The work of continuously boiling the bark made the workers very bored. They were all discussing what the prince wanted to do, and he actually got into trouble with the useless bark.
The workers have poured out a large amount of hot and turbid water, and now the four pottery jars are boiling with clean water.
Medved also used a long wooden pole to provoke the giant and turned up the bark of the tree to find out.
They had been boiled and flaccid, like birch leaves that had been soaked in water for a long time. No! The bark has indeed been soaked for so long that it becomes very brittle and can be easily crushed into powder by hand.
Wait a minute, is this what the prince wants?
A lot of preparations for papermaking had been completed in the past few days. Medved, who was neither deaf nor blind, saw that the group of carpenters suddenly found winter work and actually stopped the prince from waiting for the task. What he focused on was not how much these people would get paid, but what they were doing.
Women who had textiles and carpenters jointly made a batch of screens. Based on Medved's knowledge, the first thing he thought of was what he saw at the New Roseburg Mill.
Arik's second daughter-in-law spent money to build a mill, and the wheat grains were crushed into powder. These sieves were then used to further sieve into subdivided grains to produce delicacies that only the big shots were entitled to enjoy.
This tool is not a rarity at all in Novgorod. It is used to sift fine clay powder, and the sifted powder can be fired into the best pottery.
"Either he is drying flour, or he wants to make pottery. His wives and concubines are all trained to be skilled craftsmen. The women from White Tree Manor have very dexterous hands..."
After thinking about it, he never imagined that this had anything to do with papermaking or the production of so-called "cork boards".
The agreed three-day period has arrived, and it is the morning of the fourth day. Rurik, wearing large wooden-framed sunglasses, is dressed like a little polar bear. He brings a group of similarly dressed wives and concubines to inspect the goods.
Prince Rurik, he actually has a pair of huge black eyes, and half of his face is actually eyes? !
The workers were startled. They all cast curious glances and watched helplessly as this group of people took off their eye protection tools to reveal their true colors.
Sunglasses are meant for life in the snowy winter. This kind of equipment has become a project of the Principality of Ross to make money from abroad. Just don't expect it to make a lot of money. However, men with a little financial resources will buy it so that during winter hunting, fishing, logging and other operations, they will not be blinded by the dazzling sunlight reflected from the snow.
"Has everything been done?" Rurik asked enthusiastically.
Medved ordered the curious men to step back, then punched his chest and saluted: "I promise with honor that I have successfully completed the task you assigned."
"I want to see the results before I judge your actions. Stop boiling and pour out all the water. No matter what the bark is like, pour out all the water."
"As commanded."
Now that the four pottery urns are too hot, the linen cloth wipes off the black carbon on the outside and sticks the rolled dough cakes on them. The cakes will be cooked in a short while.
The flames were extinguished, and the boiling water was poured out. When the pottery urns had cooled enough, they were pushed down onto the snowdrift "cushion pad" made by the crowd. The next work is like digging out furnace ashes, except that what comes out is only yellowish white and seems to be mixed with some brown substances.
Medved explained carefully: "Sir, you should be able to guess that if one is boiled, the meat will be boiled into pulp and the bones will be boiled into pieces. These barks were originally very fragile, but now they seem to have become dregs. .Unless all you need is scum."
Rurik couldn't conceal his joy at seeing these so-called barks after not seeing them for several days. He saw with his own eyes that these steaming things were piled together and looked like they had no bark at all.
Most of them still maintain the basic form of flakes, but the boundaries of the form are very blurred.
Rurik simply pulled out his dagger and thrust it in. A special feeling spread from his fingers to his head.
"Ah, this! It's like the toilet is blocked by a lot of toilet paper mixed with bamboo and wood, just like this color!"
Speaking of which, pure white toilet paper is not much in Rurik’s memory. Yellow-brown toilet paper seems to contain the power of nature and has quietly become the mainstream. From a utilitarian point of view, various plant pulps are often yellow-brown. They can be processed and used, but they need to be decolored to white. For single-use toilet paper, this biochemical decolorization step can be omitted.
Normal writing paper is naturally pure white. To produce pure white paper, I am afraid that we lack the ability to produce pure white paper. Traditional decolorizing and degreasing methods such as boiling water can only be done as well as possible.
Rurik could conclude that the bark only seemed to maintain its shape, and the fibers inside were almost in a state of being broken but not broken.
Perhaps the effect of boiling it for a few more days will be more ideal. Looking at the overturned pottery urn, it is no longer the same. Seems broken but not broken? Then help it turn into powder.
"Very well, you all did well."
Rurik put away his sword and praised Medvet's work, and said: "I will pay you today as agreed." He increased his voice in order to attract the attention of the workers present and the number of people who had already reached several. Hundreds of onlookers heard it.
"I still want to continue to employ you. I need strong Slavic warriors, and I think you can do it. Come on, accept my new arrangement."
As the bark began to be transported, Rurik further learned that they had become paper in a sense.
The public stone mortar in White Tree Manor that was specially used for pounding oats was requisitioned by Rurik. The moist and soft bark that had been boiled for three days and three nights was thrown in. The conical stone hammer began to pound the grains into a random pattern, just like pounding the wheat grains into Powder, these barks will also be powdered.
In the past, Baishu Manor had not come into contact with rotating stone millstones and rolling stone rollers. Since the stone materials had to be transported from afar, and secondly, the mechanical structure of the equipment for processing grains was already very complicated. People who had not acquired advanced knowledge It is difficult for them to do it independently.
The bark that still had some shape was finally smashed into powder. In the process, they were further dehydrated, and finally became something that could stick to each other in Rurik's hand. They are not sticky at all and absorb water efficiently on their own.
If there is anything to describe them, it would probably be toilet paper that absorbs water and then is dehydrated and shredded.
These rough and mutually adhering things become pulp when put into water.
The next task is for the strong Slavic men to get their revenge and leave happily. Next is the time for the Duke and his wives.
The melted snow water was filtered slightly and then poured into five large wooden troughs that were originally used for dyeing twine.
Of course, White Tree Manor has this kind of large-scale water-storing wooden equipment to meet its own needs, so Rurik doesn't even have to think about making troughs to hold the pulp himself. A batch of wooden troughs with excellent use effects can be provided locally.
In a large wooden house stood Rurik's wives and concubines, and everyone else avoided them. In front of the curious wives and concubines, Rurik pointed to the wooden trough that had turned into five pools of suspended water: "Tree The skin will turn into small objects, and they will adhere to the screen we made. When a layer of paste is applied, we will take out the screen, push the water with a wooden board, and then put the screen in the corner. We have I have worked hard for this for many days and paid a lot of money. The success or failure depends on you!"
The girls held their breath as if they were indeed the ones who made the difference between success and failure.
Rurik clapped his hands at the end: "Let's begin!"
Papermaking has entered the final stage, and it is also the most critical step. Fortunately, everything is under Rurik's control.
Of course there is a certain amount of luck involved. If he only got pure fiber, the paper he made would be good for wiping toilet paper, but not suitable for writing. Birch bark also contains a lot of lignin, but it is boiled for three days and three nights and then pounded into powder. The long structure of the lignin is not completely destroyed.
The suspended fibers begin to adhere to the screen, and the wooden board immediately presses off the surface moisture, and the entire screen begins to dry in the shade.
The room was decorated after all, with as many as fifteen oil lamps placed on the walls. A slow-burning blend of seal and whale blubber. Although the flames were weak, the temperature in the entire house was maintained at about 3°C.
Rurik and his concubines were working in cold water, which was not suitable but also helpless.
After all the hard work, the pulp is still not used up, but all the screens have begun to dry, and the entire house is filled with erected screens. At first glance, it looks like the heat sink of a machine.
They began to rest, drink some hot honey and chrysanthemum water to warm themselves and wait for a perfect result.
They didn't have to wait long.
When the papers begin to dry in the shade, they are already paper, the moisture dissipates freely, and the paper remains attached to the screen.
They did this in one morning and came to inspect the goods just after sunset.
The long-burning oil lamps kept the whole room from being cold. The screens were still standing neatly, and the remaining pulp in the five wooden troughs was still suspended.
Rurik simply peeled off the paper himself. This was due to the lignin inside. The rougher paper gave Rurik a feel like kraft paper. Not to mention, its color also resembled that of a local cow (a kind of brown-haired European cow). Cattle) The color of a calf’s coat.
The paper was easy to peel off and its texture was relatively hard. Fortunately, it did not break after being bent.
It is said that a piece of paper cannot be folded eight times, so he did not challenge the limit this time. He folded it four times to verify that there was no sign of breakage. Isn't this done?
The wives and concubines who didn't know what was going on looked at their men playing with the so-called cork boards, and they whispered to each other in low voices.
When they saw Rurik's arrogant smile, they were sure that they had succeeded.
Svetlana asked sweetly: "Have we succeeded now?"
"Successful! Completely successful. Come on, all of you!" Rurik shouted in excitement. He raised his right fist as if to call for thousands of troops to charge. "Put all...the cork boards together. Oh no, maybe I need to give it a simpler name now. I've decided, let's call it paper."
In Europe, or the world of old Rome and Greece, the word describing paper was probably pronounced "paper". It is papyrus, structurally very similar to oriental paper.
This word is originally the Phoenician language word "papyros". The Phoenician city Byblos monopolized the Mediterranean papyrus trade, and papyrus also gave the city its name. The city-state imported papyrus from Egypt and exported it to the entire Greek circle. The Aegean world and the Levant were very prosperous in amassing great wealth from this.
The word "paper" has a deep meaning, at least its syllables are short enough to be pronounced catchy, unlike the previous "cork board", which is actually a combination of three words.
Rurik succeeded in making birch bark paper, and his intuition told him that this material could be used for writing immediately.
All the papers were peeled off, and the size of the fifty pieces of paper was exactly the same due to the standard screen mesh, except that the edges were inevitably rough.
The paper can be cut twice, split into two by a knife, making it a good paper that can be written on on both sides.
All the papers were gathered in Rurik's hands. The heavy weight was extremely gratifying, as if he was holding an equal weight of gold.
Since there is still hope for fertility, let’s pursue the victory before things can get any more exciting!
The era has entered here, at the end of 834 AD, a new papermaking technology from the far East, different from papyrus technology, was born in the forests of Northeast Europe!
Since the Eastern Roman Empire lost control of Egypt, the supply of papyrus has collapsed, causing some in the empire to pick up expensive parchment as writing materials.
Rurik knew the importance of paper to a civilization. It is a carrier of information, and it can transmit anyone's thoughts to distant places, or even to people thousands of years later.
Of course, Rurik's need for paper is extremely urgent. For the first time since its birth, the Rus' Principality needs to calculate massive data, map the total farmland in the entire Lake Ilmen region, and the preliminary population of Novgorod and surrounding farms. The census is indeed a huge national project.
He asked his wives and concubines to use all the remaining paper pulp overnight, and he himself used the quill pen with the traditional ink he brought from his hometown in Roseburg to scribble on the paper.
He wasn't doodling randomly, after all, paper was very precious. He drew some solid geometric patterns, what is a tetrahedron, what is a cube, and more complex drawings.
It turns out that in terms of writing, these rough papers really have the texture of kraft paper, even rougher. Fortunately, the so-called pen is actually the flight feather of a wild duck or a domestic chicken. It was originally widely used to make arrow feathers, and now it is suitable for use as a writing pen. There is no need to worry about wearing out the pen tip. This kind of quill pen is essentially a consumable. In order to collect statistics on a large amount of data, Rurik has already prepared a batch of spare feathers. There is no need to worry about running out of them. At worst, he will catch the chickens and pluck them out, and the remaining feathers will be left. The chicken can also be used to make soup.
The ink made by traditional crafts contains a certain amount of grease, and writing on this kind of paper will indeed not form a large cloud.
A sense of excitement dominated Rurik's body. When the girls dragged their tired bodies and told him that the matter was settled, he ordered everyone to go to bed, but he had to continue to be alone in the room in front of an ever-burning oil lamp. .
Because Rurik was already drawing a map, which was to copy the map of Europe that had been painted on the patchwork wooden board onto the paper.
Four pieces of paper were pieced together into one, and Rurik was drawing the outline of Europe based on his own memory. It could be said that he understood the structure of this vast world better than any scholar in this time and space. An outline is not enough, he needs to add further details. The general directions of mountains and rivers are marked, and the cities and small settlements of the Principality of Ross must be marked accurately!
It also includes other foreign cities unknown to the public.
This map of Europe can be continuously improved and revised. Even though the map is drawn without any framed paper, the information of the map itself is worth more than ten thousand taels of gold. It is said that when a monarch dreams of conquering a large territory and building a prosperous new world, this map is the best guide.
It is Ross's treasure, and it can only be Ross's treasure!
Moreover, it is very small and very easy to place. As long as you pay attention to dry storage, it can be stored for a thousand years.
