Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 83 Kiln making
He casually agreed to Shen Hong's request to let him enter ethnology tomorrow, and Shen Zhezi turned and left without turning his head.He had to find a way to get this third uncle away, so he couldn't let him stay at home and chatter in his ear every day.

In terms of academics, he doesn't think that studying all kinds of scriptures can upgrade his cognition again.As for fame, it is much more effective to find a few famous people to talk about it than to bury your head in hard study.Why waste time on this.

As soon as he walked out of the wooden field, Shen Zhezi heard a shout: "Qingque save me!"

Shen Mu stood on the slope, waving his arms at Shen Zhezi, shouting loudly, with a rather sad expression.

Shen Zhezi laughed and walked up the slope, Shen Mu was already holding his arm and complaining: "Qingque, let me go! I can't stay here any longer!"

On this sloping land is an earthen kiln, which was originally a workshop built by the old man to mint coins.However, there is insufficient copper material nowadays, and the workshop has been abandoned for many days.Shen Zhezi used waste and transformed it into a brick kiln, which was used to fire bricks and tiles to build houses in the valley after the beginning of next spring.

Just like his earlier arrangement, he also arranged for Shen Mu to record every process in detail here in the brick kiln.He is not an all-rounder. Many processes can only provide an idea. To obtain a mature process, a lot of practice and trial and error must be carried out.Now that the winter is slack, the manor is full of labor, which is suitable for laying a foundation.As long as detailed and precise process steps are obtained, additional investment can be made to increase production capacity.

With the backing of his own resources, Shen Zhezi can launch many projects at the same time without having to personally do everything.

It's just that these things are too boring for Shen Mu, it's really tasteless, it's far worse than taking the family soldiers of the first part to wander and hunt in the wild.

Shen Zhezi also knew that Shen Mu was not a talent in this area, but the other children in the clan were all studying in the clan school for fame and fame, and only Shen Mu, a third-grade high-ranking student, was released. .

Hearing Shen Mu's complaints, Shen Zhezi smiled and said, "Second brother, a third-rank talent, is really a waste of talent to indulge in this earth, stone, brick and tile. That's it, you can go, and I will take care of the record. But in this way, I But I have no time to conceive a chapter to praise the beauty of that Wu Xinghan."

When Shen Mu heard the first half of the sentence, relief and joy appeared on his face, but when he heard the second half, his smile collapsed again.

The reason why he was coerced by Shen Zhezi is because of this, now that he is a third-rank and quite famous person, if he sees a beautiful girl and yells and flirts like before, it will seem too out of style.

Especially to capture the heart of the girl from the Yao family who has the reputation of "Handou", naturally one has to do what she likes.It is often heard that Yao Jiahan is quite elegant and talented, and he likes poems and poems the most.Shen Mu also knew that he was too heavy, and it was rare to be able to write "The girl from the Yao family is as beautiful as a fairy", so he wanted to ask Shen Zhezi to write a few love poems to seduce her, so he was arrested and sent here.

Since there is a need for others, no matter how uncomfortable it is, Shen Mu can only bear it with gritted teeth, try to let go of his thoughts, and fantasize about the piles of clay bricks as the girls of the Yao family who are happy and angry, so that he has the courage to persevere .

After dismissing Shen Mu, Shen Zhezi stepped into the construction site to watch the craftsmen sieve and compact the blanks.

At present, the brick and tile technology is very proficient, and the process is not too complicated. The more delicate ones are the selection of materials and the control of the kiln temperature.

The main material is clay, which can be easily excavated and used anywhere, but it should be noted that there should not be too much sand, gravel, or gravel.The best clay should be as fine as glutinous flour, and blended like cream.

Compacting is also simple. The clay is blended and poured into the blank, and the water is removed while it is compacted with a bamboo board. When the surface is dry in the shade and there is no water stain, it can be fired in a kiln.After a day and night, the bricks take shape.

Shen Zhezi was watching the workers compacting and was still considering the feasibility of developing a compacting machine. Theoretically speaking, human beating and pressing can be completely replaced by stone rolling and rolling wood. Suddenly, a slightly old roar came from behind: "Tong kiln!"

Hearing the sound, Shen Zhezi turned around and looked over. He saw several strong men holding pennies and piercing through several blocked kiln holes from a distance. Martian smoke rushed out of the kiln holes wrapped in heat waves in an instant. The scene was quite spectacular. .

Shen Zhezi was still far away and still felt the heat wave, but the old craftsman in charge of guarding the kiln just turned slightly sideways to avoid the frontal impact of the heat wave.

This old craftsman, like the old Zuo Dan, is a treasured and experienced craftsman in the Shen family's manor. His name is Ma Fang, and he is also one of the few masters in the Shen family who can make exquisite celadon.Shen Zhezi invited him to take charge of the firing of bricks and tiles, which can be said to be overkill.

When the heat wave weakened, Shen Zhezi walked over. Seeing that the beard and hair of the old man Ma Fang were curly and withered from the long-term care of the cave dwelling, he couldn't help persuading him: "Mr. My dear, as long as you are in charge of the workshop, it is already very valuable."

Ma Fang chuckled, patted the dusty thin shirt, and said to Shen Zhezi: "You don't know, my lord, the most important thing is to make pottery pottery. The quality of the utensils is very different. Although you are diligent in doing things, it is difficult to control the fire, and it is only when you are old and old that you will be at ease."

When Shen Zhezi heard this, he admired the old craftsman's attitude of doing everything personally.Without the self-discipline requirements of generations of craftsmen to strive for perfection, it is really hard to imagine that those beautiful utensils could be manufactured under the simple conditions in ancient times.

But although Shen Zhezi admired the spirit of these craftsmen, he still had different ideas.He does these things not to pursue more refined craftsmanship, but to reduce the difficulty of simplifying the process and strive to achieve standardized production.The pursuit of traditional exquisite craftsmanship must be maintained, but in the current shortage of materials, the explosion of large-scale production capacity is obviously more important.

Although it is difficult to formulate industry standards due to the lack of necessary instrument assistance, at the very least, it is necessary to allow labor to follow detailed steps to produce, and to be able to quickly spread the output under the premise of ensuring quality benchmarks.

For example, in the firing of bricks and tiles at present, the traditional green brick firing process does not actually have the process of passing through the kiln. Instead, the kiln is cooled with water, and the result of ventilation and cooling is red bricks.

Compared with the two kinds of brick materials, the process required for green brick is more cumbersome, and the technical requirements are also higher. Regardless of air permeability, water absorption, or corrosion resistance, it is far superior to red brick, and it is said to be indestructible for thousands of years.Although the hardness of red bricks is not inferior to that of blue bricks, other properties are not as good.

But red bricks have one advantage that blue bricks can't compare to, that is, the process is simple and the output is large.If such a kiln brick is fired, it can only get more than a hundred square meters, and the various processes are more cumbersome.But if red bricks are fired, hundreds or even thousands of square meters can be fired in one kiln!
Under the same cost input, such a huge gap in output can fully make up for the lack of other performance.Moreover, most of the green brick buildings that can theoretically last for thousands of years were not destroyed by natural disasters such as sun and rain, corrosion and weathering, but by wars and man-made disasters.

Instead of forcing a false and unattainable vision, it is better to grasp the practicality in front of you.And if cement and lime are applied on the outside, the durability of red brick buildings is not inferior to that of blue bricks. Of course, from an aesthetic point of view, it is difficult to compare with each other.

To build a brick kiln, Shen Zhezi planned to build a batch of houses in the manor and distribute them to shade households during the winter leisure time.

During the Little Ice Age, the temperature in winter today was lower than that of later generations, and the cold and damp in the south of the Yangtze River was even more unbearable.The houses where the shady households live are mostly made of adobe, mud and turf. If there is no charcoal fire for heating, it is not uncommon for a group of infirm people to freeze to death in the event of sudden wind and snow cooling.Even now, Shen Zhezi saw that many shady households had chilblains, swelling and gangrene, and even festered and pus.

It is better to invest in home construction instead of wasting labor in winter. With red bricks that can be put into production quickly and produced in large quantities, the construction period can be greatly reduced.At the same time, a large number of skilled craftsmen can be trained to polish this model to maturity.When Jiangbei is implemented in the future, dock walls can be quickly built to protect refugees, watch and respond, advance steadily, and completely sweep the Hulu out of the Central Plains!
Connected to the brick kiln is the cement workshop. Since there is no ready-made technology for reference, it is time-consuming to develop.Hard limestone is difficult to grind into a powder that meets the requirements with the current technology. What Shen Zhezi asked people to do now is to smash limestone into small pieces and calcined into lime.

Layers of wood fuel and crushed stone were laid on top of each other, and the fire was fired for calcination. Although lime was also burned out, Shen Zhezi couldn't help frowning once the cost was calculated.The consumption of fuel is astonishing. If the labor and follow-up process costs are added together, even if the cement is developed, the cost will be higher than the mortar used in today's buildings.

Even so, Shen Zhezi still gritted his teeth and asked these craftsmen to continue their research.As long as the preparation is successful and the process is mastered, it is completely unnecessary to put it into production, and wait for the fuel that can reduce the cost to put it into production.

Jiangdong is short of coal, which is also a very helpless thing.There are quite a lot of coal mines in the Huaibei area of ​​Xuzhou, and mining is not very difficult, but half of that area is currently in the hands of Liu Xia, the governor of Xuzhou, the commander-in-chief of the refugee, and the other half is occupied by Jiehu.Moreover, the two sides compete with each other, which is not suitable for large-scale mining.

In Shen Zhezi's memory, Fuling, another coal-producing area south of the Yangtze River, is in the hands of Yizhou Chenghan, and the mountain roads are rugged, even if it is mined, it is not easy to transport.As for other places, not to mention that he has no surveying means at all, even if he has, it may not be able to be mined on a large scale.

After wandering around the valley and inspecting various factories, Shen Zhezi returned to Longxi Manor.What we are doing now is just the beginning.

He has no intention of dragging the times into an industrial structure that does not match the productivity, but he also wants to try his best to break out the production capacity while maintaining the food supply. This is not something that can be done overnight.There are ten bad horses, hard work, and perseverance will pay off.

　Third watch. . .One thing, if you are used to reading books on PC and are willing to help take care of the book review area, you can add the Q group under the introduction and tell the author. . .The operation is also very simple. It is necessary to encourage honest people to speak out, praise the author's refinement, and praise the author's appearance to the top. . .

　　
　
(End of this chapter)