Chapter 352 Alley Fire Wall (Please vote and subscribe)
The square yard with a side length of 16.6 meters, except for the five main rooms, has been converted into a temporary papermaking workshop.
There is a stove and a big pot for cooking, a foot-operated pottery mortar, which was originally used to husk rice and is now used to pound pulp. In addition to these, there is also a large thatched shed. On the wooden frame below, there is a large wooden trough, which is used to hold pulp for papermaking. There is also a table next to it for placing paper.
People in the yard are boiling tree bark and hemp balls, hemp stalks. In fact, hemp stalks can also be used to make paper. Although the main part of the ramie plant is the stem bark, the stems inside can also be used to make paper, and there will be no waste.
This thing needs to be boiled for a long time, at least one or two days in a row. There is still time to wait, so Luo Chong began to have people prepare thin straw mats for papermaking. First, the leaves of the sword grass are split with a knife and cut into narrow and thin strips, then soaked in water, and boiled in a pot for an hour to soften it and make it more flexible. Then it can be fished out and dried before it can be used to weave mats.
This work is also a delicate job. It will take another two days. Luo Chong really can't sit still, so he asked someone to build a lane in the yard with bricks for paper cultivation.
This thing is actually a device for drying paper. Most of the papermaking is wet papermaking, that is, mixing plant fibers and water into pulp, and then making paper from the water, but such paper is very wet and cannot be used, so it needs to be dried.
There are two ways to dry wet paper. One is to stick each piece of paper on a flat large wooden board and then put it on a sunny drying ground to dry naturally. However, this method takes too long and takes up too much space. In addition, it is affected by the weather and there are many uncontrollable factors. What if it suddenly blows and rains? Wouldn't all the dried paper be ruined? So Luo Chong chose another method, drying.
Put the bricks sideways to build a wall, so that the wall can be built very thin. Of course, it is easy to fall down, but it doesn't matter. You can build piles on the back, so that there will be more support points and the wall can stand firm.
In this way, a low wall of five or six centimeters thick is built, and then a similar thin wall is built at a parallel position on the back of it, 40 centimeters apart, so that the two walls form a parallel lane. Finally, the outward side is mixed with gypsum and kaolin, and the brick joints and all uneven places are smoothed, and then burned hard with fire, and the lane is completed.
When using it, just light firewood in the middle of the alley to heat up the two walls, then stick the dehydrated paper on the flat wall, and use the heat of the wall to dry the paper. The speed is very fast, and it can be completely dry in just a few seconds.
When working, one person can stick two pieces of paper, divide the wall into two left and right sticker positions, first stick the first one on the left, and then stick the second one on the right. When the second one is done, the first one is also dry, then peel off the left one and continue to stick, alternating left and right, and the work efficiency is very high.
Moreover, this baking method saves time and labor, saves a lot of wood boards, and saves a large area of drying yard. It is not restricted by weather factors, has high production efficiency, and considerable output. This is why Luo Chong built this alley. On
one side, he cooked the materials, on the other side, he wove the mats for copying paper, and on the other side, he had to build walls, smoothen them, and burn them hard. The three tasks were carried out simultaneously, and finally there was a result after two days.
The mat was the first to be woven. There were four sheets in total, each 90 cm long and 60 cm wide. This is based on the size of 2-fold paper with a rough edge enlarged. After the paper is made, you can use a paper cutter to cut off the rough edge and cut it into the specifications of 2-fold paper. The size is the same and it is more convenient to use.
Folding a 2-fold paper in half is a 4-fold paper, and a 4-fold paper in half is an 8-fold paper, which is the size of an ordinary test paper. Folding it in half again to 16-fold paper is a large exercise book. In this way, if you want any size of paper, just fold it in half and cut it.
In addition, considering that this was the first time to make paper, if the mat was too big, it would be difficult to control during operation, so Luo Chong did not make too big a mat. If he wanted to make a big one, it would not be too late to make it big after the workers became skilled. Luo Chong's primary purpose now was to experiment with the feasibility of papermaking. The size of 2-fold was not too big or too small. Even if it was for experimentation, it would not be wasted.
After the four mats were made, Luo Chong asked the carpenter to make four wooden frames specifically for the mats, which were convenient for holding when making paper.
In the afternoon when all these were done, the fire wall of the alley for papermaking was also made. Luo Chong asked someone to polish it again, and it could be put into use at any time.
The materials that were boiling in the pot were not stopped until the next morning. After these bark, hemp stalks and waste hemp balls were fished out, they could be seen that they had been boiled to white and rotten, but they still could not be used. These things had to be mixed with natural paper pulp and beaten until they were completely mixed and beaten into cotton wool before they could be made into thin paper pulp for use.
Although there is still a pounding process, physical work is not a problem for the Han tribe. They are all very hardworking and are not afraid of working hard, but they are afraid of having nothing to do.
Several people took turns stepping on the lever wooden hammer, and one person stayed to turn the materials in the pottery mortar. It took half a day to pound the materials. However, this is mainly because there are not many materials. After all, it is still in the experimental stage and not a large-scale production.
All the preparations were completed. In the afternoon, a group of people began to copy paper in this small workshop.
Luo Chong came first to copy paper. Although he had never done it, he knew some precautions. For example, before copying paper, use a stick to stir the pulp trough to make the density of the pulp uniform and not settle to the bottom of the water.
Then it is to copy the paper paddle. Copy a certain amount of flocculent pulp and water into the wooden frame, and then hold the wooden frame and tilt it left and right twice. Use the water to flatten the flocculent pulp in the wooden frame and spread it evenly.
After this step is completed, the mat can be taken out of the wooden frame, and then drag the mat to spread the paper flat on the table with water poured on it.
The next step was a boring repetitive process: copying paper, spreading paper, copying paper, spreading paper.
This was the first time Luo Chong had made paper in his two lives. He had no experience, but he knew a little bit. He copied dozens of sheets by himself. After he felt that he had figured out some skills, he taught others and gradually improved his work efficiency.
There was really no way to copy paper. Only through long-term practice could the speed and quality be improved. It was impossible to rely on opportunism. For the time being, this thing could only be done by people. It was unrealistic to replace it with machines.
(End of this chapter)
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