Chapter 499 Boss Fang is really tall and hard
The seventeenth day of survival in the Xishuangbanna rainforest.
After hammering by the stove for a whole day, the original iron ball had been completely stretched out and turned into a long strip, for which Bifang broke two stone hammers.
To choose to forge steel through repeated tempering is to race against time. Starting from yesterday, Bifang has been working until late at night every day, and gets up before dawn to warm the furnace and melt the iron.
With less than six hours of sleep a day, this may be a blessing for global audiences, because they no longer have to worry about the time difference of live broadcasts. As long as they turn on their mobile phones, they can almost see people hammering iron or hunting.
Day 18 of rainforest survival.
Perhaps it can no longer be called survival. Since the day Bifang decided to smelt iron, it has gone beyond the scope of survival and become life.
It was still dark, and Bifang got up, washed, and started the furnace skillfully like a blacksmith.
Charcoal was continuously added to the fire, and Bifang had to refine at least one cellar of charcoal every day to meet the needs.
The high temperature in the furnace blackened his entire body. Sweating profusely, Bifang clamped the bright red iron bar and hammered it continuously.
At noon, the long iron bar was bent suddenly by a hammer and folded again.
Bifang couldn't remember how many times he had done the folding forging. He just vaguely remembered a number and he felt that his arm was about to break.
Continue to heat the iron bars in the furnace.
After taking a few sips of water to replenish his body, Bifang walked aside and washed his face, revealing his wheat-colored skin and breathing heavily.
"How does the saying go? Laziness is the root of productivity development. Although it's a joke, I think it really makes sense."
During the breaks, Bifang would choose to chat to retain the audience in the live broadcast room.
It is very scientific and quite a number of people are willing to stay and listen.
After all, sexy Bifang and online science popularization are still quite attractive.
The desire for knowledge is also a desire.
"We used charcoal as fuel to smelt the iron ore in a furnace into a spongy solid mass. When the furnace cooled, we took it out. This is actually called lump iron. This is probably how we did it 2,500 years ago."
"Lump iron has a low carbon content, is soft and has many impurities. It is the wrought iron made by humans in the early days. Using lump iron as raw material, it is heated in a carbon fire to absorb carbon and increase the carbon content. Then it is forged to remove impurities and infiltrate carbon, thus obtaining steel."
"This kind of steel is called block iron carburizing steel. But the quality of this steel is not good enough. During the refining process, it is very difficult to control how much carbon penetrates, whether the distribution is uniform, and the degree of impurity removal. In addition, the production efficiency is extremely low."
This steel is certainly unqualified for any tool use.
"In order to improve the quality of steel, craftsmen in the middle of the Western Han Dynasty invented the 'hundred-fold steelmaking' process. This is what we do now, where a piece of iron is repeatedly heated, folded and forged to make the steel dense, uniform in composition and with fewer impurities, thus improving the quality of the steel."
Now Bifang is constantly carrying out this step, constantly forging the refined iron.
At this time, the iron is both raw and cooked, or it can be said to be neither raw nor cooked.
Bifang calls it the duality of raw and cooked iron!
"Haha, just a joke." Bifang scratched his head.
"The demand for hundred-fold steel is growing, but the production efficiency of its raw material, iron, is very low. After smelting, it must be "cooled" before it can be obtained, so the development of hundred-fold steel is restricted. The most important thing is that it is too tiring. A craftsman has to forge a piece of hundred-fold iron at least a hundred times before it is considered to be formed, so it is called hundred-fold steel. However, people at that time did not have enough nutrition, and when weapons were needed in war, craftsmen might die of exhaustion."
"In order to break through this limitation, craftsmen invented a new pig iron steelmaking technology, stir-frying steel. I mentioned it a few days ago. This is a cheat."
"Steelmaking is the process of heating pig iron to a liquid or semi-liquid state, stirring it in a furnace, and using methods such as blasting or sprinkling in concentrate powder to oxidize silicon, manganese, and carbon with oxygen in the air, thus reducing the carbon content and producing steel. Steelmaking is so named because it is constantly stirred during the smelting process, just like cooking."
China started to make steel more than 1,600 years earlier than Europe's steel-making technology which started in Britain.
After chatting with the audience for a while, Bifang poured the remaining water on his head, came to the blast furnace, removed the furnace cover, and continued forging.
You have to practice over and over again. How can you succeed without practicing a hundred times?
After counting, it turned out that Bifang had been fighting for nearly three days and had only fought for less than fifty-five times, which was far from enough. This was also the result of the softer texture in the early stage. The later it was, the more difficult it would be to forge.
There are only three days left, so we need to work harder.
"Damn it, no wonder the craftsmen were so exhausted. I'm almost dying of exhaustion."
The nineteenth day in Banna.
Today, Bifang worked hard for more than thirteen hours, folded it twenty-one times, and the total number of times reached seventy-six times.
The iron at this time was no longer as soft as it was at the beginning. It had become harder and more difficult to hammer, forcing Bifang to find a better stone hammer. A layer of wood board was also glued to the surface with rubber to prevent it from breaking due to low toughness.
This is good news.
This means that the quality of the iron in Bifang's hand has increased and is beginning to develop into steel.
It is worth mentioning that the water monitor lizard ran to the stove at night and was hit by a piece of red charcoal, leaving a black scar.
From then on, it never dared to approach the blast furnace again.
The twentieth day of survival in the Xishuangbanna rainforest.
During the whole day, Bifang only folded the steel bar fifteen times, bringing the total number to ninety-one times. Every time he pounded it, his muscles would feel uncomfortable for a while.
At night, Bifang lay in bed, his right arm was so sore and swollen that he had to soak it in cold water.
These days, millions of viewers have been accompanying Bifang in the live broadcast room, watching the iron that was originally larger than a fist turn into an iron bar, bending and folding again and again.
The size is getting smaller and smaller. So far, the iron bar is more than one circle smaller than the original one. If it is hammered and polished, everyone believes that it will be a good dagger.
[Why not just forget it, it feels too difficult]
[Is it enough to have iron? 】
[This will take me a whole day, no, half a day, and then I will die]
【Lao Fang is a real man, he counts and does what he says, I feel like he is made of steel now.】
[I won’t watch the Broken Sword Contest without you]
Bifang laughed, and laughed happily.
"If the iron in my hand didn't get harder, I might have really given up, because it contained a lot of other impurities and the possibility of it becoming steel was very low. But it didn't, so I had to do my best."
Iron is tempered into steel only after thousands of times of hammering!
Without countless blows and training, the processing performance and usage performance are both rubbish!
This is not only about refining steel, but also about training oneself. Only when you reach the extreme and can no longer fold it, can you say that Bifang has delivered the answer.
The perfect answer from his heart.
Thinking of this, Bifang suddenly stood up from the bed, water droplets flowed down his slightly swollen arms, vines wrapped around his palms again, he reached out and grasped who knows how many stone hammers, and went outside again.
I will be leaving here in six days tomorrow night, so I must complete the forging before tonight so that I will have enough time to polish it tomorrow.
Start the furnace and smelt iron!
The 21st and last day of survival in the Xishuangbanna rainforest.
It was still dark and the audience had not slept yet. They stayed up all night following Bifang, watching the red iron bars fold again and again in the darkness, sparks flying and black iron sheets falling off.
In the early morning, with the final blow of the hammer, the stone once again shattered and fell to the ground.
Bifang was dizzy with stars in his head. He hadn't slept the whole night, which made him extremely tired. He had no doubt that if he was given a soft bed, he would fall asleep right away.
“How many times has this happened?”
[101! This is the 101th time, Master Fang! ]
[It’s really steel that has been tempered a hundred times.]
[Have you started grinding? ]
Bifang shook his head, continued to heat the iron bar, turned around and went into the house to take out another stone hammer.
He said he would hammer until he couldn't hammer anymore.
In the early morning, the sunlight slanted across the trees and shone on Bifang.
He hadn't applied mosquito repellent mud for several days. The temperature here was so high that even mosquitoes didn't want to come near him.
The water monitor lizard swung its tail and crawled out of the cave. As a cold-blooded animal, its intelligence was not enough for it to think about too many complicated problems, but it was still deeply shocked by not sleeping for a whole night.
This creature is so scary.
A full five days.
Bifang's skin color changed, becoming a healthy wheat color. Every hair on his body glowed golden in the morning sun, and sweat oozed through the gaps between his muscles.
After days of hard work, the salt in Bifang's body quickly disappeared. If it were not for salt, animal blood alone would not be enough to replenish it.
The sound of metal colliding was heard, and sparks flew again.
One hundred and two times.
Continue heating.
One hundred and three times.
Bifang had breakfast. In order to save time, he only ate large boneless fish or the belly of boney fish, and gave the rest to the water monitor lizard.
Perhaps this wild water monitor lizard has never thought in its life that it would be able to eat cooked food.
The huge hammer fell again, and a huge rebound was transmitted to the arm, and Bifang suddenly let it go.
In the woods, the clear sound of metal trembling continued for a long time.
This time, the orange steel bars resting on the stone slabs did not react at all.
Bifang suddenly fell to the ground, his eyes went dark again and again, and cold sweat poured out layer by layer.
It’s not easy. It’s really not easy.
Everything in front of me is not so real.
It took more than five days of hammering, more than twelve hours a day, and less than six hours of sleep, and finally, a qualified steel bar was hammered out!
【This is... steel? 】
Looking at the red iron bars standing upright on the stone plate, no, they should be called steel bars now, everyone just felt a sense of magic.
Am I really on Earth?
[So, God Fang really forged a piece of... steel in the wilderness? ]
In the first venue, the audience saw stuttering and looking at each other, as if trying to verify what they saw.
But the extremely shocked expressions on everyone's face told them.
That's right.
This is.
steel!
