Chapter 61.

Seeing this expression on the middle-aged blacksmith’s face, Zhou An thought that this matter had basically succeeded.

It would be much easier to be covered by a constable inside Anding County.

As expected, after the blacksmith’s eyes lit up, he tentatively asked: ”Sir, is this true? As long as you enter the door, this blacksmith store will be under your protection.”

Zhou An nodded, “Within the terms of reference, as long as you find me, I will help you.”

The middle-aged blacksmith gritted his teeth, “How much do you charge!”

The constables of An Ding County did not rarely fish for the people’s oil and water.

Although the things they fished out every time were not much, and sometimes they were irrelevant and just three melons and two dates.

But after a long time, in the hearts of the people, it didn’t leave any good impression.

It was normal for the middle-aged blacksmith to have this doubt.

Zhou An shook his head and said, “I’ve made it clear that I won’t ask you for half a penny, I’m just coming over to learn how to make iron.”

“You provide me with a place, I’ll come over every day at noon to learn.”

After the middle-aged blacksmith double-checked that Zhou An really didn’t have any other problems, he sighed in relief, “My lord, I’ll teach you tomorrow.”

He didn’t continue to ask why he wanted to learn how to make iron, these were matters of the officials, he wouldn’t ask.

What the people were concerned about was more about the benefits.

“Teach today.” Zhou An said.

Catch up early not late, come and learn a little.

The middle-aged blacksmith didn’t expect Zhou An to be in such a hurry, but he didn’t nag, and led Zhou An to a small platform at the side.

While the blacksmith was leading Zhou An, Zhou An also knew the middle-aged blacksmith’s name.

Surname Zhao and name Tie, very much in line with the identity of the blacksmith.

This place in front of him was much smaller than the place where the blacksmith made iron.

“My lord, this is a place for apprentices, specializing in learning, you can come here every day at noon to learn.”

“I learn here, where do your apprentices go?” Zhou An asked.

Zhao Tie scratched his head awkwardly, “I recruited several times in the past, but they didn’t learn for long, then they all gave up, our line of work is very tiring and we have to be roasted by the fire, so there aren’t many of us, so we just stopped recruiting.”

All of them are the truth.

Iron making requires a lot of strength, but also have to stay next to the fireplace, very few people can bear the pain.

“Then let’s start.” Zhou An said.

Blacksmith Zhao didn’t have any nonsense and started explaining.

When it came to specialized knowledge, he became very serious.

After spending about a pillar of incense, Blacksmith Zhao gave an overview, and Zhou An understood some of the basics of the ironworking business.

The three pains of life: ironworking, supporting a boat, and grinding tofu.

Ironworkers endure the heat of the furnace day and night, and living is like going to hell.

The boat is always in danger of capsizing and losing its life.

The tofu seller sleeps three nights and rises at five, and works as a donkey, earning only a small amount of money to make ends meet.

Blacksmithing comes first, and the difficulty can be imagined.

First, the blacksmith buries the cut iron in a pile of burning coals and burns the iron red.

When making forging, the blacksmith’s left hand pinched out the red-hot iron, placed it on the anvil, and his right hand lifted a small hammer to forge it.

At the time of hammering, sequentially lifting the sledgehammer forging.

Play to the iron material from red to dark, and then put into the furnace red, so repeated, and eventually forged into different sizes and curvatures of the iron.

After shaping, red again, immersed in a pool of water to cool, or buried in slag ash natural cooling, and finally, and then polished with a whetstone, in order to sharp.

These are all processes, although the process is simple, but the difficulty lies in grasping the different materials, fire and quenching time.

It is difficult for a blacksmith to make a living without a good hand at hardening.

Normally it was the master’s small hammer and the apprentice’s big hammer, but since there was no apprentice on Zhao Blacksmith’s side, he had to do it alone.

After Zhou An listened to the general explanation, he also started to try his hand at it.

“Just hit a handful of iron bars to try.” Blacksmith Zhao said.

Zhou An nodded and put the iron into the burning furnace.

Under Blacksmith Zhao’s explanation, after waiting for the iron to burn red, he took out the iron, took a small hammer and started pounding.

While hammering, Blacksmith Zhao was still talking at the same time.

The important thing in iron making was hardening, but that didn’t mean that pounding wasn’t important.

Under Blacksmith Zhao’s teaching, Zhou An’s hand with the hammer was very steady, and even Blacksmith Zhao felt amazed during the pounding.

Blacksmith Zhao had lived for most of his life and had never seen a novice able to be so steady.

“Clang clang clang ……”

Inside the room, a series of banging sounds rang out.

In no time, the reddened iron material was whacked by Zhou An in the shape of a long bar, but it looked unbearable.

After all, he was a novice, and even if he had talent in this area, he couldn’t do the craftsmanship of a master teacher.

The red-hot iron bar was slightly curved, and if he didn’t tell anyone, he wouldn’t really know that it was a piece of iron bar, more like a twisted worm.

“It’s already very good that your lordship has made this kind of progress.” Blacksmith Zhao boasted.

It wasn’t flattery, but rather speaking the truth, it was good for a novice to be able to hit it.

“The next step is quenching, this must be timed well.” Blacksmith Zhao said.

When quenching, the heated iron block needed to be quickly dipped into cold water or oil to achieve the effect of making the surface hardness of the iron block increase.

If the cooling is too fast or too slow, it will also lead to the deformation of the iron block or loss of the proper hardness.

Cooling can be based on factors such as the size and type of iron block and the desired hardness.

To be clear, it needed to rely on experience.

Zhou An nodded and put the bent iron bar into the burner once again to burn red before putting it into the water on the side.

Soon, white smoke rose.

The iron bars rapidly cooled.

Although there was Blacksmith Zhao instructing him, Zhou An was after all a novice, and was still far behind in terms of fire.

When the cooled iron bars were taken out of the water, Zhou An’s face darkened slightly.

The iron bars taken out were pitted, and the color was very uneven.

Not only that, Zhou An realized that the iron bars were also very brittle.

Seeing that Zhou An’s face was not good, the beside Zhao Blacksmith hurriedly said, “My lord, don’t be anxious, it’s already very good to get it like this for the first time.”

Of course Zhou An was not in a hurry, because a line of text had already appeared in front of him.

[Ironmaking lv.1: 1/10,000]

Proficiency appeared, proving that his method was right.

In the future, if you follow this method slowly, the proficiency will grow.

Give and take, this saying was embodied even more bluntly in Zhou An’s case.

“Continue!”

Zhou An shook off the mood he was in just now and took out the iron material again, continuing to pound away.

The entire noon passed just like that.

By the time Zhou An came out of the blacksmith store, he shook his arms.

Beating iron was tiring, but it was good that the air in his body had a restorative effect.

In front of his eyes, the text changed for a while.

[Blacksmithing lv.1: 2580/10,000]

Since he had been learning for quite a while, he didn’t fight for long at noon, but the proficiency growth at level 1 was fast, and he used to be able to go up to level 2 in one night.

Zhou An thought that he would have to spend his noon here in the future and went straight back to the government office.

There wasn’t much to do in the afternoon again, and after dispersing his duty, Zhou An returned home with Yu Hang.

Just after arriving home, Zhou An lit the oil lamp on the table and realized that there was an extra letter on the table.