Such blast furnaces are different from those in ordinary manufacturing sites. On the one hand, the length is increased, and on the other hand, the furnace wall is also widened a lot. This blast furnace has become quite a prototype of a modern blast furnace. The bottom of the furnace is surrounded by carbon bricks and the bottom of the furnace, and the bottom of the furnace is clay bricks. The entire furnace is four people tall, half a room is large, and there is an air inlet below. It is worth mentioning that it is a blower made by carpenters.

The blower is like a blast furnace, and is also huge. The blower appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty and adopted the water discharge power, that is, a wooden frame is set up on the bank of a turbulent river, and a rotating shaft is upright on the wooden frame, and a large water wheel is installed at the upper and lower ends. A blade is installed around the wheel shaft of the lower water wheel to withstand the water flow, which is a device for turning the hydraulic force into mechanical rotation; a drum-shaped small wheel is installed in front of the upper lieutenant wheel, which is connected to the upper lieutenant wheel by a "string rope"; a crank is installed at the top of the drum-shaped small wheel, and a swingable connecting rod is installed on the crank, and the other end of the connecting rod is connected to the blower box. In this way, when the water flow hits the lower lieutenant wheel, it will drive the upper lieutenant wheel to rotate. The connecting rod connected to it moves, the connecting rod reciprocates, so that the fan is opened and closed, and the air blows.

This is almost the prototype of modern blowers. Naturally, Hao Fenglou made some improvements in the blower box. He adopted two-way blowers, and the pistons inside also found ways to enrich them, making the wind stronger.

Using water conservancy blowers not only solves the problem of manpower tightness, but also greatly improves efficiency.

Of course, to be able to make such a thing, on the one hand, Hao Fenglou has to thank his ancestors for his efforts to find relevant information from the Han Dynasty. On the other hand, it is naturally Hao Fenglou's physical knowledge. As a time traveler, although he cannot study complex machines, he can improve it based on some basic physical knowledge on the original basis. It is easy to get it.

The drained wind wheel and the blower box are already connected, and the coking coal in the blast furnace has also been ignited. Driven by the water flow, the blower begins to move with the crank, and the wind blows out immediately from the mouth of the box.

Hao Fenglou breathed a sigh of relief, and it turned out that he was afraid of those carpenters' bad things. Unexpectedly, these guys succeeded in one go, but they almost underestimated them.

The water flowed rapidly, and the air from the blower was continuous, and the wind was extremely strong. The outlet of the air outlet was facing the air outlet of the blast furnace. Suddenly, the coking coal, which was originally just emitting black smoke and did not completely burn, quickly began to crack. The coking coal in the furnace immediately burned.

Hao Fenglou could not test the temperature, so he could only stand aside and wait with his breath. The craftsmen around him did not say anything. They were vaguely looking forward to it, hoping that the young master would give them a brand new insight.

It is strange to say that when we were in the process of making a plan, under the whip of officials, everyone just dealt with things. One day or another, the iron smelting has nothing to do with them. Anyway, as long as the quantity and quality are completed, Shangguan will not care about it, and they are even more lazy to care about it.

If you really want to describe it, then their previous life situation was like this. Now, their mood is a little different. On the one hand, they are eating the king's fortune, and they are just offering good food and good food for free, without having to beat and scold them, and they feel a little embarrassed. It seems that if you don't make some good things, you will be sorry for others. On the other hand, it is also General Manager Hao San who revealed that as long as everyone does well, they will pay wages in the future and can also receive their families, and they will still offer white rice. Not only that, if you have children in the future, you can also teach them to study.

Although I don’t know what the limit is to do well, everyone told themselves that they must do it with all their heart and must not be embarrassed.

Smoke began to emerge from the top of the stove, and the smoke was simmering, and the whole stove was red.

Several eye-catching craftsmen took a deep breath and said, "Young Master, when we used to take coke, it was roughly the temperature."

Hao Fenglou knew that if it was just this temperature, it would be impossible to completely remove the sulfur content in coking coal. Once the sulfur content was high, the coke taken out would be used to smelify iron, and naturally even charcoal was not as good as charcoal. He nodded: "Wait a little longer, it is not enough."

After waiting for another half an hour, the temperature in the furnace continued to rise. Hao Fenglou saw that the opportunity was almost done and said, "Get carbon."

With a command, several blacksmiths took out special tools and took out the hot coke. The next thing was quite good, and they still needed to bond, solidify and shrink. However, the blacksmiths were working hard for more than an hour. The coke samples were delivered to Hao Fenglou's hands. Hao Fenglou looked around and saw that the carbon body was black and there was no impurity, and he said, "Brother Huang, come and see, how about this coke?"

Huang Ting hurriedly stepped forward and took the coke from Hao Fenglou's hand, his eyes widened.

I have seen so many cokes, but the cokes I refined today are very different from those in the past. The color is black and shiny, and there is no trace of variegated colors seen throughout the body, which is really amazing.

He nodded and said, "Sir, this coke is no longer the best, but the best."

Hao Fenglou pursed his lips. In fact, he was most afraid of being serious in everything. It was a pity that although he had more innovations in ancient times, he was not serious enough and refused to refine it. In addition to some necessary improvements to increase the temperature of the blast furnace, the most important thing is to be serious.

He said, "Since that's the case, then use coke to refine a furnace of iron first. Remember to clean the furnace well. With this blast furnace and blower, the heat should not be a problem. Coke is also the best. Whether good iron can be refined depends on you."

The craftsmen cheered up, some went to move iron ore, some prepared coke, and some went to clean the stove. After a busy life, another hour or two passed.

Then everyone started to grow the furnace with familiarity, put iron and stone into it, and ignite the coke.

While waiting, the temperature in the furnace began to rise until the critical point was reached.

Immediately afterwards, molten iron flowed out from a groove.

Someone couldn't help but say: "It's molten iron, molten iron, and iron turned into water."

If we talk about molten iron, we have seen it, but all melted into molten iron, not many people have seen it. Once it is melted into molten iron, it means that a large amount of impurities will escape from the iron.

What happened next has nothing to do with Hao Fenglou. If iron is to be refined into steel, there is already the most advanced technology at present and will not be outdated for at least three hundred years, which is the so-called steel filling method.

A day later, when a steel knife was sent to Hao Fenglou, Hao Fenglou tried the steel knife that had not yet been opened. It was not very good, so he asked someone to call Zhu Zhiling. Zhu Zhiling had a little knowledge of swords and tried it, and couldn't help but praise: "No, it's a good knife."

Hao Fenglou smiled bitterly and said, "How great is it?"

Zhu Zhiling pursed her lips: "How do I know this?"

Hao Fenglou had no choice but to sigh and summoned a few blacksmiths' backbones to let them continue to improve by using methods, especially in their grasp of the temperature. They should not be negligent, nor should they be perfunctory. They should refine more furnaces to see which furnace is better and remember some of their experiences.

In addition, the carpenters and stonemasons continue to build blast furnaces and blowers. Haofenglou plans to build ten buildings for the time being, and the rest will be discussed in the future.

He knew very well that although iron-making has made great progress in steelmaking, it is still early now and we still need to strive for excellence to see if there is any improvement.

This 'young master' didn't have any airs. He ran to the blast furnace every now and then to watch the blacksmiths smelly smelting iron and occasionally participated in their discussions. After a few days, the steel was indeed much better than at the beginning. In addition, some old craftsmen began to teach and exchange experiences of forging, and everyone's level grew very fast.

The days seemed to have passed like this, and of course Hao Fenglou did not expect that His Majesty's imperial edict caused an uproar.

Zhu Di was an honest man. When Hao Fenglou set off, his imperial edict was handed out. The ministers in the court were stunned for a moment. Fortunately, it was the Yongle period, not Zhengde. If it were Zhengde, the emperor would have dared to be so "absurd", and he would have to point at his nose and curse. During the Yongle period, the spirit of martial arts was still there, and most of the nobles were quite interested in this and began to discuss it.

This time, the sword competition was not only allowed to participate in the envoys of various states, but also the vassal kings were allowed to participate. There have been many vassal kings coming to Beijing recently. Seeing that His Majesty was interested, they naturally couldn't help but join in the fun.

There was also news that His Highness the King of Han was ready to go. As for the prince, it seemed that he had been searching for famous craftsmen recently. His Highness has always been criticized for being too weak. He wanted to change his image, and perhaps he might not be able to compete with the King of Han.

However, the Japanese people's reaction was mediocre, and the Japanese envoy Ashikaga Yoshi sneered at this.

This kind-hearted man was from a prominent family in Japan and had a very high status. On the one hand, he went out to sea to hope to communicate with each other. On the other hand, he was hoping to ascend the new king of the Ming Dynasty and pointing to the new king to give some rewards. As a result, Zhu Di was so stingy that he became angry. In addition, he simply relied on this place, on the one hand, he revised the letter of the country and implicitly mocked the Ming Dynasty to treat Japanese envoys with arrogance, and on the other hand, he spread rumors and caused trouble.

As a result, something really happened.

Several Japanese envoys bought pears on the street, but because they felt that the price was too high, a Japanese envoy drew his sword and cut off the head of the pear seller.

In a moment, Nanjing City was in an uproar. Yingtian Mansion didn't know what to do for a moment, so he quickly wrote a letter, and the memorial was naturally lying on Zhu Di's desk.

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Chapter completed!