novelden Chapter 169 Iron Smelting Experiment
Chapter 169 Iron Smelting Experiment
Lin Baiyan picked out some of the firm peaches, peeled and chopped them, then put them into an earthenware pot to boil. After the pot boiled, he simmered them for a while until the edges of the peaches were slightly translucent.
After turning off the heat and letting the peaches cool, Lin Baiyan looked at the number of peaches in the pot, estimated it in his mind, and then poured all the honey from one of his large bamboo tubes into the earthenware pot.
The surrounding beastmen were completely dumbfounded as the priest poured all the beast honey into the pot!
Lin Baiyan, however, remained calm.
This bamboo tube weighs about five jin (2.5 kg), and the peaches in the earthenware pot weigh about fifty jin (25 kg), a ratio of 10 to 1. Lin Baiyan was still worried that it wouldn't be enough.
But no more can be added; Lin Baiyan still has this bit of honey for other uses.
He felt a little heartache at the thought of pouring so much in at once.
It seems like it's time to take the opportunity to consider whether or not I can raise bees.
Judging from today's situation, these bees are indeed not aggressive towards him. Perhaps he could find some time to catch some bees, put them in a box, and have them collect nectar for him!
Then I can just go and collect honey on time like a landlord, and I'll have more honey than I can eat!
The thought of stealing honey from bees like a mischievous swindler made Lin Baiyan chuckle mischievously.
The honey poured into the earthenware pot needs to be thoroughly mixed with the peaches. Lin Baiyan took out an earthenware jar with grooves around the edges, which was a pickling jar he made specially.
The groove on top can be used to invert a ceramic bowl and seal the opening with water, which can better preserve the food inside. It is also perfect for pickling peaches.
Lang Cang happened to return from the kiln team at this time. The two of them worked together, first cleaning the earthenware jar, drying it to make sure it was free of oil and water, and then putting all the peaches from the earthenware pot into the earthenware jar.
Finally, invert a ceramic bowl, pour water into the groove, and the canned food made this way can last until the snow season!
He stuffed a piece of canned peach into Lang Cang's mouth, "Try it, is it good?"
Wolf Cang was suddenly stuffed with something in his mouth. He looked at the sub-beastman in a daze, and when he tasted the sweet flavor in his mouth, he subconsciously chewed and swallowed it. "It's delicious."
Lin Baiyan smiled and ate a piece himself, "That's good then." It was worth it for him to consume five catties of honey.
Lin Baiyan then took a few more peaches from the earthenware pot and distributed them to the cubs.
The two people were busy packing the food into cans.
Lin Baiyan made five large earthenware jars of canned food. He instructed Lang Cang to put two of the jars into the tribe's storage cave. One jar was kept for the tribespeople to try, and the other was used as an exchange for the tribe's peaches.
Then the rest were moved back to their own houses and placed in a cool, well-ventilated corner, where they were left alone.
These canned peaches may not seem special now, but during the snowy season, when food and fruit are scarce, it would be wonderful to sit in a warm house, watching the snow outside, and enjoying a bite of chilled canned peaches.
That feeling! Lin Baiyan couldn't even imagine how happy she was at that moment.
After finishing what he was doing, Lin Baiyan, holding a peach in his hand, wandered over to the place where Hu Qing and the others were drying peaches.
A group of sub-orcs were busy steaming and drying peaches. Lin Baiyan walked to the bamboo rack, reached out and pinched the freshly steamed dried peaches on the winnowing basket, and nodded in satisfaction.
Hu Qing and his friends are becoming more and more comprehension-oriented.
After a busy day, Lin Baiyan didn't want to bother making any more complicated food. He stir-fried some animal meat, added a vegetable, and ate it with a few potatoes and sweet potatoes with Lang Cang to finish their dinner.
……
There was a lot to do in the tribe. Lin Baiyan was busy weeding and fertilizing in the planting area. They had already tried the fertilizer once before, and this was the second time.
The toilets that were built finally came in handy when it came to fertilizing. The excrement, mixed with some wood ash and haystacks, made the best fertilizer.
It's already early July, and the potatoes in the planting area are ready for harvest. They'll be ready in a couple of days. However, this is Lin Baiyan's first time growing potatoes on his own, and he's worried that the potatoes won't grow big, so he's thinking of letting them grow for a couple more days.
The sweet potato vines grew incredibly fast, sprouting tall in successive stalks. The orcs in charge of the planting area had to collect many sweet potato vines every day to bring back to the tribe as vegetables.
The priest had told them that if the sweet potato vines grew too vigorously, it would be bad for the sweet potato fruits growing in the soil, so they had to check on the growth of the sweet potato vines every day.
After finishing up in the planting area, Lin Baiyan finally remembered Tieshi, whom he had forgotten about.
Ironmaking had always been part of Lin Baiyan's plans; he had even prepared ceramic furnaces and blowers for firing iron.
Blowers are essential tools for iron smelting, which requires extremely high temperatures. Without blowers, the required temperatures cannot be reached.
After thinking for so long, he could only remember the simple steps of iron smelting.
Iron ore is mixed with quicklime and coke, calcined at high temperature, and then turned into pig iron, which is then reprocessed.
Quicklime is relatively easy to make. It is made by calcining limestone at high temperature until the stone turns white.
However, coke was not so easy to find. As far as he knew, coke was a product obtained after coal was dried, and he had no idea where coal was, so naturally he couldn't obtain coke.
However, the iron smelting plan still had to proceed as scheduled. Lin Baiyan planned to try it out first to see if pig iron could be successfully smelted without coke.
Lin Baiyan called on two strong orcs, Zhu Shan and Xiong Fei, to help him grind the iron stone into powder.
He made a simple lever device. By pulling hard on one end of the straw rope and then releasing it, the stone hammer at the other end would fall and smash the iron stone.
This greatly reduces manpower consumption.
After the iron stones are crushed, they are poured into the prepared ceramic furnace, and then quicklime and charcoal are added. The furnace is then lit to begin reducing the iron. Iron has a melting point of over 1500 degrees Celsius. To successfully smelt iron, the temperature inside the ceramic furnace must be at least around 2000 degrees Celsius.
To keep the temperature inside the furnace constant, charcoal had to be added continuously. Zhu Shan and Xiong Fei took turns pushing the bellows to keep the flames inside the ceramic furnace burning brightly.
The furnace burned for nearly five hours, until sunset. It was Lin Baiyan's first time smelting iron, and he was unsure of the time, so he stayed close to the furnace the whole time. Even his meals were brought to him by Lang Cang.
Lin Baiyan finished the meat soup in a few gulps and handed the empty bowl to Lang Cang, saying, "You can go back now."
Before Lang Cang could say anything, Zhu Shan interrupted him from behind, "Priest, come and see what's inside this pottery furnace?"
Upon hearing this, Lin Baiyan quickly ran to the pottery furnace.