Chapter 63

It's really hard to say whether the "big, steel making" movement in Huaxia was right or wrong.

From the perspective of later generations, the movement that swept the whole country was wrong. It wasted people's money and seriously damaged the fragile industrial foundation at that time.

However, at that time, this was not true, otherwise it would not have formed such a nationwide steel-making situation.

Of course, it's too far away from Shi Xiong. He doesn't want to judge it right or wrong. He claims that he is not qualified to judge it. He can only say that it was an inappropriate move in an inappropriate era, from the top to the common people, because they did not fully realize their own scientific and technological level.

However, thanks to the large-scale smelting and steel movement, Shi Xiong has seen the local blast furnace left over from that year in some remote villages in the province. At that time, a retired leader of the Museum once said that these local blast furnaces had witnessed the changes of an era and were the condensation of the wisdom of the people at that time. There is nothing wrong with local blast furnaces, so they should not be destroyed in the wind and sun.

It was with the instructions of the old leader that Shi Xiong, who had just joined the work, followed the master to maintain and repair the local blast furnaces and found out the structure of these local blast furnaces.

In fact, even the modern iron making blast furnaces of later generations are not so complicated in structure and principle, even worse than the earth kilns for coking. Although these local blast furnaces are built by local methods, their principle and structure are no different from those of modern ironmaking blast furnaces.

That is to say, a round cylinder with a diameter of about two and a half meters and a height of about five meters is built out of stone or red brick mixed with soil. The smaller it is, the narrower it is, the narrower it is, the narrower it is, and the top of the furnace throat is sealed, and then the gas outlet and feed inlet are reserved. The furnace interior is pasted with a thick layer of refractory clay, some soil blast furnace without refractory clay, simply directly with mud paste, the main purpose is to prevent high temperature.

At the junction of bosh and hearth, there are inclined upward air inlets. The air produced by bellows or blower will be injected into bosh from these air inlets to accelerate the combustion of coke in blast furnace.

At the bottom of the blast furnace hearth, there are two discharge ports respectively. The bottom of one end is the special discharge port for molten iron, and the higher part of the other end is the special discharge port for slag.

During ironmaking, coke, iron ore and limestone are placed in the hearth and furnace belly according to a certain proportion, then ignition is made, and the air box or blower is used to blow into the furnace belly continuously. With the continuous increase of furnace temperature, iron ore and limestone will melt into molten iron containing waste slag.

Because the density of hot metal is very high, which can exceed 7, and the density is much higher than that of the slag, so when the hot metal is produced, the slag from ironmaking floats on the hot metal.

This forms the situation of hot metal in the bottom and slag in the top.

Therefore, the taphole is at the bottom, and the slag taphole is one block higher than the taphole. In this way, the slag produced by ironmaking will flow out from the slag outlet, and the pure molten iron will flow out from the bottom outlet.

This kind of local blast furnace is bell type blast furnace, which is a kind of local blast furnace whose coke consumption rate is far lower than that of cupola type blast furnace and iron tapping rate is far higher than that of cupola type blast furnace. At that time, some large-scale ironmaking sites mostly used this kind of bell type earth blast furnace.

This thing is really not difficult for the stone bear, just like the gourd painting ladle.

Although the local blast furnace built in this way is very primitive, it is the most advanced in this era. Even in Europe, there is no such bell type blast furnace.

Of course, in terms of the current strength of the gaoshu tribe, there is no need to build such a large earth blast furnace. Although in the division of blast furnace, even if the blast furnace is less than 100 cubic meters, that kind of small blast furnace is too big for today's gaoshu tribe.

So Shi Xiong plans to build a smaller earth furnace than a small blast furnace. After all, it's a waste to build too large one.

It's not difficult for the people of gaoshu tribe to build a blast furnace, even if they have never done this kind of muddy work before, but it's really not difficult. In addition, they built a stone house to make firebricks before, so it's not a big deal to build a small blast furnace under the guidance of stone bear.

At the same time of building the blast furnace, the stone bear used the unburned coal left over from coking.

The iron ore excavated from yeniushan is relatively large, so it is too inefficient to put it directly into the blast furnace, so it needs to be broken.

In the gaoshu tribe, where there are no crushing machines or even hammers, the best way to crush these massive iron ores is to burn them first and then pour cold water.

That is to put the iron ore into the burning coal for heating. When the iron ore is very hot, pull it out with a stone stick, and then water it upward. The iron ore will disintegrate under the condition of expansion and contraction.

Before the invention of Chayao, both in the West and the East, rock was mined in this primitive way.

While building the blast furnace and crushing the iron ore, other clansmen were not idle. Under the leadership of yangweihua, some clansmen, mainly women, continued to open up wasteland and plough the land. Under the leadership of Dajiao and gaoniu, another group of clansmen began to frequently enter the yeniushan and wilderness to catch bison.

Wolf's tail failed twice in a row in the hands of the stone bear, each time he was disheartened, so his prestige in the tribe has been greatly reduced, and he is no longer suitable to lead the tribe's soldiers to fight or hunt.

Because it was not for the purpose of killing the bison, and because it used the method of ambush to capture the bison, the capture of the bison went very smoothly.

Usually, about 20 people are divided into two groups. One group begins to sneak into the vicinity of the isolated bison to make an ambush. After the ambush, the other group begins to ride horses and blow horns to scare the bison.

When the lone bison plunges into the ambush circle, the oncoming fishing net will make these bison with endless strength have no place to use.

These soldiers can even catch three bison a day when they are good, and at least one bison a day when they are not lucky.

In the short four days from the completion of the blast furnace, there were eight more bison in the tribe, including six cows and two bulls.

It has to be said that bulls are really more difficult to deal with than cows. When catching these two bulls, two soldiers in the tribe almost died under the horns.

In order to make the eight new bison honest as soon as possible, Shi Xiong did not hesitate to tear down another pair of tongs, and then made eight ox nose rings. With the help of the clan, he put on the ox nose rings one by one.

Not to mention, after the training of the nine bison, the stone bear is now a master of the ox nose ring!