"Come with a hammer!" Chen Xu ordered.

A craftsman standing next to him quickly went to the shed to get a five or six pound hammer. Chen Xu told the onlookers to get a little bit aside, and then he smashed the cement brick hard a few times, and found that it was indeed very strong. He smashed a corner after a few hammers.

This hardness is no different from bluestone, and it is even stronger than bluestone. The main component of bluestone is calcium carbonate, which is softer among the stone materials, otherwise it will not be used to make stone bricks in large quantities. The entire city walls and palaces of Xianyang City are almost made of stone bricks, cottage tiles and rammed earth. They are the most commonly used stone materials because bluestone is easy to process, but even if it is easy to process, the chisel made of bronze is still very worn. Moreover, it takes nearly half an hour to process a stone brick two feet long, wide and thick one foot each. This is because the stone materials are relatively regular, and a skilled worker and craftsman cannot make much in a day. Therefore, the stone bricks required for construction in various places in Xianyang are piled up manually, and they cannot be taken advantage of at all.

But it is different with cement. Simply mixing sand and gravel with water can quickly pour a large amount of cement bricks and even be directly poured into the mold. It is more than a hundred times more convenient than bluestone bricks, and it is also convenient to transport.

Chen Xu was very satisfied with the strength of the cement bricks in front of him, so he went to carefully observe the various processing links and steps of the cement workshop, and made some more reasonable improvement instructions for some of the areas that needed improvements. Finally, he came to the mill where the large iron mill was placed.

It is said to be a mill, but it is actually two walls, three meter wide and two meter high. A platform is built with thick wood on the wall. A funnel in the middle is just aimed at the grinding eye of the iron mill below. There is a small crane on the side of the wall. A basket of crushed bluestone is hung on the operating platform. The slave used a shovel to shovel the gravel into the funnel. Someone below drove the bullock and turned the iron mill. The stone will be ground into raw materials. Other coal, iron ore and cement stone will be put into the iron mill at the end. After the grinding is full, it will stop to rest. The workers will come in and transport the ground raw clinker out.

This large iron mill weighs 5,000 kilograms. It took more than ten days to cast this iron mill alone, because such a large sand turning mold had never been made. During the pouring, five iron smelted steel with exactly the same ingredients at the same time. Nearly a hundred craftsmen were used to successfully pour it in one go. The successful pouring of this large iron mill also greatly improved the craftsmen in the iron craftsmen's skill in pouring large steel castings.

In order to drive this large iron mill, two strong bulls were used, and they could not work too long at once. However, this is the current expedient measure. Chen Xu thought that after the water truck on the river was successfully manufactured, he could use a water truck to drive the iron mill. However, it is unlikely recently. Because the water rains often rise in water in summer, most of the dam was almost stopped after half of the construction, and the water truck was still hanging on the river bank. However, considering that the water mill driven by the water truck could be designed and built first.

Chen Xu felt that the cement workshop was able to achieve such strength was completely successful, which was almost no different from the strength of ordinary cement in later generations.

Chen Xu was also very impressed during his careful inquiry. Just by studying the current situation, the cement workshop has successively used more than ten craftsmen and dozens of apprentices, nearly 200 work slaves, and more than 30 recipes have been tested, and the finished products have reached tens of thousands of kilograms of fired products have accumulated. Chen Xu has never calculated the money and grain consumed during the period. These are all Zhao Qing is responsible for. Using so much manpower, material resources and financial resources, hard work pays off. Although only hundreds of kilograms of cement finished products have been successful, it is undeniable that this will be a major weapon that can promote the rapid development of the Qin Empire after steel, and will exert energy beyond the times in major infrastructure such as construction, transportation, water conservancy, etc.

Of course, to truly let cement exert its power of infrastructure, output is a huge bottleneck, but I think with Qin Dada as a backer, if you see the effect of cement, even if Chen Xu wants to dig a hole in the earth, Qin Dada will definitely not hesitate too much. It doesn’t matter if the people are not enough. The Qin Iron Cavalry can sweep the Huns and Donghu at present. Is it enough to capture tens of thousands of people? If not enough, you can continue to catch them. You can catch them until the Arctic, even the polar bears are caught to help push the mill.

Waiting for the time when the concrete solidified, Chen Xu followed Gongshusheng to the steel workshop and blacksmith shop next door to watch the coin model and coin stamping machine he and Ma Gan collaborated.

The money style is relatively simple, because there are Chen Xu, Zhang Cang and several craftsmen with experience in polishing and carving jade artifacts to design patterns successfully. With the repeated trials of several craftsmen with experience in making money styles and craftsmen with sand turning and mold making, the mother model of four coins of one, five, ten and fifty coins have been successfully minted, and the four copper coins of different materials have also been made using traditional craftsmanship, and the weight is almost no different from the design requirements.

Looking at the four different coins of different sizes and colors placed on the fine linen cloth, and looking at the exquisite and clear patterns on it, Chen Xu picked them up and looked carefully.

"It's not bad, it's completely achieved the design effect!" Chen Xu couldn't help but praise him after reading it.

The coins seen in front of you are at least several times more refined than half a liang of coins. Especially the new one-qian copper coins are more than half lighter and more compact and easier to carry. Although they are still in the same shape of blue-gold round square holes, there is an outer ring imitating the copper coins in later generations. This not only prevents people from cutting off the outer ring to collect copper and making coins privately, but also for wear resistance and beauty. Moreover, there is not only half a liang or two small seal characters on it, but the four clear seal characters of Shihuang Tongbao are engraved on the front, and the words of Yiqian are engraved behind it.

The other five-cent coins are cast in brass, pure yellow, heavy on ten zhu, belonging to copper coins, with no holes. There is a five-pointed star on the front, and there are five seal characters, gold, wood, water, fire and earth on the five corners. There is a circle in the center of the back, and there is a large Qin character engraved inside, with five-cent characters engraved on both sides. This coin is called the Five Elements Tongbao.

Ten coins are cast in white copper, weighing 15 zhu, with a Bagua pattern on the front, and a Qin character on the back, with the words Ten coins written on both sides. This coin is also called Bagua Tongbao.

Fifty coins are cast in copper, weighing one or two taels (twenty-four zhu), and there is a Tai Chi pattern with alternating yin and yang on the front, and the back is also a small seal script Qin character, and the outer ring is arranged with the words "Fifty coins of the First Emperor Twenty-nine Years" on the outside. This coin is also called Tai Chi Tongbao. Because it is made of almost pure copper copper, it looks the most precious and gorgeous, with the largest face value, and is the most handy in hand. Chen Xu feels like he is holding a silver dollar, and he really can't put it down.

The molds that cast these coins were poured out of the hardest steel. In order to create these four types of coins, the factory applied to Zhao Qing to call the best craftsman who specially cast copperware for royals, and called the best molds and the best jade carving craftsmen. They first made the finest and most realistic coins with stone wax, and then wrapped the coins with the finest mud and sand by the watering method. After countless times of watering, they obtained a casting mold. When the melted steel slowly poured into the mold, the wax pattern melted from the pores reserved in the mold, and finally cooled and opened the mold, they obtained a steel coins.

This method of making molds with wax is widely used in the casting of bronze ware and has been used on a large scale since the Spring and Autumn Period. This method can be used to make extremely complex bronze ware, which is also the reason why so many bronze ware with complex shapes and incredible shapes are unearthed later generations.

With this coin style, you can directly use the most traditional method of minting to pour the melted copper juice into it, close the coin style, cool it slightly and open it, and it will be a complete brand new copper coin.

But Chen Xu was obviously not satisfied with such a primitive way of minting.

Therefore, a manual stamping coin minting machine was designed.

A cast iron platform with a square hole in the middle can just put half of the coin. A piece of cast iron weighing 50 kilograms above is fixed on two steel columns on the platform through two round holes, which can be moved up and down. A handle can lift and press down the cast iron. The other half of the coin is fixed below the cast iron. The already made coin is placed to heat to a soften level, and then put it into the coin of the stamping machine to press down the handle. Under the weight of the cast iron and the pressure of the handle, a coin is stamped out.

This stamping machine has not been completed because it requires that the upper and lower two dollars should not be deviated at all when the upper and lower volumes are closed, otherwise the coins produced by die-cast will inevitably not meet the specifications. At present, this stamping machine will have gaps when it moves up and down due to process problems, and the alignment effect is not very good.
Chapter completed!