Though it was supposed to be rest time, after returning to the inner courtyard, Han Qian couldn’t fall asleep. He took out paper and brush to ponder the internal structure of piston-style bellows.
Although he had thrown this difficult problem to Chen Jitang and the others, his main purpose in doing so was to force them to think deeply, helping them break free from the shackles of rigid convention. He didn’t actually expect them to truly figure out the internal structure of piston-style bellows and fierce fire oil cabinets within two days.
Otherwise, if Chen Jitang and the others’ minds didn’t become enlightened for a day, would Han Qian not allow piston-style bellows and fierce fire oil cabinets to come into existence for that day?
Xi Ren wasn’t interested in engineering and manufacturing matters, so she went to her room to sleep first, leaving the tempting little vixen Zhao Ting’er to accompany Han Qian as he stayed up late.
She wanted to see when Han Qian would be unable to resist devouring this tempting little vixen, flesh and bones, into his belly—that would save this little vixen from constantly showing off to her.
Beyond using one-way valves to control the entry and exit of air, piston-style bellows also utilized piston-rod板式 pistons to simulate the compression of traditional bellows.
Once the principle was understood, the internal structure wasn’t complex.
The so-called water pumps and fierce fire oil cabinets were structurally quite similar to piston-style bellows—mainly changing from controlling air entry and exit to controlling the entry and exit of liquids like water and fierce fire oil.
If there were other differences, they lay in material selection and external shape.
Bellows didn’t require strict sealing, water pumps could tolerate some minor leakage, but if fierce fire oil cabinets leaked, with flammable oil material leaking everywhere, the hidden danger would be enormous.
Beyond piston-style bellows, Han Qian also needed to consider the structure of new-style forging furnaces and wind-powered forging hammers.
The flat, open areas around Yandang Headland lacked high-elevation streams and rivers to provide convenient conditions for water-powered machinery, but the wind was strong. Building on the foundation of constructing water-powered trip hammers, coal crushers, water mills, and water-powered bellows at Qiuhu Mountain Villa, using canvas to make vertical sail windmills—even connecting forging hammers to the windmill’s rotating shaft—actually presented no insurmountable technical difficulties in the contemporary era.
Vertical sail windmills and wind-powered forging hammers seemed to have no technical difficulties preventing their realization, but their structure was far more complex than bellows.
And in the contemporary era, all components had to be hand-forged and crafted—it couldn’t be done in three to five days. However, the new-style forging furnace Han Qian proposed, compared to old-style hand-forging furnaces, merely added a relatively fire-resistant, sturdy furnace top and redesigned the flue.
The main purpose of doing this was to make the working chamber semi-enclosed, minimizing heat source dissipation as much as possible.
After Han Qian thoroughly explained the relevant principles to Zhao Ting’er, he had her help him with the drawing work, which saved him a great deal of effort.
The Third Prince couldn’t remain outside the city for long. Early the next morning, the Palace Attendants Bureau sent someone to urge his return. He had to rush back to the city before noon, but remembered to have Zhang Ping bring the Yongchun Palace servant household registry across the river to see Han Qian, allowing him to select twenty servant households from the estate as an additional reward.
Han Qian couldn’t possibly summon all nine hundred-plus servant households before him to examine one by one. He could only select twenty households based on the merits or reputation of their fathers’ generation. That afternoon, Zhang Ping used ships to transport twenty households—one hundred twenty-seven people—into Yandang Headland estate.
The estate compound didn’t have sufficient housing, but since they were servants, they could make do temporarily with makeshift shacks.
Beyond supplementing the distillation room, smelting room, construction team, and shipping association, these personnel also provided over ten additional able-bodied workers. North of the currently cultivated paddy fields, they dug ditches and embanked polder fields, hoping to plant one to two hundred more mu of wheat after the autumn waters receded.
Regarding the difficult problem Han Qian had given Chen Jitang and the Du brothers, only Chen Jitang produced a solution after two days.
Although the solution Chen Jitang provided differed greatly from the bellows Han Qian personally designed—being quite redundant and complex—being able to manually operate air blowing into the furnace chamber was sufficient proof that his inherited family learning was indeed genuine.
If he hadn’t suffered drastic upheaval, even if his life achievements didn’t reach his father’s level of eternal fame for the Siming Mountain Dam, Han Qian secretly felt Chen Jitang’s future accomplishments wouldn’t necessarily fall below Marquis Liyang Yang En.
Han Qian finally assigned the Du brothers to go daily to the Prince’sMansion’s Jinyun Pavilion to help him transcribe and search for books—this was also a process of deep learning for the Du brothers.
Han Qian appointed Chen Jitang as chief supervising craftsman of Yandang Headland, while Zhao Qi assisted Old Zhao in specifically managing the servants and handling the estate’s trivial affairs.
In any case, everyone in the estate compound was from his Han family’s retainers and servants—whom Han Qian assigned to do what was not subject to others’ criticism.
Over the next several days, Han Qian remained at Yandang Headland, personally supervising the construction of new forging furnaces in the newly built compound.
Limited by defects in contemporary construction materials, Han Qian didn’t dare rashly build large furnaces. Even if he were to build them, he wouldn’t spend huge sums building large furnaces at Yandang Headland. Ultimately, he controlled the new furnace’s semi-enclosed chamber-style working furnace chamber to within three chi.
This way, although large steel components couldn’t be made—even requiring three steel components to assemble one complete refined steel bow crossbow—it could greatly reduce the risk of furnace collapse.
Currently, as an experimental furnace, it was sufficient.
Once piston-style bellows were drawn in diagrams, with skilled carpenters available, crafting them became even easier.
On August third, Yandang Headland’s new furnace, about one person tall, was officially fired up. Seeing the flames rising from a pile of charcoal quickly turn pure azure, the Han family craftsmen were so excited they nearly jumped.
How could they have imagined such simple modifications would produce such tremendous changes?
The contemporary era mainly relied on observing flame color changes to roughly estimate flame temperature.
The common saying “mastery of the furnace fire”—actually in the contemporary era, being able to burn flames to pure azure in smelting matters was already the ultimate achievement.
This was roughly common knowledge that contemporary craftsmen all possessed. Only at this point could pig iron blocks be quickly melted into molten iron.
Previously, the hand-forging furnaces made in earthen brick buildings could never burn flames to pure azure, so naturally the speed of heating pig iron bars extremely tested one’s patience.
Now, raising the flame temperature so quickly and maintaining it stably there—whether frying steel or forging steel components, the speed was several times faster than the old method!
Of course, building semi-enclosed chamber-style forging furnaces and bellows didn’t mean everything was settled.
Currently there was no effective method for detecting carbon content and impurities, let alone precision testing instruments.
To what degree steel components should be forged, as well as the selection of pig iron material, iron ore, even quenching materials and methods—all could only be explored step by step. Only through continuous comparison in practice could sufficient experience be accumulated.
It might take a long time of exploration before stably forging steel component products with excellent performance.
Iron ore from each location would also have a relatively independent set of smelting, casting, and even quenching methods. This mainly related to different locations’ iron ore having relatively stable types and contents of impurities.
Xuzhou of course also produced iron ore. After the new forging furnace was completed, Han Qian specified that Chen Jitang lead the Han family craftsmen to temporarily use only several types of pig iron material produced in Xuzhou, exploring methods for forging steel components.
This way, on one hand it could continue expanding the scale of trade shipping between Jinling and Xuzhou. On the other hand, even if the ultimately summarized forging and casting methods leaked out, it could ensure the origin of iron ore and pig iron material could only be Xuzhou.
Although he didn’t expect to quickly forge refined steel bow arms—steel components with extremely demanding requirements—casting crude steel for farm implements was sufficient.
When the estate dug ditches and built polder embankments in autumn, planning to embank over a hundred more mu of polder fields, and still needed to build three to five more compounds to have sufficient space to serve as the Xuzhou Shipping Association’s mooring base in Jinling—previously needing to purchase farm implements and craftsmen’s tools from outside—now they could forge them independently using the new-style forging furnace.
Doing this, the quality of cast farm implements and craftsmen’s tools could receive direct feedback.
“In Jinling city, a masonry trowel sells for two hundred coins in the market, with profit of only thirty to forty coins. But with the new furnace Your Lordship has built, to make one masonry trowel—Jitang has calculated—requires only seventy coins. Once vertical sail wind power is completed, hammering and forging will save even more labor, and costs can be even lower. From now on, even if the estate specifically casts farm implements, it will be enormously profitable.” After supervising craftsmen in making farm implements and craftsmen’s tools for two days, Chen Jitang quickly calculated the material and labor costs of the new-style forging furnace. In the future, continuing to research quality improvements would only further reduce costs.
Salt and iron monopolies had been implemented since the Han dynasty, and in the contemporary era salt and iron were still discussed together.
However, because iron smelting techniques had spread extremely widely among the common people, roughly since the late Han the imperial court had been unable to monopolize the iron smelting industry. Therefore, unlike the salt monopoly system, Great Chu’s control over the iron industry mainly involved levying iron taxes, without restricting private mining, iron smelting, or casting iron implements. Management was much more lenient than wine monopolies, comparable to tea and medicine industries.
Chen Jitang’s meaning was very clear—he was suggesting that Yandang Headland apply for an official permit to operate an iron foundry. From now on, with the Prince’sMansion’s support, even if only forging and selling farm implements, it should quickly become Jinling city’s largest-scale iron foundry.
Han Qian smiled faintly and said to Chen Jitang, who had quite an economic mind: “The new-style forging furnace matter shouldn’t be disseminated for now. When you have free time, perhaps help me ponder which internal parts of sailing ships can be replaced with steel components. From now on, the smelting room, besides trial-casting refined steel bow arms, will mainly forge a batch of ship-use steel components for our own use!”
Large-scale iron foundries still needed to fully utilize water power resources. With Jinling’s situation uncertain two to three years hence, even if he were to build a large iron foundry now, Han Qian would only place it in Xuzhou.
He currently didn’t want major movements. What he wanted to do more was mainly to work out a mature smelting and forging method based on iron ore and pig iron material produced in Xuzhou, then craft a batch of ship-use steel structural components on a small scale, so the shipping association could possess stronger, more solid yet lighter warships.
Compared to scorpion ballista projectile attacks, if they could build more solid warships and directly utilize the ship hull’s advantage for ramming, in naval warfare the deterrent and destructive power would be even stronger.
This was clearly demonstrated when defending Xichuan—when Yang Qin and the others used warships to impact the Liang army’s naval fleet formation. The civilian ships the Liang army navy requisitioned in Jingxiang were truly too fragile—otherwise the Jingxiang campaign wouldn’t have ended so easily ahead of schedule.
With so many people now watching his side, if Han Qian truly built a large iron foundry directly, how could the new smelting and forging technology possibly be concealed?
Currently the smelting room only used Han family retainers and servants, which was sufficient. Han Qian not only had authority to restrict their entry and exit from the estate compound, but could also limit their contact with outsiders, maintaining strict control over them. But once a large iron foundry was built, it would inevitably require hiring large numbers of craftsmen and master craftsmen from outside—who knew how many spies would be inserted?
Han Qian was discussing with Chen Jitang his thinking about ship-use steel components, discussing principles of buoyancy. Where others would find iron blocks floating on water very difficult to understand, Chen Jitang’s thinking was open—many matters were transparent with just a hint. In this aspect he even surpassed Ji Xiyao and Zhao Ting’er by a notch.
At this moment, Old Zhao came in to report: “Advisor Zheng from the Prince’sMansion has come to pay respects to Young Master.”
“Ah? What’s he coming to do?” Han Qian was slightly startled.
Han Qian thought to himself that the distillation method he was willing to reveal to the Zheng family—with Zheng Hui’s discernment, after seeing it he shouldn’t have difficulty deducing the key points. He also couldn’t imagine there were still some critical technical methods hidden here. So why would Zheng Hui make a special trip to see him alone?
Moreover, although he was now more lazy, he still ensured going to the Prince’sMansion every two days to show his face. Whatever Zheng Hui had to say could be completely said at the Prince’sMansion.
“Advisor Zheng didn’t send someone with a calling card—he’s already personally arrived at the estate,” Old Zhao said, seeing Han Qian somewhat distracted, reminding him.
“Ah! That makes him an unexpected visitor!” Not expecting Zheng Hui to have already arrived at Yandang Headland, Han Qian had Chen Jitang and Old Zhao follow him out together to receive Zheng Hui.