Chapter 108 Autumn Tiger
This land has been mined for coal, but the true role of coal has not yet been realized.
The ironmaking technology uses block ironmaking.
The height of the furnace is very low.
Put firewood and charcoal in the furnace and ignite it, put iron ore on top of the charcoal for smelting, dissolve the impurities in the iron ore, and after all the slag flows out, you get honeycomb sponge iron.
In order to take out the sponge iron, you have to knock off the shell of the furnace - just like disposable chopsticks, throw them away after use, and make a new pair of chopsticks when you eat.
The output of this kind of iron smelting is naturally low.
Because the demand for iron is too great, blacksmiths have to improve the means of iron smelting.
They built a permanent iron smelting furnace with stones, and lined the inside with mud to achieve an effect similar to that of a furnace. Every time the iron smelting is finished, they only need to replace the new mud as the furnace.
But the output is still not high.
So don't blame the high price of iron ingots.
It is rumored that the glorious human empire hundreds of years ago had extremely advanced iron smelting technology, but those technologies were lost due to the destruction of the empire.
Roman knew that it was common for barbarism to defeat civilization.
No matter how advanced and powerful the empire was in the past, it did not prevent this era from being backward.
A skilled charcoal burner can burn 20 to 30 kilograms of charcoal every day.
500 kilograms of charcoal and 500 kilograms of iron ore can smelt about 50 kilograms of sponge iron.
This 50 kilograms of sponge iron requires 25 kilograms of charcoal to calcine.
Use a wooden hammer or a stone hammer to forge and remove impurities on stone or wood.
Finally, forge long iron ingots, cut them off, and sell them out - that is, 1 gold coin in exchange for 30 to 50 kilograms of iron ingots.
Iron smelting is extremely difficult.
But the army cannot do without the demand for steel.
It can only buy iron.
Many noble territories only have agricultural output.
Hundreds of tons of grain must be pulled out to maintain steel consumption and military expenses.
Compared with steel, the value of salt is slightly worse.
Roman cannot put all the labor in Sige Town into the work of mining salt mines - although it can feed the entire Sige Town and make a lot of money.
But the huge output will impact the market price, causing ripples that can radiate the entire land.
At that time, the nobles behind other salt-producing areas will not sit idly by.
If the commotion is too big, a group of troops can be assembled in two months at most.
Although Roman does not care about the opinions of those idiots.
The biggest reason why he does not expand the scale of production is that he has no manpower, and sales are also a problem - those small merchants cannot carry hundreds of thousands of pounds of salt.
He does not want them to come to kill him, but for him to kill them and punch them!
The price of salt must be brought down!
Fuck you!
If you dare to sell it to me at the sky-high price of 1 copper coin again, I will slaughter you all!
I'm sharpening my knife now!
...
Roman wants to burn refractory bricks, which are crucial.
In the current era, the formula of refractory bricks is equivalent to black technology.
But this is also a necessary condition for building blast furnaces and coke ovens. At the same time, he asked the 100 workers to dig coal.
Now there are three roads in Sger Town, namely the salt road, the railway road, and the coal road.
Roman plans to build a coal-iron processing plant at the intersection of the coal road and the railway road, transporting coal from the coal mine and iron ore from the iron mine, and finally processing it into wrought iron, and sending the finished product to the iron shed.
These two types of buildings do not require the assistance of construction workers.
As the saying goes, every profession has its own specialty. Roman wants to train a group of iron smelters by himself.
…
9 days later.
The work of the road paving team is over.
These days, they have bypassed lakes and mountains and built the road to the iron mine more than 100 kilometers away.
After hearing this news, Roman's originally tense nerves relaxed.
He even laughed without caring about his image.
Because he knew that nothing would threaten or hinder his development in the future.
Steel has great strategic significance, but the disadvantage is that the iron mine is far away. Starting from the town of Sego, it takes more than half a day to ride back and forth with light luggage.
The current season is the beginning of autumn.
But the temperature, which was gradually dropping, has risen again, and the weather is getting hotter.
In the hottest time of summer, the body temperature is only about 40 degrees at most, and it drops to 30 degrees in late summer. Now, as if it is a last gasp, the body temperature has exceeded the 50-degree mark.
The air is dry and hot, and the high temperature in the afternoon is scorching the earth.
Roman can't stand this temperature that can burn his skin.
The people of Wandong call this phenomenon "the precursor of winter night". After the short and warm summer ends, the northern land will enter a long and endless winter night;
The people of Sinnoh call it "the embers of the devil". In the church scriptures, a demon god who enslaves 42 demons will destroy the world at the end of summer. But the gods had joined forces to kill the terrible demon before this, and their ashes formed this abnormally hot natural phenomenon;
The Arctic Igo called it "Summer Dusk", and they believed that all the gods died in the last summer of the ancient era. Therefore, the church was very unhappy with them and repeatedly made things difficult for them, and the Arctic pirates were happy to use their battle axes to split the skulls of the priests.
Roman originally wanted to send people to build dozens of wooden houses at the mining site - live there first, and forget about brick houses for the time being.
But he heard that dozens of laborers collapsed on the road due to heat stroke, and more than ten of them could not be saved. Even the unlimited supply of herbal tea could not save their lives.
Roman always used his own experience to push others forward. He himself was somewhat unable to adapt to the scorching heat, and the iron ore mining work was ready.
It was time to stop.
So he recalled all the laborers to escape the heat and gave them three days off.
Their work efficiency surprised Roman.
He was naturally very kind to these hardworking and hardworking people. He rarely called them fools, and asked Jimmy to take a few gold coins of pensions from the manor and give them to the families of the farmers who died of fever while paving the road.
Others who died were slaves.
Some slaves had poor physical fitness and should have been classified as sick and weak to do simple work.
But they were still young and healthy, and Roman needed a lot of labor.
So they were put into the paving team. Some slaves were unable to work, or fell on the road, or fell asleep in the hot afternoon.
Roman arranged for the dead to be buried with honor, and specially prepared a vast cemetery for this purpose, and engraved their names and causes of death on the tombstones.
He did not want anyone who gave his life for him to end up being ignored.
He secretly promoted and fanned the flames, and this behavior soon spread throughout the town of Sger.
Whether slaves or indigenous people, they all felt a unique shock from the depths of their souls from this humanistic care.
They were weeds, and should not have left their names, so they could only be hastily buried, but now they can erect a monument and pass it on to future generations.
They were restless, wanting to do something, but they didn't know what to do.
Their once muddleheaded and muddleheaded thoughts were undoubtedly touched, and thus imprinted with something.
