Take the warehouse back to the end of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 82 Glass Firing Successfully
A few days later, Zhao Wen and Li Xiaosan stood outside the hot glass kiln, staring closely at the kiln mouth.

Because the glass kiln is no better than cement, Zhao Wen built the glass kiln in the fort.

The purpose of building the fort is very clear, that is to prevent outsiders from spying, and to facilitate the management of these glass kiln workers.

"Come out, come out!"

Li Xiaosan looked at the red glass liquid slowly flowing down from the mouth of the kiln, and excitedly jumped up from the ground.

"Hurry up and bring the grinding tools!" Wang Liuqi wiped off the sweat from his face, and shouted to the apprentices beside him.

"I'm coming!"

An apprentice about fifteen or sixteen years old trotted over with an iron flat grinder.

Wang Liuqi snatched the mold and put it under the kiln mouth.

The burnt red glass liquid slowly flowed down the kiln mouth.

Zhao Wen looked at the burnt red liquid glass, and he was determined.

At this point, it means that the firing of the glass has been more than half successful.

As long as the final quenching is controlled, the glass will be fired.

Under the gaze of everyone, the molten glass slowly flowed out from the kiln mouth, and finally spread onto the extremely flat iron grinding tool.

Wang Liuqi stared closely at the kiln mouth, and when the glass liquid spread on the iron mold, he quickly closed the kiln mouth.

After Wang Liuqi closed the kiln, he used a pair of iron tongs to hold the iron mold filled with molten glass and ran to an iron furnace.

Wang Liuqi put the iron mold on the burner of the stove, and continued to accept the high temperature roasting.

At this time, the molten glass is slightly cooled, and there is a lot of molten glass in the iron mold, so it is necessary to transfer it to other iron molds.

After the iron mold was burnt red, Wang Liuqi hurriedly clamped the iron mold with iron tongs, and quickly moved it to several iron molds next to him.

The iron grinding tools next to them are shallower than the previous iron grinding tools, about one centimeter deep.

After the transfer was complete, Wang Liuqi took down a shovel from the tool rack next to it.

Holding a shovel, he scraped the uneven glass liquid round and round along the edge of the iron abrasive.

After finishing all this, Wang Liuqi touched the sweat on his forehead and let out a sigh of relief, "Now it's time to wait for it to cool down."

Zhao Wen looked at the uncooled molten glass in the iron mold, and said with a smile, "I think it's almost done. Steward Wang, you deserve the most credit."

Wang Liuqi hastily cupped his hands and said, "Don't dare to do it, don't dare to do it, it's all thanks to the lord, it's all the lord's credit."

Zhao Wen said with a smile: "If you say you have credit, you will have credit. What's the point of dawdling. Okay, let's do this first. I still have something to do, so I'll go first."

Seeing that there was no problem here, Zhao Wen led Li Xiaosan away.

After walking not far, Zhao Wen said to Li Xiaosan beside him, "Go and find Zhao Daniu for me."

Zhao Wen looked at Li Xiaosan who left in a hurry, squatting under a big tree beside the road.

The sunlight penetrates through the gaps in the branches and leaves of the big tree and falls under the big tree, forming white spots one after another.

Zhao Wen looked at the white spots on the ground and fell into deep thought.

Now glass has been successfully fired, but this thing is no better than cement.

Cement depends on production, while glass depends on rarity.

According to Zhao Wen's idea, the best use of these successfully produced glass is to make mirrors.

It is not that there are no mirrors in this era, but those mirrors are imported from the West.

Not to mention the small size, the figure is not clear, and the price is super expensive.A palm-sized mirror costs at least 100 taels of silver.

If the glass as big as today is made into a mirror, it may sell a lot.

Zhao Wen thought about making glass mirrors from the fired glass, and selling them in the capital or Nanzhili.

If the mirrors are sold in these places, they will definitely make a lot of money.

Especially the Lianghuai salt merchants, those people's net worth is not low, all of them have billions of dollars in wealth.If these mirrors are shipped to the Huaihe River for sale, they will definitely make a lot of money.

However, for things like mirrors, rare things are more expensive, and the rarer they are, the more valuable they are.Therefore, the recipe for making glass mirrors must be tightly held in one's own hands.

When Zhao Wen was considering whether to give Shanxi merchants a little to help them sell, Zhao Daniu stood in front of him.

Zhao Daniu looked at Zhao Wen who was deep in thought, and asked softly, "My lord? My lord?"

"Ah? Daniel, you are here." Zhao Wen hurriedly stood up from the ground.

"I don't know why my lord is looking for me?" Zhao Daniu looked at Zhao Wen curiously.

Zhao Wen clapped his hands and said to Zhao Daniu: "The glass kiln fired glass today, do you know?"

"Li Xiaosan told me on the way." Zhao Daniu said angrily.

"It's good to know, I have a task for you now, you can leave it to Hu Zi to handle the conscription first.

The most urgent task now is to find out the details of the helpers in the glass kiln.I don't want the golden hen in my hand to be stolen by others. " Zhao Wen said coldly.

Upon hearing this, Zhao Daniu immediately changed his expression, "My lord, don't worry, if you dare to steal our hens that can lay golden eggs, you are courting death. I, Zhao Daniu, will kill them first, so don't worry, my lord." , I will definitely find out the details of those people for you."

After Zhao Daniu finished speaking, he hurried away.

Zhao Wen looked at Zhao Daniu's back, and turned his thoughts to the way the mirror was made.

Glass mirror, there are two methods of electroless silver plating and vacuum evaporation, the most commonly used method is electroless silver plating.

This method is to dissolve silver nitrate in water, add ammonia water and sodium hydroxide solution and dilute it into silver hydroxide ammonia double salt to make a silver plating solution.Invert sugar or formaldehyde, sodium potassium tartrate solution is used as reducing solution.

Clean the glass surface, sensitize it with dilute stannous chloride solution, then wash it, then mix the silver plating solution and reducing solution and immediately impregnate the surface. After the mirror surface is formed, clean it, and then copper plating and protective paint can be applied.

In fact, in the West in this era, they mainly used mercury to make mirrors.

If mercury is used to make mirrors, the cost is too high, and the second is poisonous.

In addition, the reflection degree of the mirror made of mercury is not very high, and the figure inside looks very blurry.

And the mercury method manufacture procedure is loaded down with trivial details, and processing speed is slow, is not suitable for batch production.In terms of production speed, it is far inferior to the chemical silver plating method.

As for the vacuum method, it was directly abandoned by Zhao Wen.Can a vacuum be created in this day and age?
But the chemical reagents required by the electroless silver plating method are not rare. It is not so easy to manufacture qualified chemical reagents in this era.

In fact, in ancient times, it was not without chemical reagents. Many kinds of chemical reagents have been recorded in "Mengxi Bi Tan" by Shen Kuo in the Song Dynasty and "Tiangong Kaiwu" by Song Yingxing in the Ming Dynasty.

Among them are the reagents needed for the electroless silver plating method, but Zhao Wen doesn't know about these.

Now Zhao Wen's face was like a bitter gourd, his brows were furrowed and he was heading towards the defense mansion.

"In this era, there is sodium hydroxide, which is also commonly known as caustic soda. The reducing agent is glucose. After all, glucose is easy to fix.

But what about the ammonia water and silver nitrate? Zhao Wen frowned, thinking about the production methods of these two reagents.

(End of this chapter)