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HISTORY HISTORY
The art of extracting and processing metal
Russian metallurgists took on a large scale here. The extraction of
metal in these parts was the same folk craft
as fishing and hunting.
In the heroic years of battles with the
Russian people have written Tatar enslavers, the metallurgists of our
many bright pages in the history of northern lands managed to establish a truly
metallurgy. Their first acquaintance mass production of weapons of excellent
with metal occurred in ancient times. quality.
There are dozens of places in the The defenders of the homeland received
south, in the north, in the east of thousands of swords, spears, arrows from
our homeland, where archaeologists, these areas. Ustyuzhna Zheleznopolskaya
exploring the most ancient sites and alone forged hundreds of thousands of
settlements, have found and still are "sweeping flies" a year, or, as our ancestors
finding bronze and iron weapons, called them in another way, "garlic" (sharp
metal utensils, and jewelry. Traces of iron thorns), which were filled with river fords
ancient mines have been preserved in so that the Tatar cavalry could not use them.
the Urals, in Yakutia, in Zaonezhie, in Later, at the end of the 14th - beginning
the center of the European part, the of the 15th century, when gunpowder
simplest foundry devices have been A section of a catalon furnace. appeared, the skill of Russian metallurgists
discovered, as well as slags, which manifested itself especially clearly in the
are metal smelting wastes thrown out production of firearms.
by ancient metallurgists from their Russian foundry workers were among the first in the world to start casting copper cannons,
furnaces. Scientists estimate the age of these finds at two to three thousand years. which appeared in our country soon after the invention of gunpowder.
It is possible to indicate entire regions in the north-west of our country: Karelia, Kargopolye, The glory of the Zheleznopol "wolf" - cannon, welded from iron strips, spread far and
Ustyuzhna Zheleznopolskaya, where excavations reveal the remains of iron-making industries wide.
that existed here at the beginning of our millennium. Contemporary documents testify to the outstanding skill of Russian foundry workers.
Here, under a thick layer of earth, researchers are looking for settlements, where almost Buchau, the ambassador of the German emperor Maximilian, who came to Moscow in 1576,
every house was equipped with one or two bloomery furnaces – ovens for smelting iron. informed his monarch that "in Russia cast iron cannons are so large that a warrior in full armor,
These ovens, the distant ancestors of the modern blast furnace, were small and simple in standing at their bottom, could not reach their edge with his hand". The author of the book
design. Blast furnace were stone conical structures wide at the top, tapering downward.
Ore and charcoal were alternately loaded into the furnace from above: a layer of coal, a "Description of the Klein Embassy" echoes
the German diplomat. "Each company," he
layer of ore. From below, through a small hole by itself, like into the fire tube of a samovar, air
entered the oven. This is how "air blast" writes, "had a field tool, very carefully cast
was carried out in the most primitive and skillfully worked out or skillfully forged
way in the first metallurgical furnaces. from iron with a hammer."
Later, metallurgists began to Finally, their creations, preserved to
pump air into the furnace with the help this day, speak eloquently about the art of
of hand bellows, similar to those that Russian foundry workers. "Tsar Cannon"!
were found relatively recently in old Who has not heard of this amazing work
forges. The coals fanned by the hand of the Russian foundry by Andrei Chokhov.
bellows gave a slight heat. The ore did For nearly four centuries, a gigantic weapon
not even melt, and the "reduced" iron, weighing about 2,500 poods (or about 40
freed from oxygen, was extracted from tons), decorated with bizarre bas-reliefs, Tsomnitsa is a prototype of a blast furnace.
the blast furnace in a soft, pasty piece has stood in the Moscow Kremlin, and still
- "krytsa". It was called so because of the resemblance to a lump of caviar. (Krytsa is derived amazes with its size and skill of execution.
from the word caviar.) The Tsar Cannon is a monument of the high design and technological culture of Russian
The iron lump melted in the bloomery furnace had an irregular shape and a coarse-grained technicians who worked in the distant past.
surface. In the krytsa, pure metal was mixed with slags - alloys of earthy ore impurities. The Arming with superior and abundant artillery required a lot of metal. The entire economy of
krytsa was saturated with them like a sponge with water. To free the iron from slags, the ancient Russia was in need of metal products more and more. The builders showed a particularly great
metallurgists beat the red-hot crystal with hand hammers, "squeezed out"” this iron sponge. demand for metal.
After a long forging, a lump of pure soft iron was obtained. It was cut into pieces and sent to Iron, melted by primitive, inefficient bloomery furnaces, was not enough. They were
the forges. This was the end of the metallurgical process. Of course, it was still very primitive. replaced by more advanced and powerful blast furnaces.
The same was true in those days not only in our country, but also in all countries where metal With the inventing of the blast furnace, the metallurgical process has also changed. In
was produced. Among them were Bavaria, England, Sweden. general, the construction of a blast furnace did not differ from a bloomery furnace. The blast
In terms of the amount of smelted metal, Russia occupied one of the first places among furnace was also loaded from above, as well as blown into it from below, but it was much larger,
them. The northern Novgorod lands were especially famous for their iron. Since then the whole higher than its predecessor. This is what affected the melting process. The blast furnace held
region there is called Ustyuzhna Zheleznopolskaya. more coal and iron. Their contact began to last longer. Coal, or rather carbon, managed not only
to completely restore all the ore, but also to saturate the resulting iron. Iron, sinking into the
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