From Chief to Ball

"Oh."

The old grandmother raised her head and thought for a while, then patted the back of Chen Jian's hand and said, "Go and do your work, good boy. I will make that clay figurine out as soon as possible."

Chen Jian exited the room respectfully, turned around and glanced at the closed room, sighed, and prayed silently.

He knew why the old grandmother asked when the wheat would turn yellow, but when the wheat turns yellow, there are also beans, copper and iron, and wooden boats and carriages, which you haven't seen yet.

After leaving here, I found the civet cat who was making the flue for other tribes.

After adjusting his mood, he asked, "How many fish have you changed?"

"Five hundred catties. Our tribe can share 150 catties. I asked Yuqian."

"Take people, don't do these things, go build a kiln." He wanted to let the old grandmother see many things that she hadn't seen before.

The civet cat casually wiped the mud from its hands on the wall, and with its own simple tools, called those people who had been out of production for three months to practice building kilns, and followed Chen Jian to the river.

Chen Jian called those pottery and charcoal burners, a total of more than 40 people. They knew that if Chen Jian asked them to stop their work, there must be something better coming out, and they were all very excited.

Looking at the terrain by the river, a small pier will be built in the future for the convenience of transporting goods.

Copper ore must not be transported by birch bark boats, it is too easy to capsize, and the draft is relatively deep after being filled with ore, so it is necessary to consider the situation that it cannot be docked.

He took a wooden stick to explore the depth of the nearby water, chose a suitable spot, and inserted a wooden stick as a mark.

Turning around and looking at the nearby river bank, the location of the copper furnace must be higher to prevent it from being submerged by water, and also to prevent the groundwater from seeping up and causing the kiln to be wet.

I found a place [-] steps away from the future wharf. The terrain here is higher and the ground is firm, so it will be convenient for road construction and transportation of ore in the future.

He had never seen what a copper smelting furnace looked like, but he roughly guessed that it should be similar to a flowerpot with a cover.

After the copper ore is smelted, it melts into copper juice, and the remaining slag will also melt. When the hole under the "flower pot" is opened, the copper juice will flow out.

Copper has a relatively high specific gravity, and the melted slag will float on the top of the copper juice, just like plugging the lower hole in a flowerpot, pouring water and oil into two layers.

After the water flows out first, the oil will also flow out, and then reload.

It is estimated that this should be the case. The slag is melted, and the pre-tech burnt lime has already been lit. The lime can be used as a flux for the slag to lower the melting point of the slag.

Only when the slag is melted can it be discharged smoothly, otherwise, a copper kiln will be wasted every time it is smelted, and the current productivity is simply unaffordable.

There should be two vents on the side wall of the "flower pot". Use a blower to blow air inside to facilitate the burning of charcoal inside and increase the temperature, otherwise the temperature will definitely not be enough.

The blower is easy to say, four or five wooden rings or pottery rings, one every one foot, and a layer of animal skin collapses on the outside. Every time it is pulled, the distance between the wooden rings becomes extremely close from one foot, and the animal skin is compressed. Air out.

After straightening, because there are wooden rings and pottery rings as bones, it will become a cylindrical cavity again...just imagine it as a leather rafter leading to a toilet.

The pottery tube acorns of the vent can be fired completely, this is the least difficult.

A few masons with somewhat professional vision were called in, and they drew a rough sketch on the ground, a bit like the shape of an upside-down goat milk bag, with a pointed top and a big bottom.

Acorn looked around and said, "Jian, how hot is this kiln? In those charcoal-burning kilns, some of the bricks in the kilns have been burnt and the outer skin has been burnt, and it feels as slippery as ice. If it is too hot, you can't use bricks." .”

Chen Jian didn't consider the issue of materials, but thought for a while and said, "It's probably hotter than burning charcoal."

"Then you have to use yellow mud and clay to tamp it up."

"Well, listen to you."

After discussing the material issue, Chen Jian said: "Then let's dig a hole first, and tamp the ground firmly, otherwise the water will seep upward. It is best to leave two flues below to light the fire to prevent the kiln from getting damp."

"There is no problem with the flue. We can build stones and bricks. You mean to build the kiln on top of the flue?"

"Yes, can you hold on?"

"it should be OK."

Several new "apprentices" rushed back to fetch various tools and started digging.Chen Jian and other "big workers" moved stones and bricks here.

In the excavated hole, two flues were first built, and the top was covered with stone slabs, and then the loess was backfilled. Thirty or forty people tamped it together, and lit it to make it firm and hard.

It took a whole day. After confirming that the rammed earth layer below was very strong, they began to mix yellow mud and clay. These two kinds of soil are extremely viscous and very difficult to mix. Fortunately, there are many people.

Use yellow mud and pottery clay to make a mud base, and first pan out the bottom.Although the principle is similar to that of a flower pot, the opening must not be on the bottom, but on the side near the bottom.Create two holes that slope downward, one high and one low.

The high ones flow out slag, and the low ones flow out copper juice.Scrape these two holes as smooth as possible to facilitate the flow of molten metal with poor fluidity.

A deep pit was also dug in advance under the copper outlet, so that clay pots could be used to receive the copper juice in the pit; the side where the slag is produced is directly on the hillside, and the slag can be thrown directly under the hillside, and there may be gold and silver in the slag. Metal, but now these two kinds of metals are meaningless and cannot be refined, so they are directly treated as waste-gold is the value given by people, and it is not as good as a sickle for the current tribe.

After the bottom is built, the top is easy to talk about. The inclined vault is not difficult for civet cats. This dome with a diameter of only one step is much simpler than that of a charcoal kiln.

In any case, I have practiced hand skills for three months, practice makes perfect, and I also intend to let a few "apprentices" see their own skills, and they are fast.

Insert the blowing pottery pipe downwards obliquely in the middle position in advance, and leave a feeding port and an exhaust hole on the top, which is basically such a thing.

As for whether it is easy to use, we have to wait until the first batch of copper is fired to see the effect.

The thickness of the copper furnace is about one and a half feet, which is enough to insulate the temperature.

The pottery tube of the ventilation hole is one foot longer. The thermal conductivity of pottery is very poor, so there is no need to worry about burning the leather of the blower.

I brought some tanned skins, and I found a good sewing expert in the tribe to sew the skins, and put isinglass glue on the places where there might be air leaks, and put leather patches on them to block them.

After it was finished, Chen Jian pulled it and felt that the effect was not bad. It took a lot of strength to prove that the airtightness was okay.

Calculated in this way, smelting a furnace of copper requires at least six people, not counting the problems of ore and rest: two blowers, one who digs out the slag, one who receives the copper juice, one who is in charge of opening and closing the copper juice valve, and one on the top. Always ready to top up.

And if you count the ore, there are even more problems: two people need to choose the material, two people are responsible for smashing the copper ore, and one person carries the charcoal here.Two people are needed to burn charcoal, seven people are needed to chop firewood, and at least ten people can be satisfied every day for mining.

Counting this small copper furnace, the entire industrial line needs [-] light and strong men to be completely out of agricultural production.

At the current level of the tribe, such a stove can be provided by relying on the food exchanged.

The crude copper smelted in this way is very soft and can only be melted into blunt objects, and it is not as hard as stone.Therefore, two more furnaces need to be built, one is for smelting tin ore, and the other is for melting and mixing blister copper and tin in a pottery crucible to form a bronze alloy.

To start full-scale work requires [-] people to leave agricultural production. The tribe can't afford it now, and it can only be divided into three days: copper smelting on the first day, tin smelting on the second day, and pouring on the third day.

It's just a primitive industry, so it can't be afforded by any tribe. Anyway, it's definitely not possible to switch to other tribes in the village.

One success can definitely be exchanged for food, but other tribes cannot succeed within a few times.

Chen Jian reckoned that if they switched to other tribes, the whole tribe would starve to death within a month.

This is the power of industry, even if it is primitive and crude.

Chapter 33 Heaven and Earth are Furnaces and Man is Copper

It took Chen Jian and his clan members seven months to pour out all kinds of tools with sweat and accumulate enough food, and they were finally qualified to build the first copper furnace.