Starting Off With A Blacksmith Workshop - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Experiment

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Li Zhenhua’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the notification.

This was really great. With this Eye of Analysis, it was much more convenient for him to choose coal that could be used for forging.

In just a short while, Li Zhenhua picked out a dustpan of iron carbon from a pile of coal.

It was a choice of good firepower and long-burning carbon.

After selecting the coal, Li Zhenhua carried a dustpan of coal to the side of the stove and moved the fire-resistant brick sealed on the stove mouth.

He took the blower out of the vent again, powered it up, and tested it to see if anything went wrong.

When he encountered the blower, the Eye of Analysis had already concluded that the blower was good, but Li Zhenhua still tried it with his hand.

He reassembled the blower and took a few pieces of iron carbon out of the dustpan, just enough to cover the mouthpiece.

Li Zhenhua lit a newspaper and threw it into a small stove that had been converted from a milk powder bucket. Then he added a small pile of broken wood. The newspaper ignited the wood.

Only then did Li Zhenhua throw the two pieces of carbon into the small stove. After a while, the carbon that he had thrown in caught fire.

Li Zhenhua took the iron chopsticks and placed the ignited carbon in the big stove.

Scraping the unlit carbon around it, he flipped the blower switch.

The fire in the forge followed the blower into the air in large quantities, and all the carbon caught.

Looking at the stove that had been lit once, Li Zhenhua once again recalled the days when he had forged iron with his grandfather. At that time, he had also been in charge of lighting the stove.

Li Zhenhua stopped the blower and walked towards a house not far from the stove in the courtyard.

After a while, when Li Zhenhua came out again, he was holding a bowboard, which was also what people often called spring steel.

This thing was now on the Internet. Some artisan experts often had it forged into knives. Of course, most of them were made into kitchen knives.

Li Zhenhua also used this spring steel to make a knife today. This decision was quite difficult.

Because when his grandfather was around, he often warned him that he had to be extremely careful when he fought.

He had thought about how to deal with it before calling. Otherwise, it would be a big deal if it was lost in the shop.

Li Zhenhua understood what his grandfather meant. He wanted him to be in awe of weapons.

But which boy didn’t love weapons? Wasn’t there a saying that a man was a teenager until he died? Even an old man in his seventies or eighties had a playful heart.

Therefore, Li Zhenhua made an exception today. At most, he would hide the knife after he was done and not let anyone know.

Besides, Li Zhenhua didn’t plan to make a long knife this time, but a short knife. As for the style, he chose the simplest watermelon knife, which was also the most commonly used thing for rogues.

The bow plate Li Zhenhua had chosen today was only twenty centimeters long, but its width was ten centimeters.

Therefore, the first thing to do was to heat the iron red and make it into a knife shape.

As Li Zhenhua did these jobs, subtitles often appeared in front of his eyes, displaying various data.

The iron was put in the stove. Li turned on the blower and the caption appeared again.

It showed that the temperature in the furnace had risen from one to two hundred degrees to nine hundred degrees before stopping.

It seemed that this was the maximum temperature of the furnace. Unless there was higher energy carbon or the furnace had to be modified to increase the temperature further.

The iron buried in the carbon in the stove was quickly red-hot. Li Zhenhua couldn’t wait to hold him in a clamp.

He took it out and placed it on the countertop. Li Zhenhua picked up the heaviest small hammer and began to hammer the red-hot bowboard.

Just as Li Zhenhua was hammering, he didn’t feel anything at first.

However, the further he went, the more he felt that it was going smoothly. Compared to when he was swinging the sledgehammer previously, his skills had improved by many times. Unknowingly, his hands were in their best state.

As Li continued to hammer, another subtitle appeared in his eyes.

What it showed pleased him, for he knew at last what Ingenuity was for.

‘Ingenuity: Brain says I know it. Eye says it’s too easy. Hand says: Piece of cake. I know it too (millimetre grade).’

It was also from this that Li Zhenhua had the most intuitive concept of spiritual dexterity.

Even though he knew that Ingenuity had already taken effect, since he had already started the fire and the iron had already been forged, he had to finish the saber in his hand.

The hammer in Li Zhenhua’s hand kept hitting the raw material. He hit it a few times or a dozen times.

As the temperature dropped and the hardness increased, the hammer wouldn’t budge.

The iron was to be fed into the furnace to be heated up and then taken out and beaten.

When Li Zhenhua knew the exact number on his hand, he turned his gaze to the air hammer beside him.

Li Zhenhua also wanted to try if this Ingenuity function could be used when using large equipment.

He put half of the knife-shaped glaze back into the stove and continued to burn.

Li turned to the air hammer and reattached the three-phase electric cord to the electric switch. When he pulled the power, he heard the asynchronous motor of the air hammer start to operate. The air kept being compressed into the cylinder.

The head of the air hammer kept moving up and down. Li Zhenhua adjusted the height of the falling hammer according to the eye hint.

Ever since his eyes had given him the hint, he’d known that the psychic dexterity function could also work with an air hammer.

At this point, the preparations were complete. Li picked out the foil, sprinkled it with borax, and used an iron brush to remove the impurities. He then placed it under the air hammer and placed his foot on the pedals.

The foil was being hammered by the air hammer, and the hands were adjusting it.

From the eye beginning to give advice, to the brain receiving the issuing instructions, to the hand receiving the instructions to begin the action, a series of processes formed a closed loop.

The felt slowly took shape under Li Zhenhua’s hand.

The shape of the watermelon knife was still very easy to forge. Li Zhenhua had used a blacksmith’s technique to forge it.

If he directly used a large piece of bowboard to knock it upright, then drew a knife shape on it and cut it out with an angle grinder, it would be made faster.

Li Zhenhua took the knife and placed him in the furnace again, continue heating it up.

This time, he picked up the small hammer and used it to trim the blade. At this point, it could be said that he was almost at the last step.

After repairing the saber form, the next step was to temper the saber. It could be said that this step was also a great test of a blacksmith’s skills.

As for whether to temper after the quenching was completed would depend on whether the blacksmith had the skill.

If he didn’t have that skill, it would be better to keep the knife in its quenching state.

The knife was still burning in the stove, and Li Zhenhua walked into the storeroom again.