Chapter 113: Making Glass
The only people who knew the recipes and breeding methods and could still make decisions were Gu Lang, Wang Shi, Gu Tingchuan, and Gu Feixue. Old Mrs. Gu was old and needed someone to take care of her.
The Gu family would definitely not agree if Gu Feixue went to Jiangzhou alone.
Gu Lang and Gu Tingchuan are still busy with next year's Tongsheng Examination and cannot go back to Liangcheng.
If Wang was allowed to go, Old Lady Gu would have no one to take care of her. If Wang, Old Lady Gu and Gu Feixue were allowed to go together, it would not be realistic for the three of them, including the young woman and the children, to go.
Therefore, the five members of the Gu family must either stay in Liangcheng or go to Jiangzhou.
But now Gu Tingchuan is busy taking exams. Last year, Gu Tingchuan won the first place in the county and city examinations in Liangcheng. He only needs one more college examination to get the title of scholar.
The social system of this era was similar to that of the Tang Dynasty, but the imperial examination system was a bit like that of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Only after passing the examination to become a scholar could one become a juren, and only after passing the examination to become a juren could one become a gongshi.
Only those who passed the imperial examination had the opportunity to take the palace examination and meet the emperor.
Now the Gu family’s registered residence is in Liangcheng, so they must take the examination for the scholar degree in Liangcheng. If they go to Jiangzhou now, they will have to take the examination again, which is very troublesome.
There is still more than a month left before the February college entrance examination, so the Gu family naturally would not choose to go to Jiangzhou at this time for business.
He informed Bao Hongcai of the reason why Gu Tingchuan was taking the entrance exam. Bao Hongcai sighed and said:
"What should we do? Manager Qin will only be here for ten days or so before he leaves to report back."
Gu Feixue felt very sorry when she heard this.
Not to mention that the Gu family has not yet considered whether to give up their property in Liangcheng and move the whole family to Jiangzhou.
For example, the results of Gu Tingchuan's college entrance examination are still uncertain. Although the Gu family believes that Gu Tingchuan has topped the list twice, he will definitely pass the college entrance examination in the near future. After all, the content of the examination is the same as the previous two times.
But nothing is certain, and she can't agree to Bao Hongcai now, otherwise it would be her fault if she broke her promise.
In the end, Gu Feixue could only say goodbye to Bao Hongcai, and without seeing Manager Qin, she returned to the Gu family.
Gu Feixue returned to Anju Village and inspected the farm. The cows and ducks and geese were in good condition, so she crossed the river and returned to the Gu family.
He turned the wooden lock at the entrance outside the ditch at the door of Gu's house and entered the house.
Now the last line of defense of the Gu family formation has been completed, ensuring that no one with or without martial arts skills can break in.
However, the work of digging a tunnel under the Gu family was not put on the agenda.
Things like tunnels must not be dug by others, the Gu family has to do it themselves.
Although the formation is almost foolproof, Gu Feixue often likes to keep some plan Bs. Otherwise, if something goes wrong and the Gu family is visited by others, there are other ways to go.
Just as the cooperation with Rouge is reached, she can pass on the method of purifying Rouge to her apprentices, saving time on digging tunnels.
The nearest secluded place to the Gu family is on the mountain. This mountain is not as steep and lush as Ruyi Mountain, nor as rich in resources as Taoyuan. It is just an ordinary hill.
It would be appropriate to set the exit of the Gu family's tunnel on the mountain.
She could go to the mountain to survey a suitable exit and then dig a hidden cave from that end.
The second day.
Gu Feixue took Wang to the Chun family cloth shop and signed the pledge with Chunyan, who was almost recovered.
Immediately afterwards, Gu Feixue bought a hundred boxes of rouge from the Chun family's cloth shop. After bringing them back to the Gu family, she began to work on the purification process.
The reason for purification is that even if badger oil is used, the petals of the spring phoenix seedlings are added to it, so some fragments are inevitable. What she needs to do is to use chemical methods to remove these impurity particles.
The process is not difficult, but the equipment is difficult. In this era, there was no laboratory equipment like glass.
Of course, this is not a problem for Gu Feixue. It is not difficult to make it herself without glass.
The first thing she needed was quartz particles, or sand. The main raw material for glass was the quartz particles contained within sand. Of course, with just sand, the high-temperature combustion wouldn't produce much glass, and it would also be mixed with impurities and form a shapeless substance. She also needed pure alkali and limestone.
Limestone is easy to find; it's just ordinary stone. What's more difficult is pure alkali. Modern production of pure alkali is generally done in a laboratory, but in ancient times, there were not so many raw materials, so the raw materials for making pure alkali had to be found from other things.
Gu Feixue, who already knew the chemical formula by heart, decided to use sulfuric acid.
While sulfuric acid was not readily available in the ancient world, one common substance was green vitriol, also known as ferrous sulfate. Green vitriol was commonly found on toilet walls and wet rock faces. Distilling green vitriol produced sulfuric acid of similar purity, which, while lacking in purity for laboratory use, was sufficient for glassmaking.
Then Gu Feixue scraped a lot of green stuff from the wall of the toilet, and found the pottery used to make distilled liquor.
Half an hour later, the alum was distilled completely. Although the resulting sulfuric acid water was a little mixed in color, it was considered a success.
She then added the refined salt she had previously purified, sodium chloride, to sulfuric acid. The resulting sodium sulfate then reacted with burnt carbon ash at high temperatures to form sodium sulfide. The resulting crystalline solid was what she needed to make pure alkali. The sodium sulfide was then reacted with limestone at high temperatures to produce sodium carbonate, pure alkali.
Throughout the process, Gu Feixue used a high-temperature reactor, the same earthen oven she had used to teach people how to bake bread. Although the temperature wasn't quite up to par, she still managed to produce a good amount of pure alkali.
Finally, Gu Feixue poured the sand, pure alkali and limestone found from the wasteland into the oven.
To intensify the fire, she had four or five people fanning the furnace. Once she saw the sand melt, she poured the liquid onto an iron plate. Once it solidified slightly, she pressed it with another iron plate, pressing the now translucent, slightly yellowish solid with impurities into a rectangular shape.
Finally, taking advantage of the moderate hardness, an iron rod was inserted into the glass solid.
Gu Feixue asked Tian Dali and others to pick up heat-insulating gloves, hold the iron rod and rotate the glass blocks in the oven.
After the impurities in the glass were refined out, Tian Dali was asked to put the glass into the prepared cold water to cool it down.
After several attempts, a glass block with almost no impurities was produced.
"Oh my god! We actually made Liuli!"
"Look, the glass is more transparent!"
In order to make beakers, Gu Feixue carefully selected the sand she used, all of which was white sand.
Quartz glass is made from white sand, which is not only heat-resistant but also has the highest transparency.
However, the two glass cups like the one owned by Yuchi Shuo were said to be tribute cups presented to the emperor from the Western Regions. However, they were colorful because other metal elements were mixed into them during baking.
For example, iron will make the glass have a green tint. It is very easy to eliminate it. Just add some manganese dioxide to eliminate the iron.
Thinking about it this way, maybe she could try to imitate a few glass cups and sell them. Wouldn't she make a lot of money?
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