Chapter 54 Glass

A few days after the Spring Festival, a shed was erected in the workshop area on the island. The craftsmen came and went to carry materials and quickly built the shed.

Moreover, Yu Xiaotian also put aside other things and drilled into the built shed, pointed to some craftsmen, and built a long stove in the shed. Outside the shed were some neatly placed crucibles. These crucibles were just ordered from the land, and the size and style were also Yu Xiaotian himself. Required.

In addition, there are piles of quartz stone, silica sand and quicklime. No one knows what Yu Xiaotian is going to do, but no one cares about him. Anyway, Yu Xiaotian knows a lot, and he will certainly not be full of tossing around. However, some people are looking forward to seeing Yu Xiaotian do something new to open their eyes.

Although Yu Xiaotian was busy with the holiday after his wedding a few years ago, he did not put down what he wanted to make a glass mirror. If he wanted to make a glass mirror, he had to have glass first. After he came back, he began to prepare materials for people to build a building for him in the newly designated workshop area. The large shed and drew a sketch of the stove.

At the same time, he also asked Mao Shengyuan to find a land craftsman to order a batch of crucibles that will be used to burn glass in the future. This kind of crucible is different from the crucible of molten iron water and is sealed. The ash placed in the furnace falls into the crucible, affecting the color of the glass.

After Yu Xiaotian was expelled from the university, he had done a lot of work to make a living, including working in a small glass factory.

The production process of that small glass factory is relatively simple. Yu Xiaotian understood at a glance how the glass is fired, and there is no problem in terms of raw materials.

The raw materials for firing glass are actually very simple, but they are some quartz sand, quicklime and soda ash. First, the raw materials are fully crushed and then calcified separately. After they are put into the crucible and covered, they begin to mix and calcinate them into the kiln. Then the glass liquid is generated, and then decolorized, the glass liquid can be obtained. To make various glass products.

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

So he didn't waste time and began to work. The shed and the glass stove were built together, so that the progress of the project was much faster. Coupled with the advance feeding and customized crucibles, after the shed was in place, it could start to work.

The glass kiln made of firing glass was compared with gourd painting by Yu Xiaotian. According to some things learned in later generations, it was modified in combination with the current technical conditions, and then the soil method was put on the horse. Instead, it took much effort to build a glass kiln made by firing glass liquid.

And the raw materials are easy to solve. Nanri Island itself has limestone, which can be roasted into quicklime, then matured with water, dried and crushed and sifted for use.

Quartz stone is found in many places on land. It is not valuable. You can buy it with a little money. After the quartz stone is broken, it is broken into sand and becomes quartz sand. After sifting, fine quartz sand is selected and dried with clean water. Even quartz stone has been found on Nanri Island during this period. Later, even the money and events bought on land can be saved, and you can directly take materials on the spot.

Everything else is easy to say, but at present, the only thing he lacks is the problem of soda ash. With Yu Xiaotian's level and current technology, it is impossible to produce soda ash. Based on what he knows, Yu Xiaotian decided to use grass ash to replace soda ash.

Gras ash is rich in potassium carbonate, which is soda ash. When the West fired glass, it was not used soda for hundreds of years, and it was also replaced by grass ash, so there should be no problem.

As for the acquisition of grass and wood ash, there is no need to worry about it. The island is already overgrown with weeds, and some of them are used for vegetation ash, but Yu Xiaotian feels that the vegetation ash burned with seaweed still contains more alkali and is of better quality, so he asked some immigrants or the families of fishermen on the island to work. Their sea wolves paid to go to fish for it. A large amount of seaweed is piled up at the seaside to dry, then burned into vegetation ash and transported to the newly built glass field for use.

In this way, all kinds of things are basically solved, and only wait for Xiaotian to light the fire and prepare to burn the glass.

Just after the first month, Yu Xiaotian's glass farm was completely built. In addition, he also bought several ships of coal as fuel. Fujian is not a place short of coal. In the south, only Fujian has coal, which is concentrated in the Longyan area. In the Ming Dynasty, a large amount of mining began, so it is not difficult to purchase some coal.

When doing these things, Yu Xiaotian did not explain in detail what he wanted to do to anyone, but told his men to prepare according to his requirements, and they would be surprised at that time.

So when he lit the glass stove, no one knew what he was going to do. It was just a group of craftsmen who foolishly watched Yu Xiaotian command them to work.

After the stove was lit, it was first burned for two days and completely dried. In addition, the furnace temperature was also raised. Yu Xiaotian began to put quartz sand and lime into the crucible and put it into the furnace for calcination.

Originally, Yu Xiaotian was confident and felt that there was no big problem, but when he first began to calcinate raw materials, something went wrong. Soon after putting some crucibles into the furnace, there was an explosion in the furnace, which scared everyone to escape from the shed one after another. Even Yu Xiaotian was scared to slip out of the shed. For a long time, there was no explosion coming out of the stove, so he carefully took people back to the shed to check.

Yu Xiaotian cried when he saw it. He thought it was a little too simple and felt that the crucible was not a troublesome thing, but the problem happened to be on the crucible. Among the crucibles he customized, most of the crucibles did not meet the requirements.

Shortly after heating the stove, more than half of the crucible burst, causing his first test to fail.

So he had to stop work, eliminate the unqualified crucible, then order a new crucible from the land, transport it back for the heating test, and select the available crucible to continue the test.

After such a month of tossing, the problem of raw materials and crucibles was basically solved. Then he mixed various raw materials into the crucible, closed the lid and put it into the stove again and began to bake.

After a long period of roasting, the furnace temperature rose to a certain extent, and the raw materials in the crucible began to melt and react, and were gradually burned into glass liquid. However, after taking out this glass liquid, after testing, it was found that the color was too heavy, and there were many bubbles. Even if such glass was made into glass Glass products are also not beautiful. Glass mirrors can't be used at all, and the quality can't even be compared with the current Western glass.

So if you want to get good glass raw materials, you must decolorize the glass liquid. Yu Xiaotian thought for a long time before he thought that the glass factory used ready-made decolorizing agent to decolorize the glass. The decolorizing agent seems to be manganese dioxide and sodium nitrate.

But where did he get such chemical raw materials in this era? So he can only find a substitute to solve this problem.

As for the problem of bubbles, it is easy to solve. Add a little salt as a catalyst, and then by constantly stirring the glass liquid, you can send out the bubbles in the glass liquid. Even if they cannot be completely discharged, as long as the bubbles become very small and difficult to be seen by the naked eye, it will not affect the use of glass.

Yu Xiaotian racked his brains for a long time, and finally thought that he could only replace sodium nitrate with saltpeter, so he continued to experiment, tossed for another month, and even renovated the stove once, and finally got a nearly colorless glass liquid.

Yu Xiaotian looked at the hot glass liquid pulled out by the stirring rod, and the joy blossomed. Anyway, he finally succeeded. After the glass liquid dripped down, it condensed into glass beads and was sent by him to the annealing kiln for annealing, saving too fast cooling and causing uneven internal stress cracking of the glass.

In the end, 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 little hot, he grabbed them and screamed, but he was reluctant to let go.

When everyone saw these irregular glass beads, they knew what Yu Xiaotian had been busy with during this period. Looking at the crystal glass beads one by one, they were surprised that their chins were about to fall to the ground.

People with a little insight know what this is, like the guards and Zhao Mazi who followed him to work on land. They have seen the world. Of course, they know that this is glass.

But people who have never seen the world dare not imagine that Yu Xiaotian can make crystals on the island by himself, and one or two of them regard these glass beads as crystals.

Yu Xiaotian explained to everyone and told them that this thing is not a crystal, but something that is called glazed by the world, but it is different from the glass made by Chinese people. Glass produced in ancient China contains many iron elements and dark colors, and because of the different elements it contains, the color is not Similarly, such colorless glass has not really been produced.

On the contrary, Taixi people would produce this kind of glass, but the high price after it was sold to Daming was frightening. Yu Xiaotian specially took the small mirror given to Lan'er to everyone to see. Everyone knew that such a small thing was actually worth hundreds of taels of silver, and they were even more shocked that they only took a cold air.

Think again, Yu Xiaotian has also tossed this kind of glass now. If they can produce such a thing in Nanri Island in the future, the result will be...

The pupils of the people in the hall, including others, immediately turned into square, and their eyes were full of stars.

"Haha! Now you know what I can do to someone! Everyone is waiting to get rich in the future! In addition to making glass mirrors, these glasses can also be made into beautiful cups, saucers and vases, which are still worth the money!" Yu Xiaotian also presented treasures to everyone at this time, and his mouth almost grinned behind his ears.

"The great man is really talented! I really can't think of anything that the big man can't do, haha! But the big head, how did you get the silver on the glazed mirror? Does this big head also know? Wang Hong flattered Yu Xiaotian and asked Xiaotian.

"That's natural! But this matter can't be said, can't be said! It's not that I don't trust you. If it spreads, we won't have to play in the future! It's equivalent to giving money to others! Wait, I'll get you this kind of glazed mirror later!" Of course, Yu Xiaotian would not tell everyone his method now. He put on a mysterious posture, waved his hand to let everyone go, and drilled into the glass field again.