Daming pirates

A few days after the New Year, a work shed was erected in the island's workshop area. The craftsmen moved materials back and forth and quickly erected the work shed.

Moreover, Yu Xiaotian also put aside other things, got into the work shed that had been built, and directed some craftsmen to build a long furnace inside the work shed. Outside the work shed were some neatly arranged crucibles.

The crucible had just been ordered from the mainland, and the size and style were all requested by Yu Xiaotian himself.

In addition, there are piles of quartz stone, silica sand and quicklime. No one knows what Yu Xiaotian is doing, but no one cares about him. Anyway, Yu Xiaotian knows a lot, and he will definitely not mess around when he is full.

Some people are really looking forward to seeing what new things Yu Xiaotian comes up with to open their eyes.

Although Yu Xiaotian was busy with festivals after his wedding two years ago, he did not put down his desire to make a glass mirror. To make a glass mirror, he needed glass first. He started to do it after he came back.

After getting ready, he asked people to prepare materials, build a large workshop for him in the newly designated workshop area, and draw a sketch of a furnace.

At the same time, he also asked Mao Shengyuan to find craftsmen on land through his connections to order a batch of crucibles that would be used to make glass in the future. This kind of crucible was different from the crucible for melting molten iron. It was sealed, and the ashes placed in the furnace fell into the crucible.

, affecting the color of the glass.

After Yu Xiaotian was expelled from the university, he worked many jobs to make a living, including working in a small glass factory.

The production process of that small glass factory was relatively simple. Yu Xiaotian could understand how the glass was fired at a glance, and there was no problem with the raw materials.

The raw materials for making glass are actually very simple. They are just some quartz sand, quicklime, and soda ash. After fully crushing the raw materials and calcining them separately, they are put into the crucible, covered with a lid, and started to be mixed and calcined in the kiln. Then the glass liquid is generated, and then the

After decolorization, the glass liquid can be obtained, and various glass products can be made from the glass liquid.

The small glass factory where he worked was relatively backward in technology and the glassware it produced was not very good, but it was also suitable for use in this era, allowing Yu Xiaotian to unexpectedly learn a craft.

So he didn't waste time and started working on it when he had time. The work shed and the glass furnace were built together, so the progress of the project was much faster. In addition, the materials were fed in advance and the crucible was customized. Once the work shed was in place, the work could be completed.

Started to do it.

The glass kiln for firing glass was modified by Yu Xiaotian based on some things he learned from later generations and combined with the current technical conditions. Then he started using local methods and built it without much effort.

An earthen glass kiln was built for firing glass liquid.

As for raw materials, it is easy to solve. Nanri Island itself has limestone, which can be harvested and calcined into quicklime, then slaked with water, dried, crushed and sieved for later use.

Quartz stone is available in many places on the mainland. It is not valuable. You can buy it for a little money. After the quartz stone is broken, it is crushed into sand, which becomes quartz sand. After sifting, the fine quartz sand is selected.

Just wash it with clean water and dry it in the sun before use. Even quartz stone was discovered on Nanri Island during this period. In the future, you can save the money and trouble of buying it on land and you can directly get the materials locally.

Everything else is easy to talk about, but what he lacks most right now is the problem of soda ash. With Yu Xiaotian's level and current technology, it is impossible to produce soda ash. So Yu Xiaotian decided based on what he knew.

Use plant ash to replace soda ash.

Plant ash is rich in a large amount of potassium carbonate, which is soda ash. When the West was making glass, soda ash was not used in the early hundreds of years, and plant ash was used instead, so there should be no problem.

As for the acquisition of plant ash, there is no need to worry. The island is already overgrown with weeds, and some plant ash is used. However, Yu Xiaotian feels that the plant ash made from seaweed contains more alkali and is of better quality, so he makes some

Immigrants or fishermen's families on the island work, and they pay to go to the beach to collect large amounts of seaweed, pile it on the beach to dry, and then burn it into plant ash and transport it to the newly built glass factory for use.

In this way, all kinds of things are basically solved, and all that remains is for Yu Xiaotian to light the fire and prepare to bake the glass.

Just after the first month of the year, Yu Xiaotian's glass factory was completely built. In addition, he also purchased several ships of coal to use as fuel. Fujian is not a place short of coal. It happens that only Fujian has coal in the south, concentrated in the Longyan area.

, large-scale mining had already begun in the Ming Dynasty, so it was not difficult to purchase some coal.

When doing these things, Yu Xiaotian did not explain to anyone in detail what he was going to do. He just told his subordinates to prepare according to his requirements, and he would surprise them when the time comes.

So when he lit the fire in the glass furnace, no one knew what he was going to do. Only the craftsmen looked stupidly at Yu Xiaotian directing them to work.

After the furnace was ignited, it burned for two days to completely dry the furnace. In addition, the temperature of the furnace was also raised. Then Yu Xiaotian began to put the quartz sand and lime into the crucible and send them into the furnace for calcination.

Originally, Yu Xiaotian was confident and thought the problem was not a big one, but something went wrong when he first started calcining the raw materials. Not long after he put some crucibles into the furnace, there was an explosion sound inside the furnace, which scared everyone.

After escaping from the work shed, even Yu Xiaotian was so frightened that he slipped out of the work shed. After seeing for a while that there was no explosion coming from the furnace, he cautiously took people back to the work shed to check.

Yu Xiaotian cried when he saw this. He thought of things a bit too simply. He felt that the crucible was not a troublesome thing, but the problem happened to be with the crucible. Among the crucibles he customized, most of them were not

Meet the requirements.

Shortly after putting it in the furnace for heating, more than half of the crucible burst, causing his first step of the experiment to fail.

So he had to stop work, eliminate the unqualified crucibles, order new crucibles from land, transport them back and heat them for testing first, and select usable crucibles to continue testing.

After a month of hard work, the problem with the raw materials and the crucible was basically solved. Then he mixed the various raw materials into the crucible, covered the lid and put it into the furnace again to start roasting.

After a long period of roasting, the furnace temperature rose to a certain level, and the raw materials in the crucible began to melt and react, and were gradually burned into glass liquid. However, after taking out the glass liquid and testing it, it was found that the color was too

Not to mention, there are a lot of bubbles. Even if it is made into glass products, such glass is very unsightly and cannot be used to make glass mirrors. The quality cannot even be compared with the glass produced in the West today.

Therefore, if you want to get good glass raw materials, you must decolorize the glass liquid. Yu Xiaotian thought for a long time before he realized that in the past, glass factories used ready-made decolorizers to decolorize glass. The decolorizer seemed to be dioxide.

Manganese and sodium nitrate.

But where can he get such chemical raw materials in this day and age? So he can only find ways to find substitutes to solve this problem.

As for the problem of bubbles, it is easy to solve. Just add a little salt as a catalyst, and then by constantly stirring the glass liquid, the bubbles in the glass liquid can be released. Even if it cannot be completely discharged, it doesn't matter. As long as the bubbles become very small, the naked eye can see

Just make it difficult to see and it will not affect the use of the glass.

Yu Xiaotian racked his brains and thought for a long time, and finally came up with the idea that saltpeter could be used instead of sodium nitrate, so he continued experimenting for another month, even remodeling the stove, and finally

Finally, a nearly colorless glass liquid was obtained.

Yu Xiaotian looked at the hot glass liquid pulled out by the stirring rod, and he became happy. Anyway, he finally succeeded. After the glass liquid dripped down, it condensed into glass beads, which he sent to the annealing kiln.

Medium annealing will prevent the temperature from cooling too quickly, causing uneven stress and cracking within the glass.

Finally, he got a few glass beads that were close to what he was looking for. Regardless of the fact that these glass beads were still a bit hot to his hands, he grabbed them and screamed because they were so hot, but he couldn't bear to let go.

When everyone saw these irregular glass beads, they realized what Yu Xiaotian had been busy with during this period. Everyone looked at the crystal clear glass beads, and their jaws almost dropped to the ground in surprise.

People with some knowledge know what this is, like the personal guards and Zhao Mazi who followed him to work on land. They have seen the world and of course they know that this is glass.

But people who have never seen the world would never dare to imagine that Yu Xiaotian could actually make crystals on the island, and one or two of them regarded these glass beads as crystals.

Yu Xiaotian explained to everyone, telling them that this thing is not a crystal, but something that the world now calls colored glaze, but it is different from the kind of colored glaze made by the Chinese. The glass produced in ancient China contains

There is a lot of iron element, the color is darker, and because the elements contained are different, the color is also different, so no such colorless glass can be truly produced.

It is true that the people in Taixi can produce this kind of glass, but the price after selling it to Ming Dynasty was shockingly high. Yu Xiaotian specially showed the small mirror given to Lan'er to everyone to see, and everyone knew that such a small thing.

It was actually worth hundreds of taels of silver. They were so shocked that everyone just gasped.

Think about it again, Yu Xiaotian has actually made this kind of glass now. If they can produce such a thing on Nanri Island in the future, the result will be...

The pupils of the people in the council hall, including other people, immediately turned into square shapes, and stars were shining in their eyes.

"Haha! Now you know what I am capable of in someone's life! Everyone will be waiting to get rich in the future! In addition to making glass mirrors, these glasses can also be made into very beautiful cups, saucers and vases, which are still worthy of your nose.

Money!" Yu Xiaotian was now showing off to everyone like he was offering treasures, his smile almost reaching behind his ears.

"The boss is really talented! I can't think of anything else that the boss doesn't know, haha! But boss, how did you get the silver on this glazed mirror? Does the boss know that too?" Wang Hong said.

Intrigued by Xiaotian's flattery, he asked Xiaotian.

"That's natural! But you can't talk about this, you can't talk about it! It's not that I don't worry about you, but if word gets out, we won't have anything to do in the future! It's like giving money to others! Just wait,

I will get you this kind of glazed mirror later!" Of course Yu Xiaotian would not tell everyone his method now. He put on a pretending to be mysterious, waved his hand to let everyone go, and then dived in.

Entered the glass field.