“Don’t get too happy just yet.” Henry Carter turned his head, still smiling. “I’m not finished. The steel is indeed good steel, but unfortunately, you’ve ruined it. Let me ask you, after you forged this shovel, did you skip the quenching process?”

“……” Tubby’s smile froze on his face. After a long pause, he stammered, “What did you say? What do you mean by ‘quenching’...?”

Chapter 2: Let Me Teach You What Quenching Is

Quenching is a process used in metalworking. Simply put, it means heating a metal workpiece to a certain temperature and holding it there for a while, then quickly cooling it by immersing it in a quenching medium. In traditional blacksmith shops, after forging iron tools, the glowing hot iron is quickly plunged into water to cool it down—this is one form of quenching.

Quenching, along with tempering, annealing, and normalizing, are all known as heat treatment processes, which are important methods for improving material properties. By precisely controlling factors like the medium, temperature, and time during heat treatment, you can achieve the desired toughness, strength, hardness, wear resistance, and fatigue strength in the material. There’s a lot of science behind it.

As a materials expert, Henry Carter had a deep understanding of heat treatment processes. Just one look at the farm tools made by Tubby and the others, and he could tell they hadn’t been quenched. No. 65 manganese steel is a type of steel with excellent toughness and wear resistance, but if it isn’t properly quenched after processing, the steel will be too soft, which leads to the kind of edge-rolling seen now.

Tubby and his group were all half-trained apprentices, with only a vague understanding of processing techniques. They didn’t even immediately recognize the word “quenching” when Henry Carter mentioned it. According to the dictionary, the “淬” in quenching should be pronounced “cui,” but in the heat treatment field, people are used to pronouncing it “zhan,” which comes from the northern folk term “蘸火” (dipping in fire).

“You mean... ‘cui’ fire, right?” the short one among the three young men asked tentatively.

“Mm, you can pronounce it that way too.” Henry Carter compromised. Now wasn’t the time to teach terminology—so long as they understood what he meant.

“At the time... we couldn’t find any water.” The short one answered in a barely audible voice. As an apprentice, even if he hadn’t done it himself, he’d at least seen quenching done before—he just didn’t know what it was for. When making these farm tools, maybe, just as he said, there wasn’t any convenient cooling water nearby, so they skipped that step.

“What? You’re selling iron tools that haven’t even been quenched? Isn’t that just shoddy goods!” The farmers, feeling justified, all started shouting at once. They might not know much about industry, but at least they’d seen blacksmiths at work and knew about quenching, and they also knew that unquenched iron tools don’t work well.

“Return it!”

“Give us our money back!”

“Make them pay compensation!”

The farmers shouted confidently, waiting for Henry Carter to stand up for them.

“So, what do you all think?” Henry Carter looked at the three young men and asked.

Tubby sounded a bit weak, muttering, “They’re just trying to scam us. We used good steel... Even if it wasn’t quenched, the steel is still good steel... Such good steel, and it’s fifty cents cheaper than the blacksmith’s...”

He was talking to himself, but his meaning was clear: he didn’t want to give a refund. The five farmers had bought seven or eight farm tools from them, worth more than ten yuan in total. If they had to refund everything, they probably couldn’t afford it.

Henry Carter saw Tubby’s predicament. He turned back to the farmers and said, “Uncles, may I suggest a solution?”

“Go ahead,” the farmers replied.

Henry Carter said, “Since you’ve bought these brothers’ farm tools, I assume you need them at home. The steel used in these tools is indeed good steel; it’s just that one step was skipped during processing. If you’re willing, I’ll have these brothers reheat the tools and add the quenching process. I guarantee that after the repair, these tools will be better than any you’ve used before. What do you think?”

“Hey, do you even know what quenching is? We sure don’t.” Tubby tugged at Henry Carter’s sleeve from behind, afraid that Henry Carter’s words would get them all into trouble.

Henry Carter shot Tubby a look of exasperation and said, “If I dare to promise, I’m confident I can do it... But you’ll need to help me find a blacksmith shop and some quenching medium. I’ll tell you what else I need in a bit.”

By now, the farmers had already exchanged a few words among themselves. They probably figured that arguing with Tubby and the others wouldn’t get them anywhere, and they did need the tools, so they nodded and said to Henry Carter, “For your sake, young man, as long as they can fix the tools and guarantee the edges won’t roll, we won’t return them.”

“Who can guarantee the edges won’t roll!” the tall young man blurted out at the wrong moment. “If you use a shovel to chop bricks like a tile knife, of course the edge will roll!”

“If the quenching is done well, the edge really won’t roll.” Henry Carter replied with a smile.