Chapter 45 The Wobbling Wheel (Spring Festival Update 15)
First, loosen the ground, then dig a small ditch to bring in the river water, and it will immediately become a muddy ground. However, this mud cannot be used to make bricks, and it must be trampled into mature mud.
In the past, people who had the conditions to trample the mud would use cows, and those who didn’t have cows would use people to trample it. Luo Chong was more individualistic and used elephants to trample it directly.
Rourou and Huishan were young and playful, especially the sport of trampling mud. They were naturally attracted to creatures like elephants. They rolled and ran wildly in the mud all the way, having a lot of fun, and they directly regarded work as a game. It was not easy to pull them out, and they were more obsessed with mud than wild boars. After finally
luring them up with sweet tree roots, the two guys turned into mud elephants. They took them to the river to take a bath, and then drove them away to rest.
After Rourou and Huishan finished their work, the work of the people began. They put the tamped clay into the mold and compacted it, and then turned it into brick embryos, and then left it to dry.
Now it was just making brick embryos. Luo Chong was not going to burn bricks now. The work of burning bricks could wait until winter. In winter, there was nothing to do, and the brick kiln would be very warm in winter. It was a happy job, definitely happier than burning bricks in summer.
The bricks were very big. This batch of big bricks were all prepared to be used to wrap the rammed earth city wall, so there was no need to make them too small.
But the progress of the work was much slower, not because of the time wasted in pressing the brick embryos, but because most of the time was spent on moving the clay and brick embryos.
The bricks for building the city were 40 cm long, 20 cm wide and high, and were a standard rectangular cube, but they were extremely heavy. Such a large piece of wet mud weighed at least 30 to 40 kilograms. One person used a rattan basket or a shoulder pole to carry a large piece of clay at a time, and then sent it to the drying site to press the mold and dry it.
People are exhausted and work efficiency is low, so a convenient and fast means of transportation must come out immediately.
When thinking of means of transportation, it is naturally something like a car, which saves labor and can double the load capacity. The soul of a car is the wheel.
Under the current conditions, Luo Chong basically has no choice but to use wooden wheels, but how to make wooden wheels is a problem.
In his previous life, Luo Chong had changed tires for cars and repaired tracks for tanks, but he had only seen wooden wheels on TV.
In my impression, this kind of wooden wheel car is basically not found in China. Even if you occasionally come across a horse-drawn carriage, it uses rubber tires; only the British Empire still retains a lot of these antiques, especially the Queen's carriage.
The main structure of the wooden wheel should be three parts, which should be similar to the bicycle wheel, but it is just missing a tire. A center of a circle on an axle. Luo Chong didn't know what it was called in ancient times, so he called it a wheel center, which is easy to understand. Many wooden sticks for support would be inserted on the wheel center. The spring on the bicycle wheel is called a spring, and Luo Chong also called it a spring. Finally, there is the wooden ring outside, which is the most difficult part of the wheel to make.
In Chinese class, we learned that "straight wood is bent into a rope, and then it is made into a wheel". In ancient times, wheels were bent from straight wood and then baked to shape. However, no matter how powerful the ancients were, it was impossible to bake straight wood into a circle directly, so wheels were generally divided into sections.
A wheel with a small diameter uses at least two or three sections of wood as the outer ring. In short, the more sections there are, the smaller the arc of each section, so a circle is decomposed into multiple sections of bows. Circles are not easy to bend, but bows are no problem, otherwise how can a long bow be bent into an arc?
Luo Chong had never seen a baked wooden wheel, but he had seen a baked oak barrel. Wine barrels are usually made of oak boards that are bent and baked to shape, but Luo Chong used oak to make wheels.
When a new project is launched, finding an apprentice is naturally the first thing to do. The most talented carpenter in the Han tribe is the barrel. This guy can think of using red-hot charcoal to burn a barrel on a log. Naturally, he is not an ordinary mortal.
The other one is the wooden pig. The wooden pig is very honest and doesn't like to communicate with others. His fighting ability is not high and he doesn't have any outstanding characteristics. But even such a silent person, if he focuses on one thing, his achievements must be high, so Luo Chong also called him over, and in the future, the two of them will be full-time carpenters of the Han tribe.
There are younger brothers to help, but Luo Chong still has to do the main work himself. After all, it is not realistic to ask others to calculate pi, and this will be taught slowly in the future.
The first vehicle of the Han tribe was a ash bucket car built according to actual needs. It was mainly used to transport mud. It had a pair of wheels in the front, two legs in the back, and two long handles. It was a hand-pushed two-wheeled vehicle, just like the vehicles that push cement on construction sites today, except that it was made entirely of wood.
The wheel was not big, with a diameter of only 70 cm, and it was nothing compared to the large wheels of ancient times that were as tall as a person. The wheel center was made directly from a piece of log. The center of the log was directly pierced with a red-hot copper rod, then enlarged with a hand drill, and polished smooth.
Then the connection points of the spring were evenly divided on the outer diameter of the wheel center. The drilling method was still a red-hot copper rod and a hand drill, just to increase the production speed.
The outer ring of the wheel was baked from two pieces of oak, that is, two roughly semicircular shapes. Of course, there were also some requirements for baking oak. The bark side should be placed on the outside, because the wood layer close to the bark is relatively hard. Putting it on the outer ring is wear-resistant and the material of the tree core is relatively soft, which is suitable for inward compression and contraction.
First, pour water on the sawn oak strips, and then put them on a thick log prepared in advance to shape them. Then use a thick hemp rope to make a rope loop to tighten the oak strips on the log. Finally, put a pottery basin with a fire underneath, heat it with a fire, and tighten the rope loop with a wooden stick to make the oak strips gradually bend and shape.
Three people spent a whole day to build this cart. There are only 10 springs for the wheels, and they are planed one by one with a planer. The speed is too slow. Luo Chong plans to improve the process next time.
The two sections of oak on the outer ring are fixed at the interface with U-shaped copper nails. The axle is also made of wood, which is relatively stable when pushed. There is a ash hopper made of a wooden board on top. The joints are all mortise and tenon structures. Except for the four copper nails on the wheels, the rest are all wooden structures.
The first cart was built and immediately delivered to the engineering team for use. Luo Chong was also experimenting and observing where to improve.
After the first day of use, the tribesmen were very interested in this new means of transportation. Since Luo Chong invented the basket weaving method, the Han tribe has said goodbye to the mode of carrying things on shoulders and hands, and changed to the mode of carrying baskets or carrying poles. Now the cart has appeared, which will be another reform.
The tribesmen are very happy, but Luo Chong is not optimistic, because the tools are primitive and simple, and this cart can be said to be shoddy. In terms of performance, it can only be said to be "able to move", that is, it will turn in circles when pushed, but it will definitely fall apart in a short time.
There are too few springs. Ten springs are not enough to support a circle. There are more than 20 or 30 springs on the wheels of ancient times. If there are fewer springs, the outer ring cannot be supported to maintain a circle. When the load is large, the outer ring will be in danger of breaking or deforming.
In addition, the width of the wheel center is not enough, and the length of contact with the axle is too short, which causes the wheel to swing left and right when rolling. The wheel center must be lengthened next time.
～
～
～
～
～
Please recommend, collect, comment, and reward
(end of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
