Two days later, Guo Shao discovered that the forging hammer workshop could not operate.
"Hurry up and stop the donkey," shouted the head craftsman Luo Jiye. "It's stuck."
Guo Shao looked up at the cast iron lump that served as a forging hammer, hanging in the air and unable to fall, and the chain being pulled and making a clacking sound. It was as if ten thousand horses were roaring through his heart. He had been busy for a month, and it was like this. You can imagine how depressed he was.
After a while, the donkey in the cellar next door was driven back and forth, and finally the forging hammer was slowly put down. Fortunately, nothing was damaged. If it had collapsed during the first test, it would have probably caused more injuries.
The craftsmen worked for so long, but it was useless. Occasionally, some people would complain and talk about it from a distance. Some people whispered that they thought Guo Shao couldn't hear them, so why didn't they just pull the rope up and down to pound the rice instead of repairing so many things.
Luo Jiye hurriedly took out the drawing, frowned and looked at it, then bent down and said to Guo Shao: I did everything according to General Guo's instructions and did not dare to cut corners.
There was an official from Jiafang Office nearby, and he asked: What's going on
Everyone looked confused. Except for a few officials, most of the people here were craftsmen. This thing seemed to be beyond the knowledge of craftsmen, and people could not understand the problem. The official of Jiafang Office turned to Guo Shao and said: General Guo, I know someone who built a waterwheel. Why not call him to come and have a look
Okay. Guo Shao nodded.
He gradually calmed down from the depression of failure, knowing that there would always be setbacks in attempts, just as scientists had tried countless times to make the light bulb. Although the structure of this mechanical forging hammer was relatively simple, mainly based on the principles of transmission belts and pulleys, the principles were not unfamiliar to Guo Shao. However, he had never had the time to tinker with this thing before, and he had no practical experience at all.
It was indeed too novel for the ancients; the ancients also had creativity, but the development of technology was based on previous experience, and it was a slow process of occasionally making one or two details. It took them a while to accept something completely new. As the saying goes, "a different trade is like a different mountain", this is also true for unfamiliar things.
Guo Shao walked back and forth between the two rooms several times and said: There is a problem with the design of the opening and closing pendant connecting the forging hammer and the chain. The intention cannot be achieved during operation. We have to think of a new solution.
The experienced blacksmiths and shipbuilders around him also looked confused, and no one could continue Guo Shao's topic.
Guo Shao asked someone to set up paper and ink in the workshop, and then he drew a rough sketch based on the structure in front of him and thought about it. He felt that the semi-automatic design was too big a step and difficult to achieve for the time being, so he had to simplify the structure. The simpler the process, the less likely it would be to have problems.
He also discovered that the chain on the edge of the millstone was diagonally directed upward to the hole in the wall. He intuitively felt that this orientation would shorten the distance the chain could be pulled and the forging hammer could not be pulled too high. He immediately drew a triangle on paper and used trigonometric functions to confirm his judgment.
The officials and craftsmen stared in amazement at Guo Shao drawing the picture and writing all kinds of completely incomprehensible symbols. They were all confused and bewildered.
Guo Shao didn't want to bluff them, and he had no way to explain it. He started with Arabic numerals and formula symbols. How could he explain it clearly to everyone? There were mathematicians in ancient times, such as those who wrote the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art and the Pythagorean Theorem, but they were a minority after all. There were no less than several thousand officials in Tokyo alone, and no one knew who was good at what. Anyway, most people, including civil servants, could not quite understand the more complicated rules of geometry. Perhaps the officials of the Imperial Observatory would be more knowledgeable.
The two millstones needed to be raised by a support. Guo Shao told Luo Jiye that the donkeys pulling the millstones should not be placed in the cellar but on the ground; the millstones should be raised and then lifted up.
Luo Jiye gestured and asked a few questions, and finally understood what Guo Shao meant.
Guo Shao took out the redesigned and simplified drawing of the pendant device, walked to the forging hammer, pointed at those things and explained them to Luo Jiye. Part of the structure had to be reassembled, there was nothing he could do about it.
Inspector Guo Du left the yamen early every day. It was said that Shi Yanchao was doing nothing in the yamen of the Palace Front Office with a group of civil servants and craftsmen, so he sat there and chatted with Yuan Yan.
Yuan Yan said: Last time, Privy Envoy Wang mentioned that it seemed that Inspector Guo wanted to make new armor.
Shi Yanchao was stunned for a moment, then laughed and said: I almost forgot, I heard that General Guo used to be a blacksmith, haha
Yuan Yan was more steady, so when he heard Guo Shao's somewhat joking words, he did not join in the fun. He just sat there without saying a word, pretending to be deaf to everything.
Shi Yanchao said: I don't understand, why does Guo Du, the inspector of the imperial guards, not do his job well and go to take charge of the affairs of the Military Equipment Bureau? If he hadn't asked Xiang Gong to attack Hanzhong and chosen a good man, Hanzhong would have become our territory now, and we would be comfortable now. We lost more than we gained, and spent a lot of money and food, but didn't get anything. The court did a losing business.
Yuan Yan originally wanted to say that Xiang Gong was not a mediocre person, but Shi Yanchao seemed to dislike Xiang Gong, so he was too lazy to argue with Shi Yanchao.
On the twelfth day of the twelfth lunar month, Guo Shao came to the outer city workshop again and found that the workshop was already in operation.
There was a piece of felt on the anvil below, and the two large wheels next to it were turning and making a loud noise. Guo Shao shouted: "Prepare some tung oil, and apply oil everywhere so that it won't be so noisy."
Seven or eight donkeys pull the big wheel near the axis, which doesn't move very fast; but the other small wheel is several times smaller, so it rotates faster. So the chain on this side also moves up and down faster.
With a loud bang, the forging hammer weighing more than a thousand pounds was suddenly pulled up to the height of the beam, like a sluice gate being violently opened. A wooden stick next to the forging hammer hit a pair of copper bells with a jingling sound as it rose.
The craftsman standing nearby heard the sound of the copper bell and pulled the rope hard. The oiled iron hook of the pendant was very thick and shaped into a relatively flat V-shape, tilted on both sides. As the craftsman pulled it, the chain tilted to the side, the pendant was immediately unhooked, and the heavy forging hammer fell down with a whoosh.
There was a loud bang. Although the anvil was padded with felt, the forging hammer weighing more than a thousand pounds still made a deafening sound when it hit it.
In a flash, the chain head moved downward very quickly. The chain head also had a several dozen kilograms of iron lump hanging on it, pulling the empty chain straight. The V-shaped iron hook was pressed by the gravity of the iron lump, and the inclined surface of the hook was directly pressed into the gate-shaped bracket of the forging hammer.
The hammer was reconnected and immediately pulled up by the iron chain. There were two clangs, which were the sound of the hammer rising and falling through the copper bell. Then it hit the anvil again, and this cycle repeated.
Haha, Guo Shao couldn't help laughing, and everyone else followed suit and laughed. For a moment, the whole workshop was filled with cheers.
So the craftsman swept away the pounded felt, put a piece of red-hot wrought iron on the anvil with tongs, and quickly pulled out a square shield with holes to protect the front. With a clang, the red square iron was flattened. The craftsman carefully adjusted the position of the wrought iron with tongs behind the shield, and after a while, he was hit again with a clang.
After forging it five or six times, he clamped out the already flattened wrought iron; another craftsman clamped in another red-hot iron block.
The previous piece of flat iron was stuck in the cracks of the stone and was bent by hammering, and then replaced and folded forged.
Guo Shao watched for a while and said with a smile: It is said that Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Western Chu, can lift a tripod weighing a thousand pounds, but even the Overlord cannot compare with this thing; if we enlarge the wheels and use a few more mules, we can lift two thousand pounds or several thousand pounds.
Luo Jiye laughed and said: Even the Overlord of the West cannot lift a tripod and do the work of a blacksmith and go to the shop to forge iron.
Hahahaha everyone burst into laughter again.
Guo Shao turned to look at Wang Hong, the commander of the Armor Workshop: "I will ask Kaifeng Prefecture to requisition land around here someday. You gather the armor-making craftsmen and ask Luo Jiye to build more workshops according to the size of the forging hammer gears here. We need to make three sizes of forging hammers that are doubled and doubled. Now that we have this thing, we can make new armor."
Wang Hong bowed and said: I obey your command.
Guo Shao added: All the craftsmen involved in this matter will receive monthly salaries like the elite soldiers of the Palace Guards, and they will be ordered to keep the craft secrets. Anyone who leaks it to outsiders will be beheaded.
Everyone came back to their senses from their laughter. Because Guo Shao had been going between workshops frequently over the past month and had never been arrogant when talking to the craftsmen, everyone rarely felt his power.
Guo Shao took out a drawing: The anvil and hammer cannot be completely flat. Several types of forging and annealing should be made according to these curvatures, and then used for cold forging and stamping. After making the anvil, forge a few helmets to try.
The helmets used by the imperial guards are not standardized now. There are mainly two processes: one is to cast the whole piece. Regardless of the strength, the disadvantage is that it is thick and heavy, and the cast iron parts cannot be light and thin; the other is to piece together forged iron sheets, punch holes and connect with rivets. The disadvantage is that there are many processes and it is troublesome.
In fact, the main disadvantage of the currently used chain mail is not the defense problem, but it is also very laborious to make. Therefore, the rate of full-body armor wearing by the imperial guards, which is maintained by the whole country, is less than one-third. A set of chain mail is made of hundreds of iron pieces connected together, and it requires an experienced and skilled blacksmith. It takes about 20 to 30 people a whole month to make a set of full-body armor. The efficiency is low and the cost is high, mainly due to labor costs.
Guo Shao wanted to make this thing by cold forging into a large area of plate armor. The combination still uses the popular technology at that time, hammering and splicing with rivets. However, the design is the most difficult part. If some moving parts are made of iron plates, it will affect people's movements.
So it is not the time to start producing plate armor yet, let's try making helmets first. Slowly try to design plate armor. Anyway, at least the technical basis of stamping has been achieved.