Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 113 Jade Steel
If you want to be the master of your own house, there are too many things to worry about, and you will always be lacking this or that.

Yuanye walked around the table hundreds of times. If he had put a small stone mill here earlier, he could have ground out at least half a bucket of soy milk. But even after grinding for a long time, he still couldn't remember where the rich iron ore was in Owari. After all, there was no iron ore in Owari, and no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't create it out of thin air.

He pondered for a while and felt that he had reached a dead end, so he changed his angle to consider the problem - where did all these armor, swords and guns in Owari come from?

He had never thought about this question before, but as long as he didn't understand "common sense", it would be right to ask Aman. He sent someone to call Aman back and asked him directly: "I forgot to ask you just now, where did the ironware in Owari come from?"

Ah Man was stunned for a moment, not understanding what he wanted to ask, and said in surprise: "Of course it was made by a blacksmith, how could it be pulled by a donkey?"

"I mean raw materials, like pig iron or something like that."

Ah Man is indeed a great treasure, he really knows, and immediately realized: "Oh, you mean iron materials, Atsuta comes from Hokuriku, Kaga Province, for example, produces iron materials. Shimazu comes from Sanyo Road and Sannyin Road, places like Bizen Province, Bizen Province, Bizen Province, Bimasaka Province, Izumo Province, Iwami Province, and Oki Province all produce iron materials."

Hokuriku Road, Sanyo Road, Sanyin Road...

This is too far away from Tokaido. It’s out of reach in a short time. I can’t snatch it even if I want to!

Yuanye asked with the last glimmer of hope: "Is there no place in Owari that can produce iron?" If there is, that would be his next target. At least he would have to find a way to share the profits from the production.

Aman killed his fantasy immediately: "Owari only produces cloth, pottery and rice, nothing else is rare. Besides, producing iron is something that ordinary people cannot do at all. There are all kinds of family secrets. How can iron be produced in just any place?"

A family secret? Is that so exaggerated?

But this is not important. We need iron ore first before we can talk about smelting. But now we can’t even rob it?

"Okay, go back and do your own thing!" Yuanye was disappointed and sighed. Seeing that she couldn't help, he simply sent her away.

Aman didn't care and didn't even bother to ask him what he wanted to do. Anyway, she couldn't understand what Yuanye was thinking about all day, so she just thought he was having his daily tantrum. She muttered something, patted his little butt and went back.

Yuanye continued to grind the mill in his office, and after turning it for almost half a bucket of soy milk, he still didn't give up and continued to think about how to solve this problem - the cost of raw materials was too high. In the future, when he produced armor and cannons, he would only make the labor fee by selling them, which was a loss.

Fortunately, hard work pays off. He kept thinking and recalling there, and finally stopped after a while, and came up with a solution.

There are no rich iron ore in Owari, but that doesn't mean there is no iron. It's just that it's more difficult to collect. But he is in such a mess now and he is really short of money. He has to collect it even if it is difficult. At least he has to try. So... if it doesn't work, he can only try to open an iron field. I just don't know if it is reliable.

…………

The next day, Yuanye got up early, completed his daily tasks, and made some simple arrangements for Wanjin's affairs. Then he took the "expedition team" and set out to look for iron.

The team was very simple, only him, his personal bodyguard Aqing, several senior Langdang in his family, and Aman who heard that he was going to look for iron and insisted on following him. In addition, they only brought some weapons, tools and food, not even horses. After all, they had to go up the river and explore all the way. There was no ready-made road at all, and bringing horses would be a burden.

"Is there really iron in Owari? Why hasn't anyone discovered it before? How did you know?" Aman was very curious and had no idea what Yuanye was thinking. He just kept talking nonsense beside him.

"I don't know either, let's go look for it first!" Yuanye had no way of explaining to her that iron is one of the top three elements in the earth's crust - if you don't count oxygen, oxygen is an impurity in minerals, and everyone wishes it didn't exist - theoretically iron should be everywhere, so he could only say this perfunctorily and walked upstream along the stream.

This small river is a tributary of Shirakawa River. Most of the rivers in Owari have their sources in the deep mountains of Mino Province, and Shirakawa River is no exception. However, Japan is an island country, and the mountainous area accounts for more than 80%, resulting in an undulating terrain. The Shirakawa River is also affected and twisted, so it has been winding around and diagonally across most of Owari, and finally it has become a comb shape, with large and small tributaries beginning to flow southward into the sea. In short, this small river originates from the deep mountains and has passed through a lot of mountains. In theory, it should contain a certain amount of iron sand. Now we just need to find a way to collect this iron sand.

Yuanye was still not discouraged by this crude method and kept thinking hard. He remembered a documentary about "Tama Steel" that he had watched before. That documentary was produced by NHK. NHK has always spared no expense in producing documentaries. After all, it is a TV station funded by the whole people and they will not overly consider commerciality. They will spend money without restraint and their research is usually more detailed.

In the documentary about "Tama Steel", the raw materials of Tamae Steel are clearly recorded - iron sand, red-eye iron sand and true-eye iron sand washed out from the river.

Of course, the Japanese love to give strange names. No matter how strange the names of these iron sands are, their essence is ferroferric oxide. The "tama steel" used to smelt them is actually just a kind of low-temperature steel accidentally produced due to insufficient temperature in the furnace, which makes it difficult to completely melt the iron sands. There is nothing strange about it.

Of course, you can't say this to sword enthusiasts. If you look down on "Tamagatama", they will easily give you a beating and have a heated debate with you for three days.

Anyway, "Tama Steel" is smelted from iron sand. There are a lot of messy details involved, some of which are superstitious. Yuanye doesn't care about these. He just wants the by-product of "Tama Steel" production, that is, pig iron.

As for how to get the iron sand, the documentary also mentioned that it was to dig a river to create an "iron field" and let the river slowly accumulate iron sand.

If this trick doesn't work, then he will have no other tricks. There is no iron mine nearby, so he can only hold his nose and buy high-priced iron materials, or buy high-priced iron materials with unstable supply. His dream of becoming an arms dealer will probably be shattered, and many of his ideas of forming an army will also be greatly reduced.

He was now full of uncertainty and was too lazy to pay any more attention to this curious guy, Aman, so he just walked upstream along the stream. The stream was not very wide, but due to the terrain, it flowed from high to sea at a very fast speed. He had already walked out of his temporary territory before he saw that the stream slowed down when it passed a hill and was forced to turn, and it also rushed out of a muddy river bay.

He felt that this was a good place to verify his hypothesis, so he immediately ordered everyone to stop and told his men to take out the bamboo baskets they carried and go into the water to sift the mud. The technique was similar to gold panning, that is, to scoop up a handful of mud, and shake it desperately in the water to allow the relatively light mud and sand to be carried away by the water, leaving only the heavy gold sand in the end.

Of course, this is iron sand, but the principle is the same. At most you just need to use less strength to shake it.

Of course he would take the lead in such a harmless task and went down to play in the mud. Even though it was not the rainy season yet and the river water was very cold, he did not care. He shook the bamboo basket vigorously for five or six minutes, then scooped out the remaining things in the basket, rubbed it hard in his hands, and felt cold and heavy. It turned out to be black iron sand, and the amount was much more than he had imagined. A basket of mud was enough to sift out enough black iron sand to cover his palm, at least two taels.

This was a bit abnormal. Yuanye straightened up, looked around and found that others were similar to him. There were quite a few iron sands in the bamboo baskets. He was in a trance for a moment and felt that the world was a little unreal. He seemed to be the chosen one. He was worried about having no iron, but he actually dug out the iron sands by digging in the mud. Could it be that God opened his eyes and saw that an ordinary person like him had a hard time and was still feeling aggrieved after a year, so he secretly helped him?
But he had received higher education after all, and did not believe in those superstitious things. His thoughts diverged for a moment and then converged again. After a little thought, he understood what was going on - there was something wrong with this damn place, Japan!

Anyone who has taken geography classes knows that Japan is located at the junction of the earth's plates. There are three seismic belts and four volcanic belts. The seismic and volcanic activities are very active. It is believed that the underground magma belt has brought up rich iron-containing minerals, which have risen to the surface with complex geological movements and then been transported by long-term water erosion, resulting in the iron sand content in the rivers being much higher than in other parts of the world.

In addition, this small river bay is already close to the estuary, and no one has ever looked at it directly since it was formed. The silt here has been washed over and over again by the river for who knows how many years, which has accumulated a large amount of heavy black iron sand.

Yuanye pondered for a while and felt that he could explain this geological phenomenon from a scientific perspective. His worldview was immediately restored. He squeezed the iron sand in his hand and began to estimate the output. Aman was waiting for him to fail so that he could express his hindsight. Unexpectedly, after panning for so long, he actually got a handful of iron sand. He couldn't help but wonder, "So there are so many iron sands in the river? Is this how they get iron materials in Hokuriku, Sanyo, and San'in?"

This is such a surprise, it’s been sent again!
Copper is money, and iron is also money. Even if the quality is not good, it is good to use it to cast iron coins. It can be given to the Lang gang members who have made meritorious services and pay off the debts owed in the past!
"The situation over there is unclear. There may be some small iron mines, but this is the only way we can collect iron here." Yuanye was not as happy as her. He retracted his gaze and answered calmly, with not much joy on his face.

The main thing is that he has already made an estimate and feels that there is not much iron sand here. Even if this small river bend is turned upside down, only about ten tons can be collected - a rough estimate, but no more than that. Moreover, this is iron sand, not iron material. After smelting, there will be 20% left, which needs to be knocked on the furnace.

This amount is still not enough, at least it is definitely not enough in the long run, and it cannot be compared with real iron ore. But at least we have made it clear that NHK did not lie, and Japanese rivers can really be used as low-quality small iron ore. Then there is indeed a basis for developing iron fields, and more or less, there is a long-term and stable source of iron.

He thought to himself and immediately turned to a Lang gang member and said, "Go back and call for more people. Thirty of them, bring shovels and sacks, and we will dig the river."

(End of this chapter)