After walking south along the slope for almost a kilometer, we finally came to a small hill.
Seeing this small hill, Zhou Yang suddenly became excited. This place is really a Feng Shui treasure!
Earth kilns generally cannot be built on flat land, but they cannot be built on mountains that are too high. Usually, earth mounds of suitable size must be found and built close to the mountains.
The mounds where Ji Yi brought them to were not high, and there were no large rocks. It should not be too difficult to dig below.
More importantly, there is a large open area around the mound, which can be used as a billet-making field in the later stage.
After walking around the mound, Zhou Yang immediately chose a suitable location and asked the soldiers to start work.
He first asked the soldiers to dig a large circular pit in the ground, lay the foundation of the earthen kiln with stones, and leave a fire opening, a kiln door for loading blanks and bricks, and several chimneys for exhausting smoke on the top of the kiln.
Then the soldiers were asked to tear down a section of the brick wall on the right side of the farm, pull the bricks here, and start building the kiln body.
The kiln body of a brick kiln is usually a big-bellied kiln body, with bricks inside and soil piled around the outside, which is firmly packed with tampers.
Finally, there’s the kiln door!
There are many things to pay attention to when it comes to kilns. Whether it is a brick kiln or a porcelain kiln, most of them face east or south.
Because people believe that festive things should be facing south or east, Zhou Yang opened the kiln entrance to the east, which means that the purple air is coming from the east.
Since what Zhou Yang wanted to build was just a small experimental kiln, it didn't take much effort and was completed in less than an afternoon.
Building a kiln is just the first step in a long journey of thousands of miles. There are still many things that need to be done to produce qualified bricks and tiles.
So while waiting for the kiln to dry, Zhou Yang immediately led people to start selecting clay bricks.
The quality of the soil for making red bricks is very important, and Dongquan Farm can be said to have unique conditions for this.
There is yellow clay everywhere near the south slope, which is the best soil for making bricks and tiles.
However, this soil cannot be used immediately because it contains small stones and must be filtered before use.
This process is relatively simple, you just need to find a sieve of suitable size and pass it through.
While selecting the soil, Zhou Yang had someone simply level the open land near the small brick kiln and choose a spacious and sunny place to place the finished brick embryos.
The next step is to mix the clay and make the bricks.
Although these tasks are tedious, there is no technical content. As long as these soldiers are taught, they can complete it themselves.
But in order to show the quality difference between the coal gangue sintered bricks he developed and ordinary clay bricks, Zhou Yang specially made two types when making the bricks.
One is the ordinary clay brick currently produced by other brickyards, and the other is gangue sintered brick with crushed coal gangue, slag and shale foam added when the clay is mixed.
Zhou Yang found the coal gangue from the corner of the backyard of the farm management office. There was a large pile, which may have been waste picked out by the management office when it used coal.
Now they were all crushed by Zhou Yang with a roller and brought to the kiln.
More than 20 people worked until past one o'clock in the morning, and finally made all 1,000 bricks.
However, the bricks cannot be fired immediately after they are made, firstly because the kiln is not dry, and secondly because the bricks also need to be dried, and only when they are completely dry can they be used.
Normally, it takes 5 to 7 days for bricks to dry.
But the temperature is so high right now, Zhou Yang estimates that it will be over in a day or two.
Of course, there's nothing he can do about it whether it's dry or not. He doesn't have that much time to stay here, so that's pretty much it.
Most of the time, Zhou Yang did the above-mentioned processes himself, but at the same time, Lin Yi was asked to record them on the spot with pen and paper.
There was no other way. He only had half a month's vacation. At most, he had to help them bake the first kiln test product and then he had to go back. The rest had to be done by the farm's own people.
Zhou Yang thought that Lin Yi was a good person, so he asked him to be a record-keeper on the side, so that he could guide others to build a real big brickyard in the future.
........
There was nothing to say all night, and Zhou Yang got up early the next morning!
What he has to do today is to find fuel for burning bricks and tiles!
Burning red bricks is usually made with coal, but Zhou Yang is not sure whether Dongquan Farm can obtain large quantities of coal.
Although he also knew that the farm management office often used coal for cooking, but daily use in small amounts and burning the kiln were two different concepts.
You should know that normally, it takes at least two or three days to bake red bricks.
A kiln may produce hundreds or thousands of kilograms of coal. The specific amount depends on how many bricks are in the kiln. The more bricks and tiles are burned, the more coal is required.
All in all, the demand is huge!
Therefore, Zhou Yang came to the farm management office early in the morning.
After explaining the situation, Zhang Hanwu immediately said that coal was not a problem.
There is a small coal mine less than thirty kilometers away from Dongquan Farm, and they usually go there to pull carbon.
At that moment, Zhou Yang asked the soldiers from the farm to drive the Dongfeng truck to the small coal mine.
After arriving at the field, Zhou Yang discovered that this place was really not far from Dongquan Farm. It was just over a few mountain ridges.
It's just that this small coal kiln does look very crude, and it's still in the stage of manual coal mining, so the output doesn't seem to be high.
At present, there are several large piles of excavated coal placed outside the coal kiln, estimated to be hundreds of tons.
Zhou Yang asked the soldiers to negotiate with the person in charge here, while he squatted in front of the coal pile and carefully inspected the coal.
In terms of quality, the coal dug here is pretty good!
But Zhou Yang also discovered that there was a lot of gangue in the coal here, and the sulfur content in this coal was relatively high.
It's okay to use the stove for cooking, but not so good for directly burning bricks and tiles.
Therefore, after buying it, you have to make it into coal cakes.
After some bargaining by the soldiers, and on the premise of buying in large quantities, the two parties finally agreed on the price of coal at 21 yuan per ton.
Subsequently, the first batch of 10 tons of coal was pulled directly back to Dongquan Farm by Dongfeng trucks.
After pulling back the coal, Zhou Yang sent it directly to the Nanpo Experimental Kiln, and then taught the soldiers to make coal cakes.
The so-called coal cake is similar to briquettes, but because it is the same as the biscuits that people eat, it is called coal cake.
Making coal cakes is simple. First, make a wooden mold, then sift the picked coal, sift out the coarse coal, mix it with water to make a paste, and pour it into the mold.
According to the mold, flatten it, wipe off the excess coal, and add the less!
After smoothing, pick up the mold and repeat this in order, and a piece of coal cake is completed.
After the coal biscuits are cooked, collect them and stack them up, cover them with straw mats to prevent them from getting wet in the rain, and use them when baking bricks.
In one morning, Zhou Yang and others made more than a thousand coal cakes very quickly.
During this period, Zhou Yang took a look inside the small brick kiln and found that after a night and a half of drying, the walls inside were already half dry.
If we continue like this, we will be able to do it all tomorrow.
The bricks are about the same. They can be used after drying for an afternoon at most.
Of course, if you have time, it would be better to dry it for a day or two.
But obviously, Zhou Yang's time is limited now, so he can only make do with it.
Now everything is ready, just waiting for the kiln to be fired!
However, kiln burning is very particular. Normally, kiln owners are very concerned about the first fire of the kiln. When to light the fire, someone has to find someone to calculate it. It needs to be an auspicious day and auspicious time.
Generally speaking, on the day when the kiln is lit, sumptuous sacrifices, wine and dishes, and countless firecrackers are prepared to worship the gods.
But now this kind of thing is usually done quietly, and no one dares to do it in a big way. The reason is very simple. The superiors do not allow the promotion of feudal superstition.
As for Zhou Yang and the others, they are even less particular.
On the one hand, because the nature of the units here is different, no one believes this.
Secondly, because Zhou Yang did not have the time, he decided to open the kiln and bake bricks as soon as the coal cakes were dry.
When the villagers heard that Zhou Yang was preparing to bake bricks, they were all very excited. This matter soon became the most discussed hot topic in the village!
For a moment, everyone’s eyes were focused on Nanpo!
