Liu Song Hanque

Chapter 72

Bricks were invented a long time ago in China, but at that time they were just the simplest rammed earth bricks.Not fired at all.

Later in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the brick-making process advanced by leaps and bounds, and in the Qin Dynasty, the brick-making process became more mature.

However, due to the limitations of craftsmanship, it was not until after the Song Dynasty that Huaxia architecture began to popularize the maturity of bricks on a large scale, but this does not mean that the quality of bricks in the Southern and Northern Dynasties is so poor that Wang Maide broke it easily. degree.

"Such defective products dare to be used to build a city, do they really think I'm easy to bully?"

A fierce light appeared in Liu Yizhen's eyes.

He suspected that he was too docile, which made some people think that they shouldn't have.

"Mr. Chang'an, no!"

Seeing that Liu Yizhen was going to kill someone, Wang Maide quickly explained.

"It's not the workshop cutting corners, it's the workshop's problem."

Under Wang Maide's explanation, Liu Yizhen realized that he was thinking too much.

The process of making bricks is first to take clay, and after half a year of exposure to wind and sun, it will naturally erode and decompose and loosen the interior, and then manually crush and sieve, leaving only fine and dense pure soil.

Moisten the pure soil with water, knead it repeatedly like kneading noodles, and mold the kneaded soil into a blank, dry it and then fire it.

This batch of bricks is a problem in the firing step.

Because the bricks used now are the leftover bricks from the previous workshop, which were originally intended to be used by the post-Qin royal family to build Buddhist temples or palaces, but because Liu Yuguang returned to Guanzhong, those semi-finished products were put on hold.

Now that he heard that Liu Yizhen was going to build Chang'an, the people in the workshop fired these bricks into finished products.

However, the period of time may have been a bit long, and the adobe had been weathered a bit too much, and fine holes were formed inside, which made the fired bricks very brittle.

In addition, the bricks used to build the city are required to be blue bricks.

The firing method of blue bricks is similar to that of red bricks.

The biggest difference between blue bricks and red bricks is that they need to be cooled with water after firing, so that the iron in the clay is not completely oxidized and appears blue.

The blue bricks made in this way are much stronger than the red bricks. The reason why red bricks were popularized in later generations is because modern foreigners invaded China and preferred red bricks very much.In addition, the cost of red bricks is cheaper than that of blue bricks. Over time, the capital abandoned the traditional Chinese bricks.

The blue bricks can be water-cooled to make their texture better, but at the same time, after thermal expansion and contraction, the defects of the bricks will also be magnified.

That's why Liu Yizhen saw this defective product now.

This……

Wang Maide saw that Liu Yizhen had been unable to vent his grievances these days because of his high-intensity work, so he didn't dare to touch Liu Yizhen's bad luck.

But since a problem arises, it must be resolved.

"Building a city is troublesome."

In other words, how many of them are really easy to do things?

"Come on, accompany me to the kiln factory."

The brick kiln was in the west of Chang'an City, and the craftsmen inside were a little flustered when they saw Liu Yizhen coming in.

"Mr. Chang'an, those bricks..."

"It's okay, I already know that I'm not here to punish you."

Liu Yizhen came to inspect the current situation of the brick kilns to see if they could speed up the process of making bricks.

The kiln craftsman breathed a sigh of relief, and began to introduce Liu Yizhen.

"There are actually two places that are most difficult now."

"One is mixing clay, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive."

"The other one is that the temperature in the kiln may not be enough when firing bricks, and it is easy to burn defective products."

Liu Yizhen nodded after listening.

This is a technical difficulty, and it is normal that these craftsmen cannot solve it.

"It's actually not difficult."

Liu Yizhen decided to help the craftsman who had been busy for more than half a month but failed to produce qualified blue bricks.

"Since it takes time and effort to make clay with manpower, why not use a waterwheel?"

"Water wheel?"

The waterwheel was invented in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Nowadays, it is basically popularized, but it is all used in agriculture.

Obviously, no one has thought of the industry and manufacturing industry that the waterwheel will be used for.

On the contrary, the "water wheel" in the West was first used in ironmaking.

This has nothing to do with high or low IQ, it is purely a matter of different national conditions.

It does not explain why Huaxia is used for farming. The reason why it is not used for ironmaking is because the ironmaking methods on the two sides are different.

Western ironmaking uses iron-rich ores in the Mediterranean region. Because iron-rich ores have high iron content and few gangues, even if there is no limestone, iron will not be smelted.All the impurities are mixed with iron, and after forging, the impurities can be gradually removed and become wrought iron, and finally carbon is added to make weapons.

This led to the need for strong forging technology in the way they produced steel, so hydraulic forging hammers appeared.

On the other hand, Huaxia.

We smelt pig iron in a blast furnace, and then make mature iron.

The temperature of the blast furnace is higher than that of a block iron smelting, and it is much higher than the temperature of the iron furnace in the West, which can be found in any furnace and fired. It can directly remove a lot of impurities in the pig iron.

And pig iron frying mature iron can remove impurities again.

Later, the iron pouring method was invented, which is to insert wrought iron into the pig iron liquid to remove impurities again.

In this way, it is natural that there is no need to use a big hammer to forge a block of iron to force out impurities, so the waterwheel technology has not been used in iron smelting.

So Liu Yizhen asked someone to find a water wheel and refit it into a forged model to demonstrate to the craftsmen of the brick kiln.

Looking at the machinery moving under the flow of water, the brick kiln craftsman felt that his world view had been subverted.

"The problem of mixing and smelting has been solved, and there is also the temperature of the brick kiln."

Most of the current kilns are steamed bun kilns, also known as "round kilns".

The style of this kind of kiln has developed extremely maturely, but it still cannot reach the high temperature of thousands of degrees.

It was not until the Northern Song Dynasty that anyone thought of a way.

Later, the porcelain industry in the Northern Song Dynasty developed because people solved the temperature problem at that time.

That is, switching from inefficient wood as fuel to coal.

As long as the coal particles and coal powder are mixed, the blower provides oxygen from the bottom up and raises the coal powder to achieve instant full combustion, and the temperature can reach thousands of degrees, even up to 1300 degrees.

Therefore, Liu Yizhen does not need to make major changes to the brick kiln, as long as he finds a large amount of coal.

Guanzhong, also known as Shaanxi in later generations.

In terms of coal resources, it may not be comparable to Shanxi next door.

But its stock can definitely get rid of a lot of other places.

Take Tongchuan, for example, where the coal reserves are considerable.

Immediately, Liu Yizhen sent people to look for coal in Beidi.

Huaxia has known coal for a long time, and Liu Yizhen is not afraid that they will not find it if they don't know it.

In the "Zhongshan Jing" of "Shan Hai Jing", it is recorded that "the head of Minshan Mountain is called the mountain of Nuji, and there are many stones on it", "150 miles to the east, it is called the mountain of wind and rain, and there are many platinum on it. Dosh Nirvana".

Shi Nie is coal.

Coupled with the fact that there were records of large-scale coal mining as early as the Three Kingdoms, this matter is really not difficult.After all, what Liu Yizhen asked them to look for was coal, not oil...

(End of this chapter)