Welding took practice. Using the metal element to join bronze artifact fragments also took practice. After all, Shen Le did not know which path was the correct one toward restoring the bronze chime bells.
Beyond that, research into solder ratios had already begun. Shen Le lacked nothing but money. He asked Old Master Hu to use his connections to set up a collaborative research project, and it was quickly accepted—there was no need for the doctoral supervisor to do it personally; the PhD and master's students below only had to run a few more experiments.
Old Master Hu watched Shen Le work diligently every day, adjusting the bronze chime bell fragments and helping weld the artifacts awaiting repair. He worked from seven thirty in the morning until eight thirty at night, and Old Master Hu found himself quite satisfied.
This kid might not be in the field, and he might not devote his entire life to bronze restoration, but he was willing to put in the hard work and improved quickly.
Yet only a few days after feeling satisfied, he heard Shen Le come up with something strange. "Th-These bronze fragments—why do they have to be welded together? Why can't we make a mold, place them inside, pour in molten bronze, and cast them together?"
From the perspective of metallographic structure, bronze chime bells had been cast in the first place. The structure formed by similarly cast molten metal would be much closer to the original than metal melted and cooled through welding!
"Why—"
Old Master Hu felt as though he had been struck on the head with a blunt club, leaving his brain buzzing. It was not that he could not answer the question. It was that there were simply too many things wrong with it.
From the material