My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 174: Huang Zu, Huang Zu is finished

After finalizing several major improvement directions for furnace iron smelting with Pu Yuan, Zhuge Jin would visit Pu Yuan's workshop every now and then for more than half a month, taking advantage of the winter when official duties were not busy, to check on the progress of technical improvements.

Occasionally, if he found something that was obviously inconsistent with his later experience, he would point it out in time so that it could be corrected as soon as possible.

But as long as it was not an obvious common sense mistake, Zhuge Jin's attitude was generally gentle. He would rather let the craftsmen explore by practice. However, he must send a scribe to follow and record the failed experiments and the phenomena after the failure in detail.

After all, the control experimental data found out are also of great value.

Directly forcing the craftsman to give the answer will often result in him knowing the result but not the reason, and his grasp of the theory will not be solid.

For example, on the first day Zhuge Jin asked people to experiment with the blower, the initial model was of course made according to the shape of the blades of later electric fans.

But during the repeated control group experiments later, Zhuge Jin suddenly remembered that electric fans and ventilation fans in later generations seemed to use two types of blades and ventilation principles.

He was a science and engineering student in his previous life. He dismantled and reassembled all the broken electrical appliances at home by himself. He had also replaced the exhaust fan in the bathroom several times, so he was very familiar with the appearance of the blades.

So in the following days, Zhuge Jin roughly sketched the structure of the ventilation fan blades and asked the craftsmen to try to make both types to inspire Pu Yuan's ideas.

Ultimately, actual production data will be used to determine whether the blades of an electric fan blow air faster or the blades of a ventilation fan blow air faster. Whichever is better will be used without pre-setting the answer, so that the craftsmen do not have to worry about "pleasing their leaders."

Such a pragmatic attitude and approachable work negotiation style really made Pu Yuan and others respect Zhuge Jin more and more. They were determined to try any proposals of the Zhuge brothers and no longer resisted.

In the end, the original intention was just to build a furnace with new refractory materials, but when it came to the practical stage, major improvements were made from the blasting method, to the slag flux formula, to the refractory materials of the furnace body.

It can be said that when you pull out a radish, you bring out the mud. In order to fill an expected shortcoming, three unknown shortcomings were filled in succession.

Of course, among these three improvements, the blower fan was the most effective. The experimental results were tested in more than half a month, and ultimately the furnace temperature was increased by more than 100 degrees, greatly improving the iron-making efficiency.

The problem of refractory furnaces and fluorite flux is a little more troublesome.

It is estimated that it will take at least several months for a prototype refractory furnace to be built.

As for fluorite, it depends even more on luck. Originally, no one in the Han Dynasty specifically mined fluorite. At most, it was only occasionally used in jewelry. There was no systematic experience in prospecting and mining, and everything had to be accumulated from scratch.

……

But no matter what, after the blower was improved and the furnace temperature was increased, the temperature of the molten iron when it came out of the furnace also increased, and it could remain liquid for a longer time, so it could be poured directly into a mold containing preheated fine wrought iron bars. During the cooling process, the raw and wrought iron each decarburized and recarbonized to form steel.

In this way, the "steel pouring method" that only appeared during the Sui and Tang Dynasties could basically be developed.

In the future, higher furnace temperatures and hotter pig iron will simply further improve reaction efficiency and reaction time, improve the quality of poured steel, and reduce the requirements for reaction wrought iron.

At the end of the Han Dynasty, the national steel production was no more than 1,000 tons per year. In the Tang Dynasty, it reached more than 2,000 tons, and in the Song Dynasty it was close to 4,000 tons. One important reason for this was that the steel pouring method was much more efficient than the steel frying method.

Therefore, after trial-producing a good enough blower, Zhuge Jin explained the basic idea of steel pouring to Pu Yuan.

Pu Yuan was also knowledgeable and immediately understood the essence of the matter.

In the original steelmaking method, pig iron in a molten state or in the form of red-hot debris relies entirely on forging and friction to react with wrought iron to even out the carbon content and become steel.

The reaction speed is definitely not as fast and thorough as pouring a solid and a liquid together.

Of course, it is still a little early for Zhuge Jin to start pouring steel, mainly because the refractory furnace has not yet been invented, coke has not yet been used, the furnace temperature and the temperature of the molten pig iron are not yet right, and the time for the pig iron to remain liquid and react with the wrought iron is too short.

However, Zhuge Jin at least had some basic knowledge of chemistry, so he thought: if the reaction time was not enough, he could make up for it by increasing the reaction contact area.

In the Tang Dynasty, craftsmen used the steel pouring method to forge soft wrought iron into thin bars in advance, and then preheated them to red before putting them into the mold. The thinner the wrought iron bars, the better, because the thinner and more the bars, the larger the contact area when the molten iron is poured in.

Zhuge Jin had an extra killer weapon - as early as this time last year, he thought of using perforated metal plates to pull the wrought iron rods through the small holes to make them thinner and thinner. After finally making thin wrought iron wires, he bent them into small iron circles, and finally heat-treated them to harden them to make chain mail.

When Zhuge Liang went on a diplomatic mission to Yuan Shao last year, Zhuge Jin gave Zhuge Liang and Zhao Yun each a piece of iron-ringed chain mail, which had a very good defensive effect.

Historically, until the early Sui and Tang dynasties, Chinese civilization did not have iron ring chain mail, nor the technology to use brushed metal plates or drawn iron wire.

Although Pu Yuan's current furnace temperature and molten iron temperature are slightly low, Zhuge Jin can pull out thinner wrought iron wire than the people of the Tang Dynasty. Doesn't this make up for the reaction speed and efficiency?

In this way, we can first conduct experiments on the steel pouring method, accumulate some experience, and at least verify the technical feasibility.

In the future, when refractory furnaces and coke are available, the furnace temperature and molten iron temperature will rise further, and the process of drawing the cooked iron wire before pouring steel can be omitted, so that large-scale mass production can be directly carried out.

After a month of hard work, Zhuge Jin finally completed the "laboratory trial production of steel pouring method", which made him very excited, and he immediately decided to find Liu Bei to report and show off.

Of course, there is still at least several months of hard work between "laboratory success" and "industrial mass production". It would be good if we can achieve initial mass production success in the turn of spring and summer next year.

After all, the wrought iron wires used in the steel pouring experiment are all drawn one by one from the drawing plate, and the labor cost is very high, no less than the manpower required for forging raw and wrought iron steel. It is just to verify that the idea of steel pouring is feasible.

The cost of industrialization of any new technology in its infancy is often less cost-effective than when the technology was at its peak in the old era. How could the pouring steel method, which had just been experimented with, immediately surpass the stir-frying steel method, which had been mature and used for more than 300 years?

Just like the electric car industry in later generations, if it wants to surpass fuel vehicles with a century of experience and efficiency, it will also need more than a decade of subsidies and support from the industrial sector.

Liu Bei is now playing this role. He can be responsible for investment and loss-making subsidies during the infancy of the steel pouring method, which is still "uneconomical". Obviously, other princes in the late Han Dynasty cannot have such a vision, and they do not have a Zhuge Jin-type strategist to remind them to invest. ...

However, after Zhuge Jin successfully poured steel, he did not have time to report to Liu Bei.

It was a coincidence that Huang Yueying had made a breakthrough in the past few days and shared it with Zhuge Liang, who then shared it with his eldest brother as soon as possible.

On the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month, Zhuge Liang came to visit early in the morning and said excitedly to him, "Brother! Yueying's 'counterweight trebuchet' has finally made some progress. A major difficulty has been overcome, which is the 'squirrel cage crane' you mentioned."

Zhuge Jin felt that this was very sudden, because he did not explain too much about this matter, and Huang Yueying was mainly figuring it out on her own. So he quickly asked:

"Oh? How did you achieve this breakthrough? Why was it so fast?"

Zhuge Liang was also proud and lucky: "I am ashamed to say that, that day my elder brother asked us to go to Pu Yuan's workshop to figure out the water wheel blower for the furnace. Doesn't the blower use a speed change mechanism that allows the water wheel to rotate once while the fan wheel rotates dozens of times?

At that time, Yueying thought that thing was cumbersome, and I also thought it was a lot of brainpower to tinker with it. I didn't expect that after I thoroughly understood the speed changer of the waterwheel blower, I came back to think about the counterweight crane of the counterweight trebuchet, and I was able to apply it to other things.

The counterweight of the trebuchet weighs thousands of pounds and needs to be hoisted into place by manpower. Originally, it would take dozens of people to pull it. But according to what my brother said, we can build a large hollow wooden wheel, and people can stand inside the wooden wheel and use their body weight to step on the wooden wheel to turn it, just like a field mouse running in place in a cage with an empty wheel. Then, by using the multiple of the diameter difference between the large wooden wheel and the wheel that twists the counterweight, can't we twist the heavy object?
Inspired by the speed change mechanism of the waterwheel blower, we integrated the wheel for pedaling and the wheel for twisting the counterweight into one piece, with the same axis but a diameter difference of dozens of times. The 'lever arm' also differs by dozens of times. A 300-jin strong man can twist the 6,000-jin counterweight one step higher every 20 steps. "

The "squirrel cage crane" mentioned by Zhuge Liang was casually named by Zhuge Jin, because this thing was called this name during the Western Renaissance in later generations.

Because this thing is the same as when people in later generations raised hamsters, they put a hollow wheel in the hamster's nest and let the hamster use it as a treadmill. It's just many times bigger than the hamster treadmill, and the hamster inside is replaced by a human.

For those who don’t know much about it, you can watch the episode about the counterweight trebuchet in the documentary that comes with the game "Age of Empires 4". You will then know how people step on the "enlarged hamster treadmill" on the trebuchet to hoist the big rocks to high places.

Zhuge Jin had watched that documentary in his previous life, so he had given Zhuge Liang and his wife the initial advice before. Later, through the research and development of the steel-casting hydraulic blower, Huang Yueying was further inspired and finally made a speed and force changing mechanism similar to a "bicycle coaxial gear set".

Once this universal coaxial speed-changing and force-changing mechanism is invented, it will bring immeasurable benefits and can be used in so many places. Hydraulic blowers and counterweight catapults are just two typical examples.

……

"Yueying has actually summarized the general experience of this coaxial wooden wheel speed-changing and force-changing mechanism with different diameters? That's really good news. It's worth exploring other application scenarios.

However, the most important thing right now is to report these two applications to the lord first, and strive for more resources for mass production. After the spring plowing next year, if we really want to use troops against Huang Zu, we will have heavier catapults available, and we can also provide more steel-forged armor for the soldiers who are the first to attack. By then, Huang Zu's method of defending the city with strong crossbows will not be a big deal!"

After Zhuge Jin thoroughly understood the mental journey of Zhuge Liang and Huang Yueying in developing the squirrel-cage crane, he was finally relieved about the mass production progress of the counterweight trebuchet.

Anyway, it's only the twelfth lunar month, and there's still a lot of time before the scheduled start of the war next year. The crane is the core technical difficulty of the new trebuchet. After this point is overcome, the remaining mechanical structure optimization will definitely be completely solved within two months.

Moreover, there has been no new decree from Cao Cao to clarify whether Liu Bei should start a fight with Huang Zu. In Cao Cao's first decree, it was said "first persuade Liu Biao to clean up his own mess. If Liu Biao is unable to do so or is unwilling to do so, then let Liu Bei take action."

Until now, Liu Bei has not received the second notice, and he doesn't know whether Liu Biao will take action.

So there is definitely more than enough time to prepare.

At that time, we would use the counterweight catapults to smash the battlements of the towers, destroy the crossbows on the top of the city walls, and then push the arrow-proof Ge Gongche up, and finally let the soldiers equipped with steel armor go up first.

This scene is so beautiful that I dare not even look at it. What can Huang Zu do to resist?
After fantasizing about this beautiful scene, Zhuge Jin did not stop and directly dragged his second brother to show off to Liu Bei.

Of course, he did not forget to pack a piece of strange-looking clothing before leaving.

It was a piece of clothing made of three layers of thick cloth. The two layers on the inner and outer surfaces were sewn with many small squares, and then small slits were cut on the upper edges of the small squares to form pockets.

When Zhuge Liang saw this dress, he was amazed: "What is this? Why are there so many pockets on it?"

Zhuge Jin smiled proudly: "I asked the military tailor to make this a few days ago to test the effect of the armor. In the future, when you make armor plates with steel filling, you don't need to drill holes and connect them together.

You can directly insert the pieces into the pockets of this garment, and when it is full, it can almost be equivalent to a piece of armor. Then put it on a straw man, chop it with a knife, stab it with a gun, and shoot arrows at it. You can directly test whether the quality of the steel pieces is good or not. "

Zhuge Jin combined the idea of later plate-type bulletproof vests and created an experimental tool specifically for testing the effect of armor plates. Moreover, this thing is quite similar to the cotton armor of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The cotton armor of the late Ming Dynasty could protect against musket shotgun bullets thanks to the iron straps sewn inside the pockets of the thick cotton layer.

However, the iron-strap cotton armor of the Ming and Qing dynasties did not need to consider removability and replaceability, so they would not have pockets like Zhuge Jin's prototype. They would sew the iron pieces shut on all four sides.

Zhuge Jin took the display props and a bunch of steel-filled note samples that Pu Yuan had just made, and soon arrived at the General of Chariots and Cavalry's mansion.

The guards at the General of Chariots and Cavalry's mansion would of course not stop them. They went straight into the back hall to see Liu Bei without waiting for the report.

It was not until the last moment before Zhuge Jin entered the room that Liu Bei received the guard's message and immediately came out and went down the stairs to greet him.

"Zi Yu hasn't come for many days. His sudden arrival today must mean there has been some progress?" Liu Bei said politely with a smile on his face, while pulling Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Liang into the house to sit down.

"My Lord, you are right. There has indeed been progress," Zhuge Jin said, taking out the strange thick cloth with the "steel-filled bulletproof plate" and showing it off. "If nothing unexpected happens, by March or April next year, our army will have a lot of this kind of steel armor that is easy to mass-produce. By then, what will Huang Zu mean to me?"

Liu Bei was also very happy when he heard this. He stroked his beard and asked back, "Zi Yu is really a prophet. How did you know that Cao Cao sent another messenger to deliver an order the day before yesterday, saying that Liu Biao was unable to take action against Huang Zu and that it was confirmed that we needed to take action."

Zhuge Jin was stunned: "I don't know, I just happened to learn the method of pouring steel with Pu Yuan, and at the same time A Liang improved the catapult - but, isn't this a coincidence, then we can use Huang Zu to test whether our weapons are sharp."

(End of this chapter)