The smelting room was quite crude, having just been set up today, with the furnace officially fired up for the first time.
Han Qian had spent the entire day accompanying the Third Prince hunting and inspecting the Yongchun Palace estate, only now getting a chance to observe the Han family craftsmen’s process of smelting crude steel.
The Longque Army had established garrison military offices for forging and repairing weapons and armor, which fell under the Works Office’s jurisdiction—something Zhou Yuan had striven to control from the very beginning. So Han Qian had previously had no opportunity to personally and carefully work through the steel-smelting process. In the past when he was in Jinling and wanted to forge steel components, he would instruct Lin Haizheng or other Lin family craftsmen to find craftsmen from the Works Office to help.
Back then Zhou Yuan had needed Han Qian’s help, so he wouldn’t make things difficult over such trivial details.
Standing in the smelting room at this moment, merely observing the operation of the two hand-forging furnaces inside, he felt it was truly too crude.
The hand-forging furnaces used in the contemporary era for heating pig iron blocks for decarburization and post-heating hammering had a working space that was simply a concave trough furnace chamber. The trough was filled with charcoal or coal, with combustion air supplied through holes at the trough bottom. The workpiece was buried in burning charcoal for heating, with half the working space exposed to the outside. Heat escaped through radiation and hot air convection—how high could the thermal efficiency be, and how much could it raise the furnace temperature?
The bellows for blowing air were made only of cowhide—the blowing devices commonly used for smelting metals in the contemporary era. Han Qian hadn’t yet had time to carefully study their internal structure.
These several bellows had been directly requisitioned from the military office’s Works Office. They had two handles attached at the bottom, with each bellows operated by two servants gripping the handles to blow air into the forge.
However, this type of manual bellows was extremely labor-intensive. Han Qian secretly felt that these two servants couldn’t work for even half a double-hour before their arms would become too numb and sore to lift, requiring others to take over.
Perhaps due to limited furnace temperature, Han Qian and the others watched from outside the smelting room for quite a while without seeing the pig iron bar placed in the work trough turn red. Han Qian called out a young craftsman and asked—learning it took over half a double-hour of heating like this before a pig iron bar would become semi-soft. Only then could iron ore powder be sprinkled on and rolled, allowing the raw iron ore powder to gradually burn into the red-hot pig iron bar.
Han Qian thought to himself that no wonder even crude steel suitable only for making farm implements sold at such high prices, and from crude steel to finished implements still required further hammering into shape.
No wonder the five famous swords of the Three Kingdoms period took three years to forge, and even though the contemporary era had already mastered this frying steel technique of heating and sprinkling iron ore powder for decarburization, first-class superior swords truly needed to sell for hundreds of thousands of coins just to break even.
Even from this cursory observation, Han Qian knew how much room for improvement he could achieve once he got started.
Setting aside other matters, the work trough for heating forgings at minimum needed to be changed to an enclosed or semi-enclosed chamber.
People of the contemporary era didn’t know this, but Han Qian knew that with open work troughs, the furnace flame’s heat dissipated outward in large quantities through convection and radiation. While enclosed work chambers also needed flues and couldn’t completely block hot air convection, they could at least significantly reduce heat radiation outward.
Just this one point alone, Han Qian estimated, could directly and substantially raise the furnace temperature.
Of course, enclosed work chambers had to withstand high-temperature roasting and needed to be sturdy and fire-resistant to avoid constantly collapsing and injuring people—there were still quite a few technical challenges to overcome.
Besides the work trough, the bellows in Han Qian’s eyes were also too primitive.
Although the contemporary era could make water-powered bellows—using water flow to impact water wheel paddles, driving reciprocating wheels to compress leather bags for air blowing, which was much more labor-efficient than manual blowing—the area around Yandang Headland was flat, with extremely slow water flow in the river channels, far insufficient to drive water wheels.
Furnace temperature was also directly related to the volume of air blown in. How should this problem be solved?
…
…
While Han Qian was contemplating how to improve and upgrade the bellows facilities, Third Prince Yang Yuanpu’s attention was diverted by something else. He asked Han Qian curiously:
“There seems to be quite a strong wine fragrance wafting from the eastern courtyard. Did wine jars break in Teacher Han’s residence?”
“How many wine jars would have to break to produce such a strong wine fragrance?” Zhang Ping laughed. He had already noticed the wine scent coming from the estate compound earlier, but Han Qian was a person with too many secrets—if the Third Prince didn’t bring it up, it wasn’t convenient for him to inquire rashly.
He believed Shen Yang and Zheng Hui should have noticed this as well.
Han Qian snapped back to attention, withdrawing his gaze from the smelting room, and said: “The contemporary era lacks strong spirits. I’m someone who can’t sit idle, so I secretly brew some wine to drink.”
Great Chu actually had a wine monopoly system. Within Jinling city, only a dozen or so wine shops obtained official wine permits from the Wine Administration under the Salt and Iron Commission, qualifying them to brew and sell wine publicly. Other wine houses and brothels alike had to purchase wine from these dozen-plus wine shops. That Linjiang Money Shop could use burning blade liquor to offset part of its interest payments was exploiting a loophole where the Salt and Iron Commission turned a blind eye to properties under the Third Prince’s name.
However, private individuals brewing wine privately, as long as they didn’t openly sell it publicly, the authorities didn’t restrict.
Han Qian led everyone without reservation into the eastern side courtyard where wine mash was being steamed and cooked.
The steaming pot Han Qian was currently using was placed directly on a large stove for steaming. A large conical copper lid covered the top, with copper round pipes as thick as an arm extending from the large copper lid.
Charcoal fire was set inside the large stove to steam the wine mash, with hot vapor rising and flowing out downward through the slanted copper pipes.
Since Han Qian hadn’t yet figured out how to continuously supply cold water into the condensation pipe, he hadn’t installed the condensation pipe inside the copper tube yet.
At this time, wine distillation mainly relied on the copper pipe naturally dissipating heat through contact with the air.
Even though the fire beneath the stove was very small, large amounts of wine vapor still escaped, with only a small amount of wine liquid seeping along the copper pipe walls and continuously dripping into the clay urn below.
Han Qian poured several cups of already-distilled wine and handed them to the Third Prince, Shen Yang, Zheng Hui, and Zhang Ping for tasting. He deliberately asked Zheng Hui with a smile: “How does my privately brewed Yandang Spring compare to the wine brewed by the Zheng clan of Huangzhou?”
Even if Zheng Hui wasn’t the Zheng clan’s family head, he was one of its most core descendants. He naturally knew that the Zheng family’s secret wine-brewing method actually used continuous yeast addition to increase wine strength, already considered rare strong liquor in the contemporary era. But when he entered the distillation room and smelled the rich wine fragrance filling the chamber, he knew this Yandang Spring was stronger than wine made by the Zheng family.
Zheng Hui took a sip. The wine hadn’t been blended, making it somewhat bland and tasteless on entry, but a line of fire descended along his throat—definitely much stronger than Zheng family wine. He was secretly shocked in his heart, not knowing which school Han Qian had studied under to even be versed in wine-brewing techniques.
“I didn’t expect Lord Han to also be a famous wine-brewing master. In the contemporary era, such strong fine liquor would be hard to find, wouldn’t it?” Zheng Hui said.
Han Qian smiled faintly and said: “Merely picking up scraps from others’ wisdom—what kind of famous wine-brewing master am I?”
The alcohol content of what he served everyone wasn’t high. He had tested samples with quicklime—the alcohol content was only around thirty percent. But the alcohol content was still much higher than the so-called strong liquor of the contemporary era brewed using continuous yeast addition methods.
Han Qian only vaguely remembered that alcohol’s boiling point was lower than water’s, and that distillation could separate it from water. But in reality it was still distilled with water, merely doubling the alcohol content.
Han Qian couldn’t figure out exactly why for the moment, but seeing that alcohol content could be increased, he knew it could be further purified through continuous distillation methods.
However, the installation of condensation pipes and how to continuously supply water—Han Qian temporarily didn’t have time to think carefully about these issues. So currently wine distillation was far from ideal, which was why Han Qian was very generous about inviting everyone to tour inside.
Even if Zheng Hui’s eyes bulged like copper bells, wanting to take in everything in the distillation room, Han Qian didn’t care at all.
“Teacher Han has so many matters to attend to—the useful servants in the estate compound are probably insufficient. Teacher Han, select twenty households of servants from Yongchun Palace estate!” Yang Yuanpu said while sipping Yandang Spring in small mouthfuls.
Shen Yang was about to dissuade him, but thinking that in this round of Left Office accounting, Han Qian had truly lost out far too much, His Highness’s additional reward of twenty servant households could be considered some form of compensation.
“Han Qian respectfully obeys rather than declines. Many thanks for Your Highness’s bestowal,” Han Qian said in gratitude.
He wanted to accomplish far too many things, but truly lacked sufficient useful personnel.
Over the previous two years, the nearly thousand skilled craftsmen he had trained for the workshops all remained at Qiuhu Mountain Villa. After all, these skilled craftsmen were all military household soldiers of the military office, different from the Han family’s household troops and retainers.
Among Yongchun Palace’s nine hundred-plus servant households—mainly descendants and clansmen of the defeated parties in Emperor Tianyou’s conquest of Jianghuai over the years—allowing Han Qian to select twenty households, one hundred twenty to thirty people, would enable him to pick out a batch of talented individuals.
In Han Qian’s eyes, this was naturally far more precious than directly bestowing two to three thousand mu of land.
Yang Yuanpu immediately ordered Zhang Ping to bring the Yongchun Palace servant household registry to Han Qian for selection tomorrow.
By this time, the barbecue site in front of the official residence had been prepared. The hundred-plus guards took away two elk and two wild boars to roast and stew meat. The estate compound additionally provided some fruits and vegetables, polished rice, and five jars of Yandang Spring—more than enough for the guards to eat their fill.
Han Qian and the others specifically selected one young elk to skin, marinating it with spices, refined salt, and other ingredients for half a double-hour before roasting it on a spit. Naturally the meat juice was tender and deliciously fatty. Even Shen Yang, drinking the strong Yandang Spring brew, sweated profusely and repeatedly exclaimed in satisfaction, unable to care about refined manners.