Poor family mother and son

Chapter 1013 Earning More Than You

Chu Qing stared at those pythons in a daze but couldn't answer.

Gan Lai naturally turned to Chu Qing: "How can it be so fast! Iron making is not scrambled eggs!"

Everyone is happy tonight. Although dinner is late, everyone is waiting for nothing. Snake meat is delicious!
Chu Qing made another clay cup bigger than a man's hand and threw it on Chu Yuan's woodpile for baking.

Li Hu didn't say clearly about cheating.

Before going to sleep, Chu Qing blocked the gas outlet of the kiln with mud, and then asked Li Hu: "One day I will run out of money, so I can cut firewood and burn charcoal to sell, can you?"

Li Hu: "I collect herbs and sell them, catch snakes and sell them, and I earn more money than you!"

Chu Qing: "..."

The next day, Chu Qing broke open the mud kiln, and all the branches inside had turned into black charcoal, and the quality was still very good.

Now, even Shui Maomao began to praise: "What else do you not know?"

Chu Qing: "Can't fly!"

Chu Qing called Shui Maomao's lightness skill "flying".

With charcoal, Chu Qing threw the iron ore into the "water tank" of the mud "toilet".

The ironmaking furnace and blower are connected together, it really looks like a toilet, and Chu Qing even feels that it smells foul.

Chu Yuan and Gan Lai took turns helping Chu Qing blow the wind, while Chu Qing kept filling charcoal into the fire while watching the fire.

An hour and a half later, Chu Qing used a branch to pinch a few iron lumps from the inside. The weight of these iron lumps was less than half that of yesterday's iron ore. It seemed that the iron content in the iron ore was at least half.

"Better than the iron ore in Jizhou!" Chu Qing was delighted.

These iron bumps were put into the clay cup fired last night. At this time, the clay cup has turned into a clay cup. Shui Maomao boasted: "Your cup is more upright than the pottery in those mountain people's homes!"

This cup is used as a crucible, and the iron bumps are put into it, and then they are put into the furnace together, and then a new round of blasting and charcoal is added.

In order to save some effort and hands for blowing the wind, Chu Qing twisted some ropes, stuck them on the upper end of the turning handle, and put a stone on the lower end of the turning handle as a lump.

The two ends of the rope are tied to the other stick as a pressure rod, so that the rotation by hand is changed to pressing the cross rod to rotate.

This is the easiest way to drill.

Otherwise, no matter how thick the calluses are on the palm, the skin will be torn and the flesh will be rotten.

This change made Chu Yuan breathe a sigh of relief: "I can persist again!"

Chu Qing was not idle either, while continuing to burn charcoal, he went to dig out the river mud, and together with Chu Xinghai, he patted the mud into solid pieces and made it into a slab.

Chu Xinghai usually played by himself, and his parents didn't care about him, as long as he didn't run out of sight. Now his aunt led him to play, making the child happy.

Chu Qing taught him to use stone flakes to draw what he wanted on the mud. Chu Xinghai drew a dagger and a starfish, and Chu Qing drew a hatchet.

The patterns on the three mud blocks were processed by Chu Qing, and turned into shaped shallow pits, which were regarded as molds.

When the temperature of the smelting furnace needs to be increased, Gan comes to help blow the wind, and the power of Hercules shortens the process of melting iron lumps into molten iron.

Three hours later, all the lumps of iron had melted into molten iron. Chu Qing found a stick, split the front end, and made it into a big clamp, and clamped the crucible out.

The orange molten iron was poured into a mud mold, and a dagger, a starfish, and a hatchet were cast.

As the temperature drops, the orange-red molten iron solidifies and turns red, and it is clear to scoop up river water for cooling.

Until completely cooled, three handfuls of dark, rough-surfaced semis are ready.

Chu Xinghai was very disappointed: "It's so ugly!"

Chu Qing was already too tired, and Chu Yuan and Gan Lai were too tired to lift their arms. Chu Qing handed the three semi-finished products to Li Hu: "Take it to grind!"

There are stones by the river, and Li Hu, Shui Maomao, and Shui Damao help grind them.

After polishing, the metallic luster of the iron will look much better.

Shui Damao patiently polished the iron starfish to a bright shine, and Li Hu and Shui Maomao also sharpened the dagger and hatchet to sharp edges.

Don't think it's boring and time-consuming to add carbon to make iron, but it's this kind of repetitive mechanical labor that makes it easier for Chu Qing to think about things.

It's just that he was idle right now, and he didn't move, but the sound of sharpening knives filled his ears, which interrupted Chu Qing's train of thought.

But there is also a general idea.

"Brothers," Chu Qing said, "Our people will be dispersed. Some people will stay on the side of the sweet potato field, and some people will go up the mountain. These two people will be responsible for farming, and the rest will be workers!"

Li Hu asked: "Worker? What kind of work?"

Chu Qing: "Is your brother still willing to continue building ships?"

Li Hu: "He likes to build boats, but he doesn't want to be watched like before, and he doesn't want to be built like a prisoner. Also, if he builds the same thing every time, he doesn't want to."

Chu Qing nodded: "It's easy to handle; some of the workers I'm talking about are miners and some are shipwrights; and some people want to help me make guns and guns."

Li Hu frowned. Food is a major issue. According to what Chu Qing said, the people were divided into five groups at once, and only two groups cultivated the land.

And it sounds like there are not many people in these two parts, which is very inappropriate.

Li Hu said: "Food is the greatest guarantee. If you divide it like this, does it mean that there are too few people farming?"

Shui Maomao also said: "There are not enough people growing grain."

Chu Qing counted with his fingers: "It is inevitable for the mountain people to cooperate with us on terraced fields. Although most of them are hesitant, as long as there is a village that agrees, they will agree soon;

Their women are very capable, and they can be as good as a male laborer in farming, so the mountain people can reach [-] laborers to farm the land;
We also have 1 people, and these people are enough. "

Chu Qing walked around the island and actually counted nearly 1 people, not the [-] reported by the boys at the beginning.

This discrepancy may be caused by the language barrier between him and the mountain people, or it may be caused by the fact that the boys did not visit as carefully as Chu Qing did.

The men and women of the mountain people are equal in terms of labor status. Young girls don't have to stay in the house to wash clothes, cook and feed pigs and chickens like the unmarried women in Daxuan, but they can still do things in public.

Especially in pottery making, women are the only laborers who have mastered pottery making skills, and they are almost all contracted from production to sales.

Moreover, due to the lack of productivity, the mountain people fished and hunted more than they did farming, and they actually gained very little. If they switched to farming, it would be beneficial to their survival, and compared to fishing and hunting, farming seemed safer.

So no matter men or women over 15 years old and under 50 years old, they are all counted as laborers. After this calculation, Chu Qing said that it is not an exaggeration to say that there can be [-] laborers.

Only in this way, it becomes extremely urgent to replenish farm tools.

The islanders had very few farming tools, and they mostly used fishing and hunting. Chu Qing visited all the way and found that their most productive tools were bows and arrows, stone axes, stone shovels, stone adzes, stone hoes, etc. There were very few iron products, which were very backward.

(End of this chapter)