From Nanyang Prefecture to Chengxian County, it is Longtan Ridge twenty miles northward. Accompanied by Han Gui and others, Xu Huai stood on the Laoya Cliff of Longtan Ridge and looked eastward. The Dongzhao River was like a light green ribbon dragging between winding ridges.

The ancient post road built along the valley on the west bank of the Dongzhao River is part of the Wanluo Ancient Road. After some renovations in recent years, it has been revitalized at this time. Carriages and horses are constantly moving south to Wancheng, which is in harmony with the dense flat-bottomed rafts and boats on the rippling river surface.

The Wanluo Ancient Road is divided into two lines, and the eastern line is also the most well-known to the world. The Fangcheng Pass along the north of the Tang Dynasty, the road is much more spacious, and it is also the main road connecting Heluo and Hehuai in Jinghu.

In addition to Fangcheng Pass Road, Wanluo Ancient Road also has a western line located in the middle of Funiu Mountain, also known as Sanya Road.

The western line Sanya Road goes south from Luoyang, passes through Guangcheng and Ruyang, crosses the pass at the foot of Jiufeng Mountain in the southeast of Ruyang, enters Lushan County, and then crosses the river channel in the upper reaches of Shahe River, crosses the watershed pass between Lushan County and Xiangcheng County and enters Lushan County, and goes south along the East Zhao River to Xiangcheng County, and connects to the post road from Xiangcheng to Wancheng.

The Western Front is the closest road to Luoyang, Wancheng, the former economic, cultural and political center of the Nanyang Basin.

However, with the decline of Wancheng's status and the establishment of the Great Yue Dynasty, local prefectures and county officials have neglected the construction and maintenance of large-scale projects such as roads and water conservancy. Most business travelers will choose a smoother and more convenient square city road, which is actually far less than one or two hundred miles away.

The Funiu Mountain was also breeding bandits, and Sanya Road gradually became a mountain road leading to the outside world in the villages in Funiu Mountain; the ancient post road at the junction of Lushan and Xiangcheng County was destroyed by mountain torrents decades ago, and no one thought about repairing it, so it was completely abandoned and interrupted.

Now, in addition to the Department of Making and Technology mining iron ore on the west bank of the Dongzhao River, smelting iron materials, and expanding the old road more than 20 miles from Longtanling to Xiangcheng on a large scale, it has been two or three years since the implementation of the township and technology system in Funiu Mountain. One of the main tasks of each township and technology is to actively repair the roads, open up the contact between the mountains and the outside world, and ensure that the energy sources of tea, medicinal, tung oil and other products produced in the mountains are continuously transported out of the mountains.

Although the Sanya Road was still far inferior to the previous dynasty at this time, it has now returned to smooth flow.

Further repair of Sanya Road has been put on the agenda, but Xu Huai came to Longtan Ridge this time, not to inspect Sanya Road and Yunyang Pass (Inspection Department) in the north of Xiangcheng County, but to the Longtan Ridge Iron Field.

Xu Huai and his friends stood on Laoya Cliff and could see the iron field on the slopes and valleys on the south side of Longtan Ling.

Compared with the iron smelting furnace of Shibalipu Iron Field is linearly distributed along the natural stream waterway, Longtanling Iron Field is also built to store water in the upper reaches of the Laoya River, but four artificial canals are dug up below the stone dam with a roughly parallel terrain.

In addition to the width and slope of the canal are designed according to the needs, the water potential can also be controlled and adjusted through the sluice gate so that more water wheels and water mills that break ore and other equipment can rotate stably.

It is also the layout of the iron yard that has enabled the Longtanling Iron Farm to successfully complete the total output of 10 million kilograms of iron materials last year with less than 2,000 craftsmanship and eight iron smelting furnaces that are more than 2 meters high.

Of course, just that, it is not worth Xu Huai's special trip in his busy schedule.

Xu Huai's real goal for this trip is to build a new iron smelting furnace in Longtanling Factory for trial operation for one month. The final technical summary is currently underway and will be fully launched soon.

In addition to the larger scale of the furnace body and more than three meters high, this iron smelting furnace is not much different from the previous structure of the furnace.

The biggest difference is that the latest water machine bellows are used, which can be said to be the master of Chushan's hydraulic equipment manufacturing over the years.

The traditional water drain blowing was created by Du Shi, the prefect of Nanyang in the Han Dynasty, and was also used for iron smelting. The iron smelting industry in the Nanyang area of ​​the Han Dynasty was already quite developed.

The water drain blowing means that a large vertical wheel is placed in the turbulent flow, and the water flow drives the vertical wheel, and then a curved rod connected to the vertical wheel drives the leather sewning of the cooked cowhide to blow the iron furnace.

However, since the Han Dynasty, small human-powered blowing equipment has long developed from the original skin to the bellows with reciprocating piston structures.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the scale and technology of iron smelting, and due to the instability of the large bellows structure, the bellows with reciprocating piston structure have not been combined with water wheels for more than 150 years since the advent of the last dynasty of the previous dynasty and have not been used in large-scale steel smelting for more than 150 years.

After Shen Yue invented the furnace iron smelting at the Shibaliwu Iron Field, Xu Huai proposed to combine the reciprocating piston bellows with water wheels, and created a brand new double-sleeve wheel hydraulic fan that year.

The double-sleeve wheel hydraulic fan, the main body is that two horizontal giant wheels are connected with the long axis cast by fine iron, the lower wheel is placed in the turbulence, driving the upper wheel to rotate, and then the bellows are connected to the pull rod of the bellows to achieve the front and rear reciprocating movement.

Although the initial horizontal hydraulic bellows were also successfully used for iron smelting, they were very limited.

When the water wheel is made smaller, extremely strong water flow is needed to drive the bellows; when the water wheel is made larger, the cycle of transport is too long. At this time, the bellows structure needs to be large enough to swell enough air into the furnace body at one time.

Last year, due to the death of King Chihu Khan, the enemy troops in the west of Jing and Heluo greatly reduced their defense line. Xu Huai had a short period of leisure time and pulled Shen Yue, Yu Chengzhen, Zhuang Yong, Zhuang Shouxin and others to consider the current bottlenecks in smelting, forging and casting.

At that time, Xu Huai proposed to add a gear structure to the hydraulic turbine fan.

In this way, only a relatively gentle and stable water flow is required to drive the large water wheels, and the speed change gears and curved rods can be used to achieve rapid reciprocating movement of the bellows. The bellows structure does not require much size, and even multiple sets of bellows can be used to blow the furnace body.

In fact, during the Qin and Han dynasties, the Central Plains craftsmen had already initially mastered the manufacturing and use methods of gears, guide cars, gali drum cars and various astronomical equipment. They not only used gears to drive in large quantities, but also achieved slowing and accelerating transmission.

As early as the Jin Dynasty, the water-to-continuous mill invented by the famous minister Du Yu even applied gear transmission to hydraulic equipment (water mills), and even realized the complex structure of a single water wheel driving multiple stone mills at the same time.

However, the craftsmanship in the world has serious flaws in inheriting the past and opening up the future, integrating the inheritance, dissemination, further deduction, and research. But in fields such as metallurgy that are suitable for large-scale use of hydraulic equipment have not yet been truly developed.

However, the basics exist, and many things are clear at a glance.

What's more, except that Yu Chengzhen is a master in the fields of astronomy, equipment, etc., he led a group of disciples to Jingxiang (Chushan) for many years. Jingxiang has accumulated a lot of experience in the manufacturing and use of various equipment over the years.

After Xu Huai pointed through the key points, there were no obstacles to making a brand new water wheel windbox.

The Craftsman School first tried to produce a small water wheel windbox at the Shibaliwu Iron Farm, and used it in conjunction with the iron smelting furnace. After more than a year of exploration, the newly built iron smelting furnace in Longtanling Iron Farm can be said to be the master of Jingxiang (Chushan). There are a total of four sets of water wheel windboxes at the bottom to deliver air.

Of course, it is also mainly because the casting technology accumulated by Jingxiang (Chushan) over the years is far superior to the present world. The forged water wheel and windbox components have excellent performance in all aspects and are quite precise. Only by driving precision variable speed transmission components can we drive the bellows to blow wind into the furnace quickly and strongly.

The new furnace has been in trial operation for nearly a month, and it produced 160,000 kilograms of iron that month, twice the previous single furnace output record. When it officially starts to operate, the Coal and Iron Supervision expects that the annual output of this iron smelting furnace will reach 4 million kilograms.

Last year, the annual iron material output of Jingxiang reached 25 million kilograms, which is already incredible; now an iron smelting furnace can produce 4 million kilograms of iron material in a year. Who dares to imagine before?

Due to the use of new water wheel windboxes, the amount of iron smelting of a single furnace can not only increase the amount of iron smelting of a single furnace, but also the amount of iron ore smelting faster due to the full combustion, and the amount of use per unit of cooked charcoal has been greatly reduced to more than half of the previous one.

Next, the bottleneck that restricts the production capacity of Jingxiang iron materials will be completely transmitted to the mining and crushing of iron ore.

In fact, Chushan has long used hardwood tracks in the mining area to facilitate large-scale transportation of ore.

This is a technology that was found in the Qin and Han dynasties, but sleepers and sleepers are made of hardwood, and then a special rail car is pulled with a cattle and horse to greatly improve transportation efficiency.

A twelve-mile-long hardwood track has been laid between the Longtanling Iron Field and the mining area, and even between the iron field and the Dongzhao River Wharf seven or eight miles away, hardwood tracks have been laid.

At present, the output of iron materials in Jingxiang has exceeded its limit. It is planned to use cast iron to replace the previous hardwood tracks in the future. It is believed that the scale of iron ore mining and transportation can be further improved - and the crushing of iron ore is basically carried out by large hydraulic mills.

Water pestle was also a pounding hydraulic instrument invented in the Han Dynasty. It was originally used to pound grains into shells and pound wood. By the previous dynasty, it gradually developed into spices, bamboo pulp and ore fields, and water pestle was used for mashing operations.

The new ore pellet machine with a new hydraulic transmission structure has much higher crushing strength and operation efficiency.
Chapter completed!