When I walked to the kitchen, it was empty, not even the stove had been set up.
"Old Zhao, are you guys going to build the stove, or should I hire someone to build it myself after the house is built?"
"Building a stove?" Zhao Fafa doesn't look down on such a low-end job. Just find any apprentice mason and he can help you build it beautifully. Doesn't it require the help of a master like him? That's not a job. Chicken with a beef knife.
"Haha, boss, I'm not boasting, old man. I haven't built a stove for ordinary people in decades, but today my boss said that I will pick up my craftsmanship and help my boss build a stove with my own hands!"
Zhao Fafa thought that Liang Chuan was worried that his apprentices could not build the stove well. The stove was the top priority of the family and there was no room for glimmers. People's families worshiped the stove every year because of its relatively transcendent status.
"Old Zhao, that's not what I said. Don't laugh at me. I'm going to ask, are the stoves in our ordinary living rooms now like the hole in the ancestral hall?"
Zhao Fafa didn't understand what Liang Chuan meant? Some couldn't answer the call.
"In other words, do the popular stoves today have the same structure as those in ancestral halls?" Liang Chuan asked again.
"Yes, of course it is like this. Is it possible that there are other structures of stoves? Except for those of my younger disciples who built them with stones and mud, I have never seen other styles of stoves."
This stove is something that most people don't want to change or mess around with. The stove has the virtue of fire. If the virtue of fire is unstable, it will turn into ashes. It is possible that a lifetime of hard work can be burned down to nothing in a single fire.
Several Luocheng masters looked at the thoughtful expression on Liang Chuan's face and thought that this boss might have other ideas! They are very worried because the stove is not as good as other stoves. If the stove is not well built and cannot be cooked, the food will either be undercooked or overcooked and often burnt, and the firewood will be wasted. If you are not careful, the stove may burn through the iron pot and even burn through the roof, causing a disaster.
Liang Chuan looked at the anxious expressions of the masters, with a mysterious smile on his face.
"Don't worry. The stove you use is already behind the stoves we use in our hometown. The stove you use consumes firewood and is not easy to use heat. I will tell you a plan. Take a look and see if it is better than your stove." The design is better.”
Liang Chuan told several masters about the design concept of firewood-saving stoves in later generations. At first, several masters thought that Liang Chuan was still thinking of bamboo water pipes, but Liang Chuan said that the stove door and stove chamber should be reduced, and the stove grate and chimney should be added. Everyone began to think about the purpose of such a design.
There is no farmer who has never used a stove. Although they have not tried it personally, they can feel the difference. The new stove Liang Chuan said has an extra fire ring, which prolongs the rotation distance and time of the high-temperature smoke flow in the stove. , so that you don’t need to add firewood frequently and can maintain the temperature in the stove. This will undoubtedly make the stove more effective.
"Master, I've never built the stove you mentioned, old man, but it shouldn't be difficult. Let me build one and see the effect?" Zhao Fafa wouldn't have dared to practice on Liang Chuan's stove without permission.
"Old Zhao, just do as I say. It doesn't matter if you don't do it right. The worst thing you can do is tear it down and rebuild it again!"
From the time he started building a new house to this moment, Liang Chuan never pointed out Zhao Fafa's craftsmanship, but today Liang Chuan made an exception. Because no one has made this stove, but Liang Chuan has only seen it. Every farmer in later generations has a stove like this. When he was a child, he often used the stove to roast local melons.
Stoves in this era generally did not pay attention to beauty, but only pursued practicality, because most of them were rough in appearance. In fact, the stove body must play the role of heat preservation and pot base, which requires the stove body to be uniform in thickness, smooth in appearance, and flat in surface.
Zhao Fafa and the others asked their apprentices to bring in red bricks and mud, and they built the stove while discussing. Zhao Tingchang was the most troubled by the mud. He picked up the bricks and smeared the mud wherever he pointed. As expected of a master craftsman, the leveling and smoothing was done in one go without any sloppiness.
The stove door is about an inch and a half lower than the smoke outlet. If it is higher than the smoke outlet, the smoke from the stove will escape from the stove door, choking people and taking away part of the heat. This will not achieve the effect of saving firewood.
When wiping the sides of the pot, use hard mud to wipe it tightly and prevent it from leaking. The edge of the pot should not be an inch higher than the edge of the stove, otherwise a lot of heat will be lost.
If on a normal day, when Zhao Fafa and the others were working, there would be a late guy gesticulating next to them, they would have kicked him away without politeness. Who are you to be an onion? I have been eating this bowl of rice my whole life, and I still need you to give me advice.
But this time it was different. Although Liang Chuan didn't know anything, not even the most basic bricklaying skills, his suggestions were indeed the most reasonable. He even took into account the height difference between the edge of the pot and the edge of the stove. Inexperienced people Can you understand this?
Originally, even the apprentice looked down on the muddy work, but four masters gathered together to do it for him, which took a whole morning. Only then did a beautiful wood-saving stove appear in the kitchen, and everyone went to have lunch with satisfaction.
It does take some time for the mud on the stove to cool down, but in the afternoon or evening you can test whether this so-called firewood-saving stove is really worthy of its name!
Although the experiment has not yet been successful, Zhao Fafa was very impressed by Liang Chuan's idea. During the meal, Zhao Fafa accompanied Liang Chuan and chatted with Liang Chuan from time to time: "Master, have you used this new type of stove in your hometown?"
Liang Chuan didn't dare to tell him that even this kind of stove would disappear now. Time kept bringing new things and new technologies to the fore. To their era, firewood-saving stoves were just like the gas stoves of later generations that had just appeared and became popular in thousands of homes. Thousands of households. But at a time when even gas stoves were becoming obsolete, the emergence of electromagnetic equipment and the use of natural gas made gas stoves obsolete once again.
"Absolutely. I've only seen pigs running around and never eaten pork." Liang Chuan meant that he had never built such a stove. He had seen it with his own eyes but had never done it.
Liang Chuan's humble words made everyone burst into laughter, and his easy-going atmosphere infected the young apprentices. They rarely reported that their master was not ashamed to ask questions, and his boss was an eye-opener for them.
The group of people grabbed their lunch casually. The lunch was no longer gruel, but solid dry rice. They had to ensure at least one dry meal a day.
The main rooms in the house could basically meet Liang Chuan's needs, and Liang Chuan didn't make any further requests. The only thing missing was the last room in the back. The back room was in Liang Chuan's plan, and it would be the base camp for making cane sugar from now on.
A few people thought that there should be just some sundries here, and there was nothing to worry about. But things often backfire!
The four rooms in the back room are connected from the beginning to the end, and there are no partitions. It looks like a row of extra-large rooms. However, this row of side rooms is at the back of the house, and the connection with the front yard is not directly clear. Instead, there are small doors and back doors. This row of back rooms is more like a building independent of the entire house. It is also accessible from the rear without passing through the front yard.
"I may have to work hard for you today. I'm afraid you'll laugh. We need to build a row of stoves in the back room that are more complicated than the wood-saving stove just now."
The stove that Liang Chuan is going to build is not something that is widely advertised. This is called a chain stove. The stoves from front to back are higher than the last stove. When boiling sugar, all five stoves are turned on, and water is driven from high to low. The heat must be controlled properly, otherwise the sugar will burn.
Liang Chuan has heard of many folk methods of boiling sugar in an eighteen-ring continuous pot. This technique is even more exquisite and requires a higher level of measuring skills. Juicing, brewing, watering, filtering, shaking, Sanding and shaping are done in different pots, and the same pot is used in different ways. It can be called a difficult technical action. This ancient method of boiling grain has long been lost. Although many people in later generations claimed to have been able to copy this method of boiling sugar, Liang Chuan did not know how to do it. The method he knew was more crude and only required five pots.
"Master, are you planning to open a restaurant? If you build so many pots in the back, what kind of restaurant can use so many pots?"
It is undeniable that the new firewood-saving stove made by Liang Chuan is very novel, but it is puzzling that Liang Chuan made so many stoves and pots in the back room. They have never seen anyone make such a request when building a new house. Anyway, there is money to be made. , Liangchuan has money for the materials, so it doesn’t matter if he spends some time on his own.
This back room is so big that Liang Chuan will use it entirely for boiling cane sugar. At that time, sugar extraction may also be kept indoors. He doesn't want others to learn a craft. After learning one thing, he can guess the process of the next one. By exploring, you can find out the rules and methods.
By that time, will I still have a competitive advantage and the capital to negotiate terms with little girl Zheng Ruoying?
Liang Chuan also specifically told Zhao Fafa that nothing done in the back room could be mentioned to the outside world, whether it was the stove or anything else, not even the doorknob and lock.
It was rare for the four masters to have Liang Chuan trust them so much. They drank a lot of Liang Chuan's good wine and ate a lot of good meat. They didn't have it in their hearts as Luocheng people to burn down bridges and eat milk. In order to reassure Liang Chuan, Zhao Fafa also asked three masters of the younger generation to swear an oath in the name of the ancestor that the work done in the back room would not appear in a second place in the future, but would only rot in the stomach!
Liang Chuan hoped that they could help him keep a secret. He didn't expect them to play so seriously and even swear, which made him a little bit villainous.
Is an oath useful? To a gentleman, it is like a shackle. To a villain, it is just a fart. Just let it go.
