Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 363 - 232 Ancient Sword Forging! (8600 words for monthly ticket)_4

Chapter 363: Chapter 232 Ancient Sword Forging! (8600 words for monthly ticket)_4

"So what should I do next..."

"Um, sorting."

Li Hongyun looked at the several large chunks of rough steel in front of him and roughly determined his next goal.

Judging from the condition of the rough steel, it seemed pretty decent.

In fact, there were many details in the melting process as well, and problems with the proportions of various materials or insufficient temperature due to moisture could result in the entire batch being scrapped.

Li Hongyun, perhaps due to triggering his own lucky talent, had refined these pieces of rough steel that actually looked quite good.

But this was only the first step of forging.

The next important task was, sorting.

In the ancient process of forging swords, once rough steel was produced, it could be cut and then taken to the blacksmith’s shop for repeated forging.

However, in the forging process of the Yi Dao, another important procedure after producing rough steel was selection.

There were still many impurities and substandard iron materials like pig iron within this rough steel, of which only a small portion was suitable for making weapons.

This type of material most suitable for weapon making was called "jade steel" in Yi Dao, which was actually a type of carbon steel.

Its properties lay between pig iron and wrought iron, with the carbon content needing to be between 1% and 1.7%. The specific carbon concentration depended on the carbon monoxide content and heating time inside the furnace.

Pig iron referred to iron with a carbon content above 2%, which was brittle and prone to breaking; wrought iron referred to iron with a carbon content below 0.05%, too soft, and unsuitable for combat.

In ancient times when ironmaking technology was undeveloped, some foreign soldiers had to straighten their longswords on the ground after stabbing their enemy because they bent, due to the low carbon content in wrought iron, which was too soft.

Only iron with a carbon content within this range could be called steel, achieving an optimal balance of hardness and ductility.

Li Hongyun instructed the craftsmen to heat the original chunks of rough steel, hammer them into smaller pieces, then soak and cool them in water before splitting them open to observe.

Indeed, the sponge iron looked quite appealing.

At first glance, it somewhat resembled a blackish rock, but upon closer inspection, one could see that it had a dense honeycomb structure, much like a sponge. The granular protrusions also seemed to glisten with a metallic luster.

"The best choice would be the heavy steel blocks with a bright silver color. If the edges are rough and also carry grayish-black debris, those are defective products and cannot be used..."

"Um..."

"Why do they all seem not quite good enough..."

"This one seems okay.

"This one... might be passable?"

After checking, Li Hongyun barely picked out a few pieces that looked alright.

Of course, he wasn’t sure if he had chosen correctly, because this selection depended entirely on experience and required a significant number of failures to accumulate.

"Well, let’s just try with these pieces for now."

Li Hongyun carefully picked out a few pieces of sponge iron, clamped them with iron tongs to reheat, then placed them on the anvil to start repeated hammering.

His original idea was to complete the entire hammering process by himself.

After all, in this instance, players naturally had unlimited stamina, so no matter how long he hammered, he wouldn’t tire.

And by hammering himself, he would definitely have a clearer control over the force.

However, after hammering for a while, Li Hongyun gave up and chose to let other craftsmen complete the task.

Because the process was just too monotonous!

The so-called thousand hammering and hundred foldings were absolutely not an exaggeration.

This type of sponge iron first had to undergo repeated hammering to form rough blocks. In this process, it had to be repeatedly heated to incandescence in the furnace, then hammered while hot, repeating many times.

With continuous hammering, the red-hot sponge iron first became regular, turning into square blocks. It continued to get flattened with more hammering.

But after flattening, they couldn’t stop there; they had to stand it upright or fold it into a thick piece and hammer repeatedly.

During this process, all parts of the iron block were fully exposed to the air. The impurities that couldn’t be softened in the iron block would solidify on the surface with the oxides during each hammering and continuously peel off.

Impurities like carbon, which could be oxidized into gases, also dissipated in the high temperatures.

This repeated hammering, also known in the ancient methods as "hundred-refined steel," was a necessary procedure that could not be skipped.

Because only through such a laborious process could the final product be ensured to contain few impurities, making the blade less likely to break, snap, or rust.

At the same time, because the carbon content in the sponge iron was itself uneven, this repeated folding and hammering could make the carbon content in different areas uniform, thus stabilizing the quality of the entire blade.

In this hammering process, iron was also consumed.

Because with the falling off of impurities, there was also the surface oxide layer of the iron block, so the more it was forged, the less iron remained. Craftsmen had to strictly determine the amount needed for forging from the start, otherwise, there wouldn’t be enough iron to make a sword or a knife in the end, which would be awkward.

Either the final product would come out shorter, with significant changes in the overall shape; or they’d have to forcefully use other iron to patch it up.

But patching would lead to an incomplete structure, making it more prone to breaking.

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