Decarburization of pig iron occurred in the Warring States Period. Iron products should be heated, forged and cooled before being heated and tempered during processing. Repeated processing like this will reduce the carbon content of iron products every time, and the iron products will gradually harden and become pure, and finally be tempered into steel, so the decarbonization method of pig iron is also called "tempering method". Because of this characteristic of tempering method, there is a saying in later generations that "it takes many tempering to be tempered into steel".
The word "An Baili" was first put forward by Wang Chong in Lun Heng in the Eastern Han Dynasty. He said that the sword of Ganjiang has been tempered in the fire and its blade is sharp. It took hundreds of tempering to make it like this. "Ganjiang" is a famous sword in ancient times. People think it is extremely sharp because of its "hundred trials"
A steel knife of the Eastern Han Dynasty, with a total length of11.5 cm, was unearthed from the Han Tomb in Cangshan County, Shandong Province. It is the earliest steel-making product found so far. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the development of Hundred Steelmaking reached its peak. Because the strength of Baisteelmaking is very suitable for building weapons, famous knives and swords emerged one after another in this period.
During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Quan directly named his treasure knife "Bailing Medicine". There are many details about Liu Bei's double-edged sword, Cao Cao's sword leaning on heaven and Guan Yu's crescent knife in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is a vivid description of the times when this magic weapon frequently appeared.
Summary: Steel frying method, like pig iron decarbonization method, also makes steel by reducing the carbon content in pig iron. When smelting, workers keep stirring raw materials, just like a chef cooking, so it is called "steel frying method". Guangang is also one of the main steel varieties in ancient times. With high carbon content, it is mainly used to make blades of weapons or production tools such as knives, swords and sickles.
The "pouring" here is pouring, that is, pig iron and wrought iron are used as raw materials, heated to above the melting point of pig iron and smelted into steel. The earliest record of pouring steel in ancient China was in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, steel casting technology was popularized throughout the country. Whether it is pig iron decarbonization, steel explosion or steel casting, it is an excellent technology to smelt pig iron into steel.