Rise of Rurik

A brand new furnace rises from the ruins.

Having learned the previous lessons, and even holding the engineering blueprint provided by Rurik, Kawei is full of confidence. Of course, in order for the furnace to operate smoothly, Rurik himself simply took root at the construction site.

Keep training those kids? Of course.

Rurik entrusted the task to his mercenaries, who gave the children the most rigorous training, and he really didn't have to be present as a supervisor every day.

He supervises the construction of the furnace as an overseer, and also serves as a technical consultant, always answering questions for Kawi, who is holding the blueprint, and giving pointers to the construction workers.

With thirty strong mercenaries, they became quite cheap labor. They sorted and stirred the clay into clumps that looked like bricks, and piled them up one layer after another until they formed a chimney-shaped stove.

The clay hasn't been sintered for a long time, it's just a very fragile existence today. If it has been burned for a long time, it has become a very solid existence.

Although it is sturdy, it will experience continuous erosion and damage from molten iron and slag during long-term use.

Just like the collapsed furnace before, although it has unexpectedly achieved everything that a blast furnace needs to have, it naturally inherits the challenges that the blast furnace will face.

The place where the furnace collapsed was in the fragile waist of the furnace, which was abruptly punctured by the molten metal.

Therefore, in the construction of the new furnace, Rurik came up with a plan to make a furnace with a thick bottom and a conical structure as a whole.

Just a conical structure and all is well?

Do not! What Rurik needed was a furnace that could last a long time, not a defective product that collapsed again after ten days and a half.

The most important thing is the refractory material inside the furnace.

The furnace that collapsed before, the reason for its collapse was analyzed by Rurik. Unexpectedly, Kawei still used the old idea of ​​smelting bronze, so-called laying ordinary iron ore inside the furnace as a refractory material once. If only smelting bronze, it is perfectly suitable. But the smelting temperature inside the furnace must have reached the level of smelting pig iron, the so-called refractory material, which has melted into part of the molten iron.

Even the clay used as the furnace wall, its high temperature resistance is greatly reduced in the real high temperature conditions.

After all, smelting pig iron is really a smelting miracle created spontaneously by the Rus.

It is undeniable that Rurik played a very important theoretical role in this accidental miracle.

Now the real theorists are starting to actually build new furnaces.

Even if it is an earth blast furnace, in order to resist the erosion of molten metal, it must be made of a more high temperature resistant material to make a very refractory liner.

Is there any suitable material?

In theory, ordinary clay can be fired into cheap refractory bricks by adding some aluminum metal.

Where does aluminum come from, presumably corundum is the best source.

But wait! The mountains near Roseburg are rich in iron ore and a small amount of copper ore, as for aluminum metal...

If corundum can be obtained, the construction of the furnace becomes very fast.

The fact is that Rurik could not find suitable refractory materials in the fjord of Rosburg, but the refractory material is not without, it is 180 kilometers away from the Rus people colony point Elon Orava Fort. The chromite there, which itself is an excellent refractory!

Presumably the blast furnace can smelt it into sponge iron, and if it is smelted into molten metal, it may not be possible without 1800 °C. For a charcoal or coal-fired soil blast furnace, the short-term limit temperature it can reach is only 1450°C.

To get chromite, you have to send ships to the north to pull it back.

The solution to this critical issue naturally falls on the shoulders of the Gould family.

At Rurik's behest, a cargo ship carrying a batch of fish left the Gould's pier, and her target was Fort Elronorava.

All the catch was bought by Rurik, gutted and roasted to resist decay.

In fact, these catches were all paid to the Corvins of Elrond. Rurik wanted to take away a batch of pure ore and buy the labor of his servants with fish. Oh, of course he could issue an order that his servants must send an additional batch of ore as tribute.

Since the idea of ​​"the spirit of the contract" is to be spread among the vast tribes, as a person of great status, Rurik felt that it was necessary for his servants to pay attention to the contract, and hoped that other tribes could understand the contract. important.

The ship has already gone to sea, and even if the weather is clear and the sea is not good, they will have to return in five days at the earliest.

The furnace has to continue to be built before the high temperature resistant chrome ore is laid in the furnace liner.

The mouth of the stove is designed to be converging inward, and it can only allow a slightly emaciated adult to get in, and the interior of the stove is significantly larger.

The narrow furnace mouth is to be able to fill and lock the temperature as much as possible.

Even Rurik hired stone masons of the tribe who were good at carving monuments, chiseled a granite slab and cut a hole in the slab. This thing is the cover of the furnace, which can ensure the extreme temperature lock of the furnace while leaving enough outlet for the exhaust gas.

Construction of the furnace is in full swing, and the final work can be done as long as the cargo ship carrying the ore returns to port.

With large wooden hammers, Kawi and the mercenaries rammed the dry clay purposefully piled outside the furnace shell.

As three days had passed since the furnace was stacked, the wet clay had dried out naturally, and only ramming would have allowed it to become firmer before accepting the sintering job.

In this way, a small blast furnace with a taper of 80° and a height of two stikas has tended to be successful only from the outside.

However, a doomed rain gave the unfinished furnace the initial challenge. Thanks to a canopy that was erected immediately, the hearth was not eroded by rain.

And this rain has really interfered with the transportation of chrome ore.

What can Rurik do? Even in such rainy weather, the children's training was forced to suspend, and they stayed in their homes one by one waiting for the rain to end. The entire Ross tribe, with only a few brave ones, rowed to a few bare little deserted islands off the coast of Rossburg, where they set up dried fish and hoped to catch a few fish.

Due to the rain, the production work in Roseburg was temporarily suspended. Fortunately, the rain lasted only two days.

The rain is not large, and the scale of the sweep is the entire Nordic world. If anyone likes it, it is the peasants everywhere. They are completely dependent on the weather. They were worried that the late planting season would lead to a serious reduction in production this year. A rain moistened the oat seedlings, which was a consolation for the farmers.

It's raining so much, what else is there to do?

Rurik was willing to take Klavassen's house for a long time as a distinguished guest, and by the way, he instructed the old guy to make a "centrifugal blower" out of hard wood, and secondly, he also comforted Lily, whose due date was obviously not far away. Ya.

That was a rather embarrassing question, and Rurik calculated it, and he could judge that Lilia's due date was in mid-August.

He quietly informed Lilia of his inference, in exchange for the girl's extreme shyness.

Lilia even gave Rurik a hard push, and then apologized hastily.

"You can even predict the day when a woman will give birth to a child?" She tried to calm down and brought Rurika back to her side.

"I hope my prophecy is right, and you and your child are safe."

A woman's most important day is just around the corner, Lilia is looking forward to the birth of a new life, and she is also very afraid of the terrifying dystocia. She often silently prayed to the statue of Goddess Freya enshrined at home in order to obtain the promise of peace.

Rurik was sitting beside him now.

She grabbed Rurik's hand, her eyes full of supplication: "I will be safe, right! The gods of the Rus will make me safe, right!"

Rurik was a little surprised by the sudden situation, and comforted: "Yes. God will keep you safe. Odin, Thor, and Freya are all blessing us. I pray on the altar at the summer solstice. Well, now, hehe..."

"why are you laughing."

"Look, we're following Thor's lead to build a furnace destined for success."

Since they are generally superstitious, why not just count them?

Perhaps only the complete success of the blast furnace can make Lilia completely put her fears aside, and only have infinite enthusiasm for new life.

The living room of the Cravatsen's house has become a complete wood workshop.

Even if he owns a lot of silver coins, but there is no useful consumer goods, he is more willing to bury the silver coins in the ground. He was still a blacksmith, and because it was the task assigned by Rurik, the blacksmith's blacksmithing work was completely suspended, and the orders for steel swords from the tribe were all delayed.

Sitting on the ground, he was doing his best to make a centrifugal blower nearly half a meter high.

The key to this blower is its bearing and the impeller attached to the pump.

Even if there is no ball bearing system, even if the roller bearing does not exist, it does not mean that Kravassen can't make a bearing.

A blacksmith's two-wheeled cart, it has a hard-touch rake made of bronze. Although this kind of hard contact is quite resistant to wear, as long as a large amount of seal grease is applied to the bearing gap, there is no need to worry about its use.

Kravassen was using the traditional tenon-and-mortise structure to piece together the frame of the blower, and it didn't take long just to make it.

Of course, the most important thing is to install wooden blades on the manufactured bearings.

There are as many as six blades, which are angled relatively close to 60°, and it is still mounted on a wooden shaft in a tenon-and-mortise manner. To stabilize it, Clavason also applied some turpentine to the crevice.

Each blade is not simply a straight plate arranged obliquely, they are all chiseled so that it has a certain curved surface.

Rurik knew very well that only curved impellers could work best.

And seeing the huge impeller of nearly forty centimeters randomly placed on the ground, Rurik immediately thought of not the blower.

"Ah! This... press it on the boat, isn't it a standard propeller?"

The huge impeller was installed in a preset bearing hole covered with seal oil, and Kravassen did not forget to show his masterpiece to the waiting Rurik.

He exerted force with both hands, and the entire impeller stably rotated.

"Look! It's like a rolling wheel, oh, only the best craftsmen like me can make it turn."

Rurik shrugged with a smile, listening to the old guy selling himself here.

The rotation of the impeller is indeed quite stable. Rurik is still very worried about the wear resistance of the bronze bearing in direct contact, and the entire impeller is quite heavy. To make it work well, I am afraid that only the manpower of a strong man will be effective. okay?

The biggest advantage of the centrifugal blower is that as long as it keeps rotating, the wind will continuously enter the furnace, which is a technical advantage that other types of blowers cannot achieve. The key is how to keep the impeller rotating, perhaps using a waterwheel or a windmill to drive it, which is a promising development direction.

Rurik didn't want to take a step too far. Since there are many energetic young people in the tribe, they never want to miss any opportunity to make money. At this stage, they can hire these cheap labor.

The entire blower was placed on a huge wooden board, and eight feet were nailed to the lower end of the board for stability.

The huge impeller is covered with a larger wooden bellows. The bellows is nailed down by a lot of wooden boards, and the gaps are sealed with turpentine. It is a wooden centrifugal blower that Rurik designed according to his own knowledge and resembles a huge snail shell. One side of the impeller is left with a large area of ​​holes, which is the air inlet. A long bearing protrudes from both sides, and the bearing outside the blower is covered with two round wooden plates.

The wooden disc is chiseled and proudly accommodates the drive belt.

At the back of the wooden board that carries the blower, there are two thick uprights, which hold up another bearing system. The most striking thing is of course, two wooden boards that are nearly one meter in length and tend to be perfectly round.

At the outer edge of this bearing, there are two large handles.

In a sense, its structure is similar to a spinning bike. It is not a fitness equipment, but it has a fitness function.

Two strips of deerskin, cut into strips, were bundled into a belt and held tightly in grooves in a wooden tray.

The rear wooden disc has a diameter of one stika, which is close to one meter, but the wooden disc on the outer edge of the blower impeller is only a quarter of the stika.

When the rear wooden disc rotates once, the impeller of the blower can rotate four times.

On the sixth day, although the ship transporting the chrome ore had not returned, the blower that Rurik desired was stunned to be successfully completed in the hands of Clavasson.

It stands in the living room like a holy relic, making the wood chips everywhere on the board and the various processing tools no longer annoying.

The impeller is huge, and the outlet is only the size of a man's fist, and it's designed to be perfectly aligned with the stove's inlet. Likewise, the narrow vents are intentionally made to maximize air compression even for the entire blower. Its essence is a turbocharger.

It's finally time to test its strength!

Rurik folded his arms and sat cross-legged at the air outlet of the blower. In front of him were the Kravassen and his son, who were holding the crank handle of the rear end bearing, and Kamne and all the other blacksmith apprentices who were watching the grand occasion.

"Starting?" Clavason asked.

"let's start!"

With Rurik's order, the proud blacksmith father and son waved their arms almost as thick as thighs, gritted their teeth and began to turn the huge machine.

It can be said that this thing is the most complex machine they have built so far in their life, and it actually has two bearing systems!

Because the bearing system used is too backward, its torque is a bit large, and it is true that only a strong man can drive it well. Fortunately, as long as it turns, the inertia is due to the inertia, and the operator does not need to continue to work hard to output.

Driven by the belt, the impeller obviously made faster and faster. Rurik's face was facing the air outlet, and the wind force he felt was also increasing rapidly.

In the end, he had to close his eyes and scrambled away.

"Kawy, stop!" Klavassen roared, and hurriedly asked Rurik, who was covering his eyes, "My little master, are you alright."

"I... I'm fine." Rubbing his eyes vigorously, Rurik sat up straight, with a smile on his face and couldn't help giving a thumbs up: "The wind is so strong! Clavathon, we succeeded!"

"Oh, it is my honor that you are satisfied."

"Well done! I'm sure it's a hundred times more powerful than the skin blower he used to use! Its wind blows my eyes away, stronger than the strongest north wind in winter!" Rurik The rhetoric here is indeed a bit exaggerated, but the strong wind and stable air supply brought by this blower are completely high-tech machinery owned by the Ross tribe.

"Clavason!"

"exist!"

"I've decided. You must do three more before the ore comes!"

"Ah? So much?!"

"I know it's time consuming, but our furnace has to have the best blower. The furnace must have one of four air inlets!"

Clavason nodded reluctantly: "Okay, I will."