The Lord Of Blood Hill-Chapter 100: Steel and Cement
"My lord, the statistics are in. Crop number four combined with farming method six yields the best results for grains. Root crop number seven paired with method three is particularly promising. The seventeenth group of serfs is the most diligent, while the twenty-eighth group has some issues..."
After listening to Agriculture Officer Bowman's , Henwell instructs a literate secretary to record all the important details. He wants them organized into comparative tables according to his specifications.
Next, Henwell plans to arrange the cultivation of cold-resistant crops. Based on Peace Haven's winter temperatures, he has tasked the caravans with procuring seeds that match the climate.
After the Harvest Festival, he intends to plant crops that grow in autumn and winter. Maximizing land use and harnessing the energy of the sun will ensure Peace Haven becomes a productive grain-producing region.
Henwell's vision is not just for a singular commercial trade area, but a complex region combining commerce, artisanal processing, and efficient agriculture. He anticipates that his territory won't expand significantly in the short term. To support a larger army, he needs more population and wealth, all of which depend on his ability to sustain a growing number of people.
With Henwell's strategic urbanization efforts, nearly empty villages and towns have emerged within just a year. Henwell seizes this opportunity, purchasing land and properties. By next year, he plans to establish collective farms. Well, "collective" might not be the right term, as they all work for him. It's more accurate to call them centralized management farms.
Besides managing these affairs, Henwell hasn't forgotten about his chat group. The group decided not to chat daily anymore, instead saving up their speaking privileges. Every ten days, they share the difficulties they've encountered, and only reach out for help with urgent, tricky issues in between.
The other transmigrators are eager for Henwell to expand his territory, allowing them to experiment with more innovations in agriculture, craftsmanship, and military development—areas everyone is interested in. Politics, however, isn't a focus since their situations vary, offering little in terms of shared strategies.
In agriculture, Henwell has roughly determined the best crop varieties and farming methods for Peace Haven during spring and summer. The use of iron tools has significantly boosted labor efficiency.
Additionally, the serf groups, motivated by a fair reward and punishment system and mutual supervision, show improved productivity. Henwell plans to continue with experimental plots next year, aiming to finalize the agricultural standards by the following year.
In craftsmanship, Henwell's large workshop system has, after a year of practice and adjustment, finally produced barely acceptable military equipment.
However, he hasn't shifted entirely to military production because he remains dissatisfied with the steel quality. Peace Haven's iron is smuggled in from Fabio's Iron Pit City and neighboring countries. Despite efforts to strengthen it through smelting and forging, it's still inferior to true steel.
Lacking a foundation for steelmaking has long frustrated Henwell. He's managed to bring in several prospectors through high wages and special means, tasking them with finding valuable minerals across Peace Haven. So far, no iron or other desired minerals have been found, but they did discover a gold and silver mine, which Henwell finds rather underwhelming.
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Reluctantly, he's organized a team to mine these deposits, viewing it as a way to gain mining experience. But Henwell knows it's a bit of a farce—different minerals require vastly different extraction methods, so there's little to be learned.
Meanwhile, Henwell continues to have the large workshops produce civilian iron goods to sustain territory development and maintain worker skills. Simultaneously, his specialty workshops use high-priced premium steel to craft armor and weapons, refining techniques as they go.
By late spring, Henwell has organized a team to construct a small steel furnace in a secluded mountain valley, following detailed blueprints. Without machinery or the steady power of rivers, Henwell temporarily relies on manpower. Fortunately, the physical strength of people in this world is significantly superior to that of his previous life.
Creating a small blast furnace for iron took Henwell several attempts to perfect. The stirring furnace for decarburization also required multiple trials to find the right construction materials. The traditional method of steelmaking isn't overly complex.
The process involves crushing iron ore, mixing it with lime and slag, and adding water to form clumps. Coal is then heated in an oxygen-free environment to produce coke.
Materials are fed into the top of the several-meter-high furnace, alternating layers of coke and iron ore. Once melted into molten iron, it's drained into a converter. Before the molten iron cools, it's continuously stirred to allow oxygen to remove carbon, reducing the carbon content. The result is a variety of steel types, including high-carbon steel, low-carbon steel, and wrought iron.
The entire process takes over ten hours and relies entirely on human power. Both the bellows and the converter require manual operation. This demands immense physical effort, endurance of intense heat, and involves significant danger. From the initial setup to producing the first batch of steel, it takes several months, during which dozens of workers lose their lives.
Despite these sacrifices, the endeavor proves worthwhile as Henwell finally succeeds in producing steel. Seeing the first few hundred kilograms of steel take shape, Henwell reflects on how easily others seem to develop their territories after transmigrating, while his steelmaking venture has been such a struggle.
Even after expending so much manpower and resources, the cost of producing steel is still significantly lower than purchasing it from elsewhere.
Henwell isn't in a rush, as he doesn't have an immediate need for large quantities of steel. This phase is about technical validation and accumulation. With a monthly output of around ten tons, the production is more than sufficient to meet his current requirements.
After successfully producing steel, Henwell turns his attention to cement. Upon discovering a lime deposit, he constructs a kiln to burn lime. The process is similar to steelmaking, layering ore and fuel before firing it up. At the bottom is an outlet for collecting the quicklime produced.
The process involves mixing burnt brick fragments, pottery shards, water-quenched slag, and ash with various materials. About 75% of this mixture is combined with roughly 25% quicklime, with a touch of gypsum added at the end.
The real labor-intensive part is grinding these materials together. First, they are crushed into small pieces, then ground with large stone mills. The mixture is sieved and ground repeatedly until it is fine enough to be considered cement.
Henwell tests the cement and confirms it sets properly. To improve efficiency, he later commissions the small steel mill to create several steel rollers to speed up the grinding process. Although still labor-intensive, cement is an advanced building material compared to cutting and shaping stone blocks.
If Henwell had more steel, he would immediately move to concrete casting to construct a standard concrete fortress. For now, the cement offers a significant improvement in building capabilities, allowing for more robust and efficient construction projects.
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Chapter 100: Steel and Cement
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