When Charlotte woke up the next day, she had largely returned to normal.
However, while serving Charles during his morning wash, a faint smile from Charles made her blush so deeply that her face remained red throughout breakfast.
This caused Greenspan's gaze to constantly shift between Charles and Charlotte, fearing that his daughter had already been taken advantage of by Charles in the short fifteen minutes of the morning.
Charles, being thin-skinned, couldn't endure such scrutiny.
After hastily finishing breakfast, he suggested visiting the other two workshops.
Greenspan immediately agreed, giving his wife a meaningful look before leaving, instructing her to keep a close eye on Charlotte, then took Charles to the glass and cast iron foundry.
"This is my glass and cast iron sand casting workshop?" Charles stood in front of a dilapidated small courtyard, frowning as he asked Jonathan and Greenspan, who were behind him.
Pittsburgh, at its inception, was a French army fortress.
As an advance base to support operations against the British army, it initially housed a cast iron sand casting facility for producing simple castings, primarily utilizing Pittsburgh's local coal and iron resources to process musket and cannon projectiles.
Later, when the British army and North American militia captured the area, they intended to use it as a base for further westward expansion.
They not only allowed the cast iron sand casting workshop to remain but also permitted it to produce cast iron gun barrels and small-caliber cannons.
However, before large-scale westward operations could commence, the American-British conflict erupted, rendering Pittsburgh's cast iron sand casting workshop largely ineffective.
Hans' family workshop had to significantly scale down its production, with its main business shifting to supplying cast iron gun barrels to Philadelphia, while Charles' workshop had long since gone bankrupt and closed.
Although he knew that no one had been producing for over half a year and the workshop was severely overgrown, seeing its current state made Charles hesitate to even step inside.
The courtyard was situated by the river, and from a distance, one could see a tall waterwheel, but up close, it bore no resemblance to a workshop.
Needless to say, it was overgrown with weeds, and the small courtyard inside was piled high with stones of various colors—red, black, yellow—even the ground was painted with various colors like an abstract painting, and a pungent odor permeated the air.
"Those are iron ore, charcoal, coal, and a small amount of pure quartz ore.
It hasn't been tidied up since all the slaves were called away." Greenspan said, a little embarrassed.
He walked inside, covering his nose with his hand, and at the same time waved to stop Greenspan, who was about to have the slaves clean up, so as not to make the air here even worse.
Fortunately, after bypassing the chaotic piles of ore, the area largely remained tidy; aside from some dust, there was basically no grass, nor any particularly messy items.
His steps did not falter, and his thoughts did not stop.
Charles had not noticed the quartz stones on the ground, but as a former tour guide, he certainly knew about crystals.
Artificially fired crystals are made from quartz stones, but now that they are used here to fire glass, it is truly a waste of natural resources.
He wondered if the glass production here could still continue, as Charles wanted to try making glass mirrors.
Unfortunately, he wasn't very clear on how to fire crystals, so even if he had quartz ore, he would probably only be able to honestly fire glass.
He had already inquired and learned that glass was very common now, and its value was not high; even in a small place like Pittsburgh, some ordinary colored window glass or glazed vessels used as substitutes for ceramics could be produced.
Even the making of mirrors was no longer a great secret.
However, although the mirror-making technique had been leaked, it was still a relatively expensive luxury due to the difficulty of its production.
In the early 14th century, Venetians made mirrors by coating the back of glass with tin foil and mercury, which reflected very clearly.
In the 15th century, Nuremberg produced convex lenses by coating the inside of glass spheres with a tin-mercury amalgam.
At that time, only workshops in Venice could produce the new style of glass mirrors, and European countries flocked to buy them, with wealth flowing into Venice like a tide.
Mirror workshops were concentrated on Murano Island, heavily guarded and strictly blockaded.
Later, the French government bribed four Venetian mirror craftsmen with large sums of money and secretly smuggled them out of the country.
From then on, the secret of mercury glass mirrors became public, and their value was no longer so noble.
However, mercury-coated mirrors still did not reflect light very strongly, were time-consuming to produce, and mercury was poisonous, making the price of mirrors still very high for ordinary people, so their use was not widespread.
Charles was an "omniscient and omnipotent" grand tour guide; he didn't know much about other things, but how could he not know which modern mirrors were the most fashionable and best.
In fact, in the 21st century, no one used mercury mirrors anymore; newly bought mirrors in ordinary homes were either silver mirrors or aluminum mirrors.
Modern mirrors are manufactured using a method invented by the German chemist Liebig in 1835, which involves mixing silver nitrate with a reducing agent to precipitate silver onto the glass.
Commonly used reducing agents are sugar or potassium sodium tartrate tetrahydrate.
In 1929, the Pilkington brothers in England improved this method with continuous processes of silver plating, copper plating, painting, and drying.
In recent years, many mirrors in department stores have been aluminum-plated on the back.
Aluminum is a shiny, silvery-white metal, much cheaper than precious silver.
To make aluminum mirrors, aluminum is evaporated in a vacuum, and the aluminum vapor condenses on the glass surface, forming a thin, radiant aluminum film.
In modern society, such aluminum mirrors are inexpensive and beautiful, and certainly have a great future, but for now...
Considering the level of productivity in Pittsburgh, Charles will probably still have to start production with mercury mirrors or silver mirrors.
However, a prerequisite is to restore the workshop's production.
"Greenspan, can this place still produce glass with its raw materials and facilities?"
"Of course.
Glass production isn't difficult; it's just that without good technicians, the quality might not be good.
If you, sir, could invite a few glass production technicians from Philadelphia, we could start work within two days." Greenspan nodded.
"Hmm!
That's good.
It seems I still have to go to Philadelphia; let's arrange it after I return from Philadelphia." Even if he wanted to arrange it now, he didn't have any money.
Charles continued to ask Greenspan, "Where is the blast furnace?"
"Blast furnace? What blast furnace?"
"The blast furnace for iron smelting, of course?" Charles began to doubt his habitual way of thinking.
He often saw tall, large blast furnaces and chimneys reaching into the sky in television and magazines.
It was understandable that he hadn't seen the impressive large chimney outside earlier, and it was also understandable that there weren't very tall blast furnaces in this estate, as it was just a rudimentary workshop in a newly developed area.
But now, there wasn't even anything resembling a furnace inside, or rather, he hadn't seen a furnace that could hold the crucible for pouring molten iron like on TV.
"The blast furnace for iron smelting? Iron smelting is right there." Greenspan pointed to a high platform behind Charles.
It was something similar in shape to a rural wood-burning stove, but much taller, and at the very bottom of the platform, there seemed to be an outlet.
"This is the furnace for iron smelting.
When smelting, you put iron ore and charcoal inside and keep burning it.
The iron in the iron ore turns into molten iron and collects at the bottom of the furnace.
When it's almost all burned, you open the molten iron outlet at the bottom and pour it directly into molds to get castings like bullets and cannonballs.
But it's too small.
I once went to see the other foundry; their furnaces are several, and each is much taller than ours.
They can produce gun barrels and even cannons.
However, ours here probably can't be used anymore; look at these cracks, and this air inlet is also blocked..." Greenspan gesticulated as he explained to Charles.
"Wait, I think I heard you say that this blast furnace, and the same kind of blast furnace at that other workshop, can produce guns and cannons?" Charles raised a hand, "Do their blast furnaces directly produce steel, and do they use crucibles?" (Note: In reality, most army cannons at this time were bronze, and iron cannons were very few, usually small-caliber.)
"They probably don't use crucibles." Greenspan wasn't sure.
"It seems their furnaces are just a bit taller than ours, and as for gun barrels and cannon barrels, those are directly cast from pig iron, not steel at all.
A smoothbore musket doesn't use much steel, and those slightly more refined steel parts seem to have to be shipped from Philadelphia.
So, in recent years, that workshop has always been supplying gun barrels to Philadelphia and cannot produce muskets themselves."
"sir, direct steel smelting seems to only be possible in Europe; here in the Colonies, I don't think any workshop or sand casting foundry can directly smelt steel." Jonathan, standing nearby, added confirmation.
"Oh? Not all made of steel!" Charles nodded.
He knew that early muzzle-loading cannons, and even breech-loading cannons, were cast from pig iron, but he hadn't expected that even guns were cast from pig iron; his perception had been completely misled by the term 'steel gun'.
Later, he couldn't help but pat his head; he had already seen the rifle used at home, and while the critical parts of that gun were steel, wasn't the gun barrel clearly a pig iron product?
But this was also good; as long as he improved the blast furnace at this facility to directly produce steel, and he specialized in producing muskets made entirely of steel in the future, their performance would definitely be much better than other smoothbore muskets.
At that time, he could make a fortune just by selling muskets.
Thinking of this, he immediately eagerly wanted to examine the current smelting level of the blast furnace in use.
Actually, Charles didn't need to study it in detail. He jumped onto the platform and looked at the iron slag accumulated at the bottom of the furnace to understand the general principle. Isn't it just a small blast furnace for iron smelting? It didn't even use a basic crucible.
Well, to be precise, that professional cast iron factory used a small blast furnace for iron smelting. The one in front of him could only be considered a small low furnace.
"Alas! I didn't expect that a crucible wouldn't even be used here. I remember Europe seemed to be already using crucibles for steelmaking. Is the technological gap between us and Europe really that big?" Charles had only vaguely seen the word 'crucible' in Charles' diary, and now he could only guess wildly.
This was a very strange feeling. In the 21st century, the most advanced was always America, often with some 'American gap,' and this 'American' word often represented advanced technology. Now, transported 250 years back, this 'American' word surprisingly became a symbol of backwardness. Even a butler knew his backwardness compared to Europe.
Europe was actually very late in the application of crucibles, but its application in direct steelmaking was the earliest. In the early 17th century, J. Nusbaum first attempted the crucible steelmaking process in Bavaria.
He placed wrought iron bars into a crucible, covered them with charcoal, and then placed them into a reverberatory furnace to heat for several days. However, because the high temperature required to melt steel was not reached, the steel produced this way was still carburized steel, not crucible steel.
It wasn't until 1740 that B. Huntsman of England invented the crucible steelmaking method, producing liquid steel for the first time in European history. The key to this invention was the creation of a refractory material capable of withstanding high temperatures of 1600 ℃ for making crucibles. From then on, various high-quality steels, such as tool steel, were smelted using the crucible method. However, the significance of this invention was that both the output and quality of European iron and steel stood at the forefront of the world.
Thereafter, European iron and steel dominated, most notably impacting China's Qing Dynasty, destroying the blast furnace ironmaking in China, which had already attempted to smelt liquid crucible steel with crucibles. 'Foreign iron' and 'foreign nails' became synonymous with iron and steel nails.
"Crucible steelmaking? I know this," Jonathan, who was behind him, excitedly came forward to add, "That stuff for steelmaking seems to use wrought iron. This is a cast iron foundry; what comes out of the furnace is pig iron, which can only be directly made into gun barrels and cannonballs."
"Oh! Pig iron! I understand," Charles nodded.
Charles knew a simple fact of modern industry that most people in 1776 would never understand: pig iron's primary purpose wasn't for casting alone. The real value was in steelmaking. Pig iron was the intermediate step, the raw material that could be refined into steel, stronger, more versatile, more valuable than cast iron alone.
This was basic knowledge in the 21st century, something taught in every high school chemistry or industrial arts class. But here, in 1776, it was revolutionary information. If he could figure out how to make steel efficiently, he could transform everything, weapons, tools, infrastructure. The potential was staggering.
"Greenspan, does Hans' cast iron foundry also only produce pig iron?"
"No. They mainly produce pig iron castings and wrought iron tools, and also a small amount of steel tools," Greenspan was very regretful. If Hans' workshop couldn't produce various steels and irons, he would have long suggested to Charles to produce them accordingly.
"Oh! Only a small amount of iron and steel, that's good. In that case, we don't need to worry about glass production. I'll write some things for you, and you can experiment according to my methods. If you can't make it, then so be it. If you can, then we can even buy pig iron from that workshop to make steel. Haha..." Charles laughed triumphantly.
Ignoring the questioning looks from Greenspan and Jonathan, he took the lead and left the workshop.
Back at the trading center, Charles began to draw principle diagrams. His knowledge was, after all, limited, so he couldn't draw true structural diagrams. Most places were only roughly sketched, with simple principle annotations densely written next to them.
The main improved technology was to first find a way to make coke. This had to be solved first, as it related not only to furnace temperature and steel quality but also to cost. The price of coal in Pittsburgh was unknown how many times cheaper than charcoal.
Only by using a large amount of coal could profitability be ensured. Next, high-temperature crucibles needed to be fired. This could be developed gradually. At first, some service life could even be sacrificed. Anyway, crucibles had been used in Europe for a long time, and the principle was not a secret.
Refractory bricks could already be fired here, so the technology to fire crucibles was not far off. And those ordinary refractory materials also needed improvement, which didn't need to be done specifically. With the development of crucibles, the fire resistance and sealing performance of the new furnace could be improved incidentally. There was also the use of existing waterwheels to build pig iron crushing equipment.
Brittle pig iron, after crushing, would be easier to use for crucible steelmaking. If this thing was just a simple one, it would be relatively easy, but to make a high-tech one, it would be more difficult. Finally, a tall chimney needed to be added. The higher the chimney, the stronger its draft, and the easier it would be to increase the furnace temperature. Charles' only requirement for them was to build it as high as possible.
After writing and reviewing it, there were surprisingly several pages. Charles immediately felt a little smug:
I didn't expect to be quite skilled in metallurgy. It seems I will have to become a steel magnate in the future.
However, as soon as the improvement method was handed to Greenspan, Greenspan's face showed an awkward expression.
"My lord, I don't quite understand what's written on this paper, but I think that to achieve these things, it would be impossible to start without one or two hundred pounds. And we currently..."
"Well! I know that, and I'm not asking you to start now. You just need to start preparing, like inquiring about refractory materials, coking principles, and so on. I will take the profits from the previous water mill, and the profits for the next half a year can be at your disposal, to be used for researching new steelmaking equipment."
"Still want to make steel? lord, I think that although the pioneers in Pittsburgh also need a lot of steel, steel is too expensive, and they generally use wrought iron. Moreover, merely to meet Pittsburgh's demand, I'm afraid we might not even recover the costs of this investment within decades," Greenspan, now an employed freeman, dutifully offered his opinion.
Jonathan, standing aside, frowned in dissatisfaction, unsure whether he disagreed with Greenspan's opinion, or was unhappy that Greenspan dared to object to Charles' arrangements, or perhaps was complaining that Charles had proposed another wasteful investment plan.
"You don't need to worry about the cost and sales issues. I have my own sales arrangements. And most importantly, I believe my steelmaking method can make steel as cheap as wrought iron, or even lower in cost," Charles was not angry about Greenspan's objection.
He felt that someone like Jonathan, who possessed rich knowledge yet was very submissive, was most suitable to be a butler, while the person in charge outside had to be like Greenspan, with his own opinions. After today's final inspection, he had completely recognized Greenspan's talent and decided to let him fully manage Pittsburgh's affairs. However, this appointment would only be announced after he achieved results, so he was not prepared to fully disclose his plans to this opinionated subordinate at present.
Greenspan wisely did not press further, but continued to suggest:
"That's good, lord, but if you could get someone to invite a few skilled workers from Philadelphia who understand this area, it would certainly save us a lot of time and effort."
"Well, when I go to Philadelphia, I will definitely invite a few skilled workers back. Then we can start building a real iron and steel workshop. Haha, as for you, as long as you can produce some results for me within half a year, I'll be satisfied," Charles smiled, comforting Greenspan.
He knew this matter couldn't be rushed, and he didn't need to rush. Even if good steel were produced now, it couldn't be transported to the East. Of course, producing good steel was essential, only then could good firearms be produced. And there was no fear of having too many firearms; Americans could be poor, but they couldn't be without guns. This was something he had experienced in the 21st century.
He had already seen the current level of firearm development and knew that the ideas behind current firearms were very advanced. The problem was the lack of sufficiently good steel support, and his limited understanding of firearms meant that if he wanted to achieve anything, he would have to wait until steel caught up.
Speaking of which, the development of firearms at this time was truly interesting. The standard firearms of major powers were generally flintlock smoothbore muskets, or flintlock smoothbore guns.
Their name came from their ignition device, which used a flint striking a frizzen, called a spring-loaded ignition switch. Its structure involved a striker on the side of the gun barrel, holding a flint. When the trigger was pulled, a V-shaped spring released the striker, which struck a curved steel plate mounted on a hinge.
The steel plate covered the priming pan, thus creating a spark that fired the bullet. The priming pan had a protective cover to prevent rain from entering and gunpowder from spilling out. The cover was opened by the trigger before firing, and after loading the powder, it was closed by hand. There were also short guns specifically for cavalry, which could be considered the pistols of that time.