Warrior in Turbulent Han Dynasty

Two days later, Guo Shao discovered that the forging hammer workshop could not operate.

"Stop the donkey quickly!" the head craftsman Luo Jiye yelled, "It's stuck."

Guo Shao looked up at the cast iron lump that was used as a forging hammer hanging in the air and could not fall down, and the chain was pulled so that it made a rattling sound, as if ten thousand mud horses whizzed by in his heart. This workshop has been busy for a month, and it looks like this, his depression can be imagined.

After a while, the donkey in the cellar next door was driven to turn around, and finally slowly put down the forging hammer. Fortunately, nothing was damaged... If it collapsed immediately after the first test, it would probably hurt people even more.

The craftsmen have been working for so long, but they can't use it. Occasionally, some people complain and discuss from a distance. Someone muttered quietly, thinking that Guo Shao couldn't hear, "Why don't people just pull the rope up and down, like pounding rice, but repair these things..."

Luo Jiye hurriedly took out the drawing, frowned and looked at it, then bent down and said to Guo Shao: "I followed General Guo's wishes, and I didn't dare to cut corners."

Next to him was an official from the Jiafang Administration, who said, "What's going on?"

Everyone looked at a loss, except for a few officials, most of them were craftsmen. This thing seems to have been out of the craftsman's knowledge, and people don't quite understand the problem. The official of the Jiafang Administration turned to Guo Shao and said, "General Guo, I know a man who built waterwheels, why don't you call him to have a look?"

"Okay." Guo Shao nodded.

He gradually calmed down from the depression of failure. He knows that there will always be setbacks in attempts. Scientists have tried countless times to make light bulbs... Although the structure of this "mechanical forging hammer" is relatively simple, it mainly uses the principles of transmission belts and pulleys.

It is indeed too novel for the ancients; the ancients were also creative, but technological development is based on previous experience, and occasionally one or two details are improved, which is a slow process. Suddenly a completely new thing comes, and it takes a process for them to accept it... Just as there are words and words interlaced like mountains, this is the case for unfamiliar things.

Guo Shao walked back and forth between the two rooms several times, and said: "There is a problem with the design of the opening and closing pendant connecting the forging hammer and the chain. The intention cannot be realized during the operation, and we have to think of a new way."

The experienced blacksmiths and shipbuilders around him were also confused, and no one could answer Guo Shao's topic.

Guo Shao asked someone to set up paper and ink in the workshop, and immediately drew a sketch according to the structure in front of him, and pondered it a lot. I feel that the "semi-automatic" design step is too big, and it is difficult to realize temporarily, and the structure must be simplified. The simpler the process, the less prone to problems.

He also found that the chain on the edge of the millstone was leading obliquely upwards to the hole in the wall. He intuited that this orientation would reduce the distance the chain could pull (the forging hammer could not be pulled too high). Now draw a triangle on the paper, use trigonometric functions to calculate, and confirm your own judgment.

Officials and craftsmen stared blankly at Guo Shao's drawing, writing all kinds of completely incomprehensible symbols, all of which were blurred.

Guo Shao didn't want to bluff them, and he couldn't explain it. Now let's start with Arabic numerals and formula symbols. How can we explain it clearly to everyone? There were also mathematicians in ancient times, such as those who wrote the Nine Chapters of Arithmetic and the Pythagorean Theorem, but they were a minority after all; there were thousands of officials in Tokyo alone, and no one knew what they were good at... Anyway, most of them, including civil servants, did not quite understand the more complicated geometric rules. Maybe the officials of the Qintianjian would be more expert.

"These two millstones need to be repaired to raise the brackets." Guo Shao said to Luo Jiye, "The donkey pulling the millstones should not be placed in the cellar, but should be brought to the ground; the 'millstones' should be elevated and lifted to the top."

Luo Jiye gestured and asked a few words, and understood what Guo Shao meant.

Guo Shao took out the redesigned and simplified pendant device diagram, walked to the forging hammer, pointed to those things and explained to Luo Jiye. Part of the structure has to be reassembled, there is no way.

...

"Guo Du inspector leaves the government office early every day, and I heard that he is with a group of civil servants and craftsmen?" Shi Yanchao sat there chatting with Yuan Yan while he had nothing to do in the government office in front of the hall.

Yuan Yandao: "Last time the Privy Councilor Wang mentioned that it seems that Guo Du inspected and wanted to make new armor."

Shi Yanchao was stunned, then smiled and said, "I almost forgot, I heard that General Guo used to be a blacksmith! Haha..."

Yuan Yan was a bit more stable, and when he heard something teasing Guo Shao, he didn't follow suit, and sat there without saying a word, turning a deaf ear to it.

Shi Yanchao said: "I don't understand. If the generals of the Imperial Guard are not doing a good job, what are you doing in charge of the Military Weapons Supervision? If he hadn't asked Xiang Gong to fight Hanzhong and choose someone carefully, Hanzhong has already become our territory... Now we are comfortable. Stealing chickens is not enough to lose money. We spent a lot of money and food, but we didn't get anything. The court has done a loss-making business."

Yuan Yan originally wanted to say that Xiang Gong was not a mediocre person, but Shi Yanchao didn't seem to like Xiang Gong, so he didn't bother to argue with Shi Yanchao.

... On the twelfth day of the twelfth lunar month, Guo Shao came to the workshop in the outer city again and found that the workshop was already in operation.

There was a piece of felt on the anvil below, and the two big wheels next door made a loud rattling sound when they turned. Guo Shao shouted: "Prepare some tung oil, and it won't be so noisy when you spread it everywhere!"

Seven or eight donkeys pull the big wheel close to the axis to turn, and they don't go very fast; but the other small wheel is several times smaller and rotates faster. So the chain here moves up and down faster.

"Wow!" With a loud bang, the forging hammer weighing more than a thousand kilograms was suddenly pulled to the height of the beam of the room, like a large sluice being violently pulled open. A wooden stick next to the forging hammer went up and hit a pair of copper bells with a "jingle" sound.

The craftsman standing next to him heard the sound of the copper bell and pulled the rope hard. The hook of the oiled pendant was thick and formed into a relatively flat "V" shape, with both sides inclined; the chain deflected sideways as the craftsman pulled it... The pendant immediately fell off the hook, and the heavy forging hammer fell down with a "huh... huh".

There was a loud bang. Although the anvil was covered with felt, the forging hammer weighing more than one thousand catties still made a deafening bang when it hit it.

It was too late and then too fast, and the head of the driven iron chain moved down very fast, and there was also an iron bump weighing several tens of kilograms hanging from the head of the chain, which pulled the "empty" chain straight. Due to the weight of the iron lump, the V-shaped iron hook directly pressed the slope of the iron hook into the "door"-shaped hanger of the forging hammer.

The reconnected forging hammer was immediately pulled up violently by the iron chain, and there were two sounds of "ding dong" and "ding dong", which were the sounds of the forging hammer rising and falling past the copper bell. "Bang'! Hit the anvil again, and so on.

"Haha..." Guo Shao couldn't help laughing out loud, and everyone laughed after seeing this, and the workshop cheered for a while.

So the craftsman swept away the crushed felt grass, put a piece of red-hot wrought iron on the anvil with tongs, and hurriedly pulled a square shield with holes to protect the front. With a "clang", the red square iron block was directly crushed flat. The craftsman carefully adjusted the position of the wrought iron with tongs behind the shield, tilted it slightly, and was smashed again with a "bang".

After forging five or six times, he clamped out the already flat wrought iron; another craftsman clamped another piece of red-hot iron onto it.

The previous flat and thin piece of iron was stuck in the crevice of the stone and bent with a hammer, and then it was replaced and folded for forging.

Guo Shao looked at it for a while, and said with a smile: "It is said that Xiang Yu, the overlord of Western Chu, can lift a thousand-jin tripod, but the overlord is no match for this thing; let's enlarge the wheels and use a few more mules, and we can lift two or several thousand catties."

Luo Jiye laughed and said: "The King of the West can't hold a tripod to do the work of a blacksmith and go to the shop to forge iron."

"Hahaha..." Everyone burst into laughter again.

Guo Shao turned his head and looked at Wang Hong, the order of the Jiafang Administration: "I will let the Kaifeng government expropriate the land around here. You call the armor craftsmen and ask Luo Jiye to build more workshops according to the size of the forging hammers and gears here; to make three sizes, double the size of the forging hammer, and double the size of the forging hammer. With this thing, we can make new armors."

Wang Hong bowed and said: "The next official takes orders."

Guo Shao said again: "All the artisans who participated in this matter receive monthly salaries like elite soldiers in front of the palace. They are ordered to keep secrets of their craftsmanship and beheaded those who leak it to outsiders!"

Everyone recovered from the laughter... Since Guo Shao has been going to and from the workshops for more than a month, and he doesn't have any pretensions to talk to the craftsmen, everyone really seldom feels his power.

Guo Shao took out a blueprint: "Anvils and forging hammers can't be all flat. First, cast and anneal several types according to these arcs, and use them for cold forging and stamping shapes. After making the anvils, try forging a few helmets first."

The helmets used by the forbidden military are not uniform at present. There are two main processes: one is whole casting, regardless of strength, the disadvantage is that it is thick and heavy, and the cast iron parts cannot be light and thin;

In fact, the shortcoming of the ring lock armor currently in use is not mainly a matter of defense, but also very laborious to build, so the entire body armor rate of the imperial guards supported by the whole country is less than one-third; a pair of ring lock armor needs to be connected by hundreds of pieces of iron, and requires experienced and skilled blacksmiths. It takes about 20 or 30 people a whole month to make a full body armor... Its efficiency is low, and the cost is high, mainly because of labor costs.

Guo Shao engaged in this thing because he wanted to use cold forging to stamp a large area of ​​plate armor. The combination still adopts the popular technology at that time, using rivets to beat and inlay. But the design is the most difficult part. If some moving parts are monolithic, it will affect people's actions.

So it's not yet time to start producing plate armor, let's try to make helmets first. Plate armor is slowly trying to design... Anyway, at least the technical foundation of stamping has been realized.