Start with a blacksmith shop.

Upon seeing the notification that appeared before him, Li Zhenhua was startled.

This is really great; with this analytical eye, it will be much easier for him to select coal suitable for blacksmithing.

In just a short while, Li Zhenhua had picked out a basket of iron charcoal from a pile of coal.

This is the best quality charcoal, selected for its strong heat output and long burning time.

After selecting the coal, Li Zhenhua carried a basket of coal to the stove and removed the refractory brick sealing the stove opening.

Then I took the blower out of the vent, plugged it in and tested it to see if there were any problems.

When they encountered the blower, the analytical eye had already concluded that the blower was good, but Li Zhenhua still tested it by hand.

Reassemble the blower and take out a few pieces of iron charcoal from the winnowing basket, which are just enough to cover the air vent.

Li Zhenhua lit a newspaper and threw it into a small stove made from a milk powder can. He then added a small pile of wood scraps, and the newspaper ignited the wood.

Li Zhenhua then threw the two pieces of charcoal into the small stove, and the charcoal caught fire in no time.

Li Zhenhua used iron chopsticks to pick out the ignited charcoal and put it into the large furnace.

He cleared away the unburnt charcoal around him before turning on the blower.

As the blower blew in a lot of air, all the carbon in the forge caught fire.

Looking at the furnace that had been lit for the first time, Li Zhenhua was reminded once again of the days when he and his grandfather worked together as blacksmiths, and he was the one in charge of lighting the furnace back then.

Li Zhenhua stopped the blower and walked towards a room in the yard not far from the stove.

Just a short while later, when Li Zhenhua reappeared, he was holding a bow plate, which is what people often call spring steel.

This item is now frequently crafted into knives by some DIY enthusiasts online, and of course, the vast majority of them are kitchen knives.

Li Zhenhua is also using this spring steel to make a knife today; this decision was quite difficult to make.

Because his grandfather often warned him that knives are weapons, and one must be extremely careful when using them.

Think carefully about how you'll handle it after you finish making it, otherwise it would be a big problem if it got lost in the shop.

Li Zhenhua understood what his grandfather meant: he wanted him to have reverence for weapons.

But what boy doesn't love weapons? There's a saying that men are boys until they die; even a seventy or eighty-year-old man has a playful heart.

So Li Zhenhua made an exception today. At worst, he would just hide the knife after he finished and not let anyone know.

Besides, Li Zhenhua wasn't planning to make a long knife this time, but a short knife. As for the style, he chose the simplest watermelon knife, which is also the most commonly used item by gangsters.

The bow board that Li Zhenhua chose today is only 20 centimeters long, but it is 10 centimeters wide.

So the first thing to do now is to heat the iron until it's red-hot, and then shape it into a blade blank.

While Li Zhenhua was doing these tasks, subtitles would often appear in front of him, displaying various data.

The iron was placed in the furnace, and Li Zhenhua turned on the blower. The subtitles reappeared.

The display showed that the temperature inside the furnace rose from 100 or 200 degrees Celsius to 900 degrees Celsius before stopping.

It seems that this is the maximum temperature the furnace can reach, unless there is higher energy carbon or the furnace needs to be modified to further increase the furnace temperature.

The iron buried in the carbon in the furnace quickly turned red-hot, and Li Zhenhua couldn't wait to grab it with tongs.

He took it out and placed it on the chopping board. Li Zhenhua picked up the heaviest small hammer and began to shape the red-hot bow board.

At first, Li Zhenhua didn't feel anything while he was hammering away.

But the more he practiced, the smoother things became. His skills had improved many times over compared to when he was wielding the sledgehammer. He could unconsciously achieve the best possible performance.

Just as Li Zhenhua continued forging iron, another subtitle appeared in his eyes.

The information displayed made him very happy because he finally understood the current state of his dexterity.

"Skillful hands: The brain says 'I know,' the eyes say 'Too easy,' and the hands say 'A piece of cake, I can do that too!' (millimeter-level)"

It was from this point that Li Zhenhua gained a very intuitive understanding of dexterity.

Although we know that skill and dexterity have already come in handy, now that the fire has been lit and the iron has been forged, we must finish forging this knife.

Li Zhenhua kept hammering the raw material with his hammer, sometimes several times, sometimes a dozen times.

As the temperature decreases, the hardness of iron increases, making it impossible to hammer.

The iron must be fed back into the furnace and heated until red-hot, then taken out and forged again.

When Li Zhenhua realized what kind of precision he had, he turned his gaze to the air hammer placed to the side.

Li Zhenhua also wanted to try it out to see if this skillful dexterity could be used when operating large equipment.

Put the half-cut blank back into the furnace and continue heating it until it's red-hot.

Li Zhenhua turned around and went to the air hammer, reconnected the three-phase power cables to the switch, and turned on the power. He immediately heard the air hammer's asynchronous motor start operating, continuously compressing air into the cylinder.

The air hammer's head moved up and down continuously, and Li Zhenhua adjusted the hammer's drop height based on the visual cues.

Ever since his eyes gave him the hint, he knew that the skill of dexterity could also be used with an air hammer.

At this point, the preparations were complete. Li Zhenhua took the billet out, sprinkled some borax on it, removed impurities with an iron brush, and then placed it under the air hammer, stepping on the foot switch.

The billet was being pounded by an air hammer, and the hand was constantly adjusting the billet.

From the eyes giving suggestions, to the brain receiving and issuing instructions, and then to the hands receiving instructions and starting to act, a series of processes form a closed loop.

The blanks were also slowly hammered into shape under Li Zhenhua's hands.

The shape of the watermelon knife is quite easy to forge; Li Zhenhua hammered it out using blacksmithing techniques.

If you just heat a large piece of bowplate until it's red-hot, anneal it, hammer it into shape, draw a knife shape on it, and cut it out with an angle grinder, it would be much faster to make.

Li Zhenhua took the blank knife and put it back into the furnace, continuing to heat it until it was red-hot.

This time, he picked up a small hammer and used it to shape the blank. At this point, it could be said that they were almost at the final stage.

After shaping the blade, the next step is to quench it, which is a true test of a blacksmith's skill.

Whether or not to temper it after quenching depends on the blacksmith's skill.

If you don't have the skill to temper it, it's best to leave the knife in its quenched state.

The blank knife was still burning in the furnace, and Li Zhenhua went to the warehouse once again.