More and more Jiang tribesmen gathered. Each branch had transferred more than half of their manpower to complete the construction of the smelting workshop as soon as possible. After these people arrived one after another, the people from the two clans who had worked hard all night went back to rest. After they rested, they would continue to work at night to ensure that the progress of the smelting workshop would not be affected.
The first smelting furnace was already in the process of smelting. It would not be long before the first batch of pig iron could be produced. More smelting furnaces were also under construction. It was believed that it would not be long before large quantities of pig iron could be produced here.
With enough pig iron, the living standards of the Jiang tribe would be greatly improved. At the same time, Ang Lee would also teach them the techniques of making various kinds of farming tools. He would let them master some heat treatment techniques so that the farming tools they made would be strong and durable and would not be easily damaged. This was very important. With a large amount of pig iron, if they could not make various kinds of ironware, then they would suffer a great loss. The difference in profits between selling pig iron and selling iron products was huge.
If they lacked the ability to make quality ironware, then they would have to sell pig iron to the Central Sichuan. Then they would have to buy iron products from the Central Sichuan and then transport them back to the Western Border Area. In this way, not only would it be time-consuming, but the profits would also be made by others. Moreover, they would feel that they were under the control of others. The most important thing was that iron was very heavy. It was not easy to transport it back and forth. It was a complete waste of manpower. After smelting iron locally, they would have to build iron products locally. This was undoubtedly the most suitable method.
Ang Lee knew a lot about the heat treatment techniques of iron. The same iron element, after being treated at different temperatures, would have completely different properties. The hardness, rigidity, and toughness of the metal were all different. Therefore, the heat treatment techniques were very important. The reason why the Jiang tribe had blacksmiths, but they could only do some basic repairs and forging, and needed high-quality iron products, was because of the lack of heat treatment techniques. Without excellent heat treatment techniques, the properties of the iron products would be greatly restrained. This would lead to the iron products being easily damaged, or they would not be able to be used.
For example, the local iron chisel, which was very important, had a very high quality requirement. If the quality was not good enough, it would either be smashed or bent. Regardless of whether it was broken or bent, it meant that it could no longer be used.
The craftsmen of the Jiang tribe did not have the ability to use pig iron to make chisels with enough hardness and toughness. Similarly, the quality of ordinary farming tools was not very good, so the local tribesmen were not willing to use them. Therefore, they could only go to the Central Sichuan to buy various iron products of acceptable quality. Then, if these iron products became blunt after long-term use, the local blacksmiths would repair them to a certain extent. Compared to making acceptable iron products, repairing iron products was much easier. The quality of iron products had already been heat treated, so the local blacksmiths were fully capable of repairing them.
The tribesmen who were recruited to work were all men. The oldest should be about 50 years old, and the youngest was 15 years old. The men in this age range were all qualified laborers. The women in the tribe could also work. However, as long as there were enough men, they would not easily use the women. The iron mine was too chaotic, so it would be inconvenient for the women to come here.
The first batch of iron ore was being smelted, and it would take some time before it was out of the furnace. This could not be rushed. Smelting iron ore could not be completed in a short time.
Among all the smelting methods, blast furnace smelting was a very efficient smelting method. This smelting method had many advantages. It was a smelting method that the ancient people liked very much. It was very efficient and cheap, and had a great advantage in cost control.
The smelting workshop's construction progress was very fast, but the team searching for Duan Jianhan still did not get any news. They did not know where he was hiding, but they could not find him.
"Assistant Minister Li, it seems that smelting iron is not that difficult! The stones have begun to melt, and the molten iron is coming out. "
The second chief said very excitedly.
He was greedy for money. He had been doing business all year round, so he was very clear about how much money could be made from smelting iron. He had also been in the business of pig iron. He had bought a lot of pig iron from Central Sichuan and sold it to himself and the neighboring tribes. Thus, he earned a certain price difference. No one knew the price better than him. Although the price of pig iron in Central Sichuan had dropped to a certain extent in recent years, the price was still relatively high, especially when the quantity of pig iron sold was generally very large. Overall, it was still a commodity with a relatively high price.
The local area had a very large reserve of iron ore, which meant that as long as the production was at full capacity, they could get a very large amount of pig iron. When the time came, they could take out a large amount of pig iron. A large amount of pig iron could naturally be sold for a lot of money, which would greatly improve the living standards of the local people.
Compared to selling food and animal skins, the value of selling pig iron was obviously greater. Moreover, the food could not be sold much, and most of it had to be kept for themselves. The animal skins were also limited by the number of prey in the mountains, so it was very difficult to increase the quantity. In comparison, the value of pig iron was even greater. Pig iron was refined from iron ore, and there was a large amount of iron ore in the mountains. Thus, as long as they put in enough manpower to mine, they could get a very considerable amount of pig iron resources. This was something that food and animal skins could not compare to. According to the second chief's estimation, with a large amount of pig iron resources, the income they could get from selling goods would at least increase by ten times. This would greatly improve the living standards of the local people. No wonder the second chief was so excited when he saw the iron ore turning into molten iron.
This was just the profit from selling pig iron. If the second chief knew that Ang Lee would give them the heat treatment process of iron products, he would probably jump with joy.
The price difference between pig iron and iron products of the same weight was huge. The price of iron products could be at least twice that of pig iron, or even higher. The price of iron products depended on the quality of iron products. The price of iron products of different quality was very different. Iron products made of 10 kg of pig iron could be sold for dozens of times more than pig iron if they were of good quality, while those of average quality could only be sold for a bit more than pig iron if they were of average quality. The difference was really huge.
The second patriarch, who had been doing business in Sichuan all year round, was very clear about the price gap of iron products in Sichuan. The price difference between the iron chisels made by different blacksmiths in Sichuan was huge. The cheaper ones were only one-third of the price of the more expensive ones, but he still preferred to buy the more expensive ones because the more reliable the quality, and the less likely there would be problems when using it. The cheaper ones, on the other hand, would easily wear out when using the chisels. They would have to go to the blacksmith shop to repair it after three to five days, which was really too uncomfortable. The price-performance ratio was too low, so it was better to use the more expensive chisels. It would not take a few days to go to the blacksmith shop to repair the chisels, which greatly improved the efficiency of work.
Once, the second chief also bought some pig iron back and let the blacksmiths of the tribe try to make iron chisels. The result was that the quality of the chisels was seriously not up to standard and couldn't even be used for a day. After a period of time, the tip of the chisel would stew. It was very laborious to chisel stones, and if you used more strength, the whole chisel would soon bend. It was really unusable, so he had no choice but to give up on making it himself and buy it from Central Sichuan.
The second chief's heart was really full of helplessness. He also wanted to let the people of the Jiang tribe live a more prosperous life, but the materials that the tribe could take out were really too few. These few materials could not be exchanged for too many materials. They had to buy a lot of food to exchange for a small amount of iron products. Moreover, the local lack of iron products was not only limited to salt, white sugar, cloth and other living materials were also very scarce. And these all needed to be exchanged with their own surplus food and the hard-earned animal skins that they obtained from hunting. Occasionally, they would be able to obtain precious medicinal herbs from picking herbs, which could make them a big fortune, but precious medicinal herbs were very difficult to obtain. Overall, the Jiang tribe was still very poor, and their life was really not that good.
But all of this would be completely different because of the mining of iron ore. As long as the production of pig iron was greatly increased, the tribe could sell it in large quantities and certainly make a lot of money. And if they knew that Ang Lee would give them some heat treatment techniques, they would probably be even happier.
"Has the second chief ever been to the smelting workshop?"
Ang Lee opened his mouth and asked.
The second chief shook his head and said, "No, I haven't been there. This is also the first time I know about the smelting workshop. This smelting workshop is a secret, how can it be casually shown to outsiders? They don't let outsiders get close to it, for fear that they would steal it. "
What the second chief said was right. For many workshops, the method of smelting iron ore was a trade secret. Under normal circumstances, they would not casually tell outsiders, in order to prevent their core technology from being learned by others. It must be known that a good smelting method could greatly reduce the cost of smelting. It would allow the mine owner to obtain a lower cost and thus earn more profits. Such a good way to make money naturally would not be easily told to others. Otherwise, others would also reduce the cost and they would certainly suffer losses.
People were generally selfish. They would think more about their own interests and would not think for others. If people did not think for themselves, their own interests would be taken away by others sooner or later. No one would want their own interests to be taken away by others. They would want to always be able to protect their own interests and not let their own interests be lost.
And it was precisely because people were too selfish that a lot of very good skills in ancient times were lost later on. This was because people with skills would not easily pass it on to others. They would only pass it on to their trusted children or their own apprentices. In this way, there were very few people who could learn the skills. Once their children or apprentices died, then this excellent skill would be lost forever in the long river of history. It would become a helpless thing that made people sigh.
Even in the civilized society of later generations, the blockade of technology was also very serious. In order to make their empires rich forever, to always be above other countries and to always enjoy a sense of superiority, rich countries would find ways to block the technology that they had already obtained and prevent other countries from obtaining it.
Of course, this was understandable. Although it was not very kind, other countries could not say anything. After all, it was the technology that was invented by others. How could they share the technology that they had worked so hard to develop with others?
However, there would be a more serious blockade of technology. That was, when other countries had learned a certain technology, they would suppress it by blocking the upstream and downstream supply, so that other countries would voluntarily give up the research of various technologies.
For example, if the Jiangs suddenly learned how to forge very advanced iron tools that were better than those made by the Central Sichuan blacksmiths, they could sell them at a very high price. However, the pig iron was imported from the Central Sichuan blacksmiths. Therefore, in order to protect their overall interests, the blacksmiths in the Central Sichuan might directly cut off the pig iron resources in the Western Detention Area. In this way, the blacksmiths in the Western Detention Area would have no raw materials. No matter how good their forging skills were, they could not cook without rice. All their skills would become useless and meaningless.
There was nothing more painful than being blocked by other people's raw materials. As long as one of the raw materials was missing, the forging could not be carried out.
The technology blockade in the future was much easier than this. A technology in the future required tens of thousands of raw materials and components. As long as one of the core components was blocked, the technological product would be finished. In order to restrict the development of the countries below, the empire that owned the core technology would do everything possible to suppress them. Once the countries below had some advanced technology, they would restrict one of the components so that the countries below could not produce such advanced technology. Thus, the empire firmly grasped the initiative and blocked the countries below. It could be said that this was very vicious, very excessive, and very hateful.
Ang Lee hated this kind of artificial technological restriction the most. Some of the core technologies could be restricted to prevent the technology from leaking out, but for the most basic technologies such as iron smelting and pig iron heat treatment, Ang Lee did not care at all. Therefore, he naturally had to give these technologies to the Jiangs so that they could also master this technology. Thus, the price of iron products and pig iron could be reduced to a certain extent. The lower the price of iron products, the more beneficial it would be for the entire empire. The lower the price of iron farming tools, the more popular it would be among the ordinary people. This would certainly greatly improve the development of agriculture in the Tang Empire.
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