After finishing working on the fish pond, Jiang Xuan began to dig clay and make pottery.
On this day, he took a rattan basket and a bone bag and walked to the creek.
He first used a bone shovel to shovel away the dirt with more impurities on the surface, revealing the fine gray-white clay underneath.
He dug a whole basket of clay, then took the clay to a flat ground next to the creek, found a relatively flat stone slab, put a ball of clay on it, and kept beating and kneading it.
"Pa bang bang..."
Clay is sticky, just like dough. The more you pat it, the stickier it becomes and the smoother the surface becomes.
Later, Jiang Xuan used a piece of bamboo to cut the beaten clay into pieces, then kneaded the clay into strips, and then used his bare hands to shape a round cake-shaped clay pot base.
Then, he began to make pottery clay.
He first dipped some water on the base and began to glue the mud strips to the base, then stacked them one after another to form the shape of a clay pot.
Before long, a rough clay pot with a diameter of about 20 centimeters and a height of about 30 centimeters was formed.
After the rough blank was formed, it was not very round. Jiang Xuan sprinkled a little water on the surface and tried to make it more round.
Finally, he made a lid to match the clay pot, and a handle was pinched on the lid.
Chi Shao had been watching from the side. When Jiang Xuan made the lid, she asked curiously: "Can it be fired into a clay pot?"
In fact, she wanted to say, isn't this too easy? But she didn't say it.
Uncaria, Stone Loach and Nanxing also looked at Jiang Xuan, because the process of making pottery pots was too simple, giving people the feeling that I could do it.
Jiang Xuandao: "This is just the initial shape. After that, it needs to be placed in a cool place for seven or eight days to let it dry naturally. Then an earthen kiln must be built, and the dried pottery must be put into the earthen kiln and burned for a whole day.
, only when it is cooled and has no cracks can it be considered real pottery."
Chi Shao and the three teenagers couldn't understand what they heard. They couldn't understand the words "drying in the shade", "earth kiln" and "cooling".
The three teenagers who thought I could have sex just now immediately stopped their contemptuous attitude.
Red peony root is no surprise. If pottery was so easy to make, the pottery of the Lu tribe would not be so rare in the past.
In fact, Chi Shao didn't know that the reason why the Lu tribe, including many other tribes, considered pottery valuable was because the soil they used to make pottery was random, and they did not specifically search for pottery clay, nor did they go through the process of drying in the shade.<
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They did not build a special earth kiln, and there was no standard for the temperature and time when firing pottery. They could only rely on their own exploration. As a result, the yield rate of fired pottery was extremely low, which naturally made it precious.
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Looking back at Jiang Xuan, the memories he left behind in his previous life are the crystallization of wisdom that has been continuously improved and recorded by countless generations of people. The success rate of making pottery using this method is naturally much higher.
Finally, Jiang Xuan made two thick rough clay pots, two rough clay pots, and ten rough clay bowls, and put them all in the corner of the bamboo house to dry in the shade.
The reason why it is placed in a bamboo house is that it is best not to be exposed to wind or strong light when drying. Let it naturally emit moisture and dry naturally, so that the pottery base will not be easily deformed.
This step is very important. If the pottery is not dry enough, the water vapor contained in the clay will expand during firing, causing the pottery to crack.
By the time these pottery blocks were finished, most of the day had passed.
Chi Shao and the three teenagers watched for a while, then went hunting, fishing and digging plant tubers. As winter was approaching, it was more important to store food.
Jiang Xuan ate some fish and roasted two pieces of Polygonatum japonica to eat.
Polygonatum is also one of the herbs used by tribal people and is widely distributed in the mountains of the Southern Wilderness.
Unlike the pungent wild ginger, Polygonatum odorata is slightly sweet when roasted and can be used to satisfy hunger. Tribal people often dig it up and eat it as food.
After eating Huangjing, Jiang Xuan opened a bamboo tube, which contained a jar of solidified animal blood. He added some water to the bamboo tube, stirred it with bamboo slices, and then placed the bamboo tube on the charcoal fire to bake.
The green bamboo tube was burnt black, and the animal blood mixed with water inside was boiling.
Jiang Xuan opened the bamboo tube and ate the animal blood inside bit by bit.
Since there is no salt, eating a lot of mammal meat and animal blood has become an important way to supplement salt.
Red Peony and the others were able to drink the raw blood directly when killing prey without changing their expressions, but Jiang Xuan found it difficult to accept it, so he used a method of adding water to a bamboo tube to cook the animal blood before eating it, which was easier to accept.p>
After eating, Jiang Xuan dug clay again, this time to build a clay kiln.
In fact, ordinary soil can be used to build an earth kiln, but ordinary earth is easy to crack when the kiln is fired. If Jiang Xuan wants to use the earth kiln for a long time, it is better to build it with clay.
There are several ways to build an earthen kiln. Jiang Xuan chose the Hengyan kiln, which is simple to build and can fire multiple pieces of pottery at one time.
There is a stove door in front of the Hengyan kiln, a furnace in the middle, and a cylindrical vent standing at an angle of 90 degrees at the end.
When the stove door starts to light the fire, the air is heated and flows upward, passing through the long furnace and discharged from the cylindrical vent. The principle is similar to that of the rural earth stove, except that the lower part is strip-shaped.
Jiang Xuan chose a relatively flat place in the open space next to the bamboo house. After cleaning the ground, he dug a lot of clay by the creek and packed it in rattan baskets.
Then, he piled the clay into a pile, poured some water into the middle with a bamboo tube, and then stepped on the clay with his feet. After stepping on the clay, both the stickiness and toughness of the clay would be greatly improved.
After the clay was trampled evenly, he began to build the kiln.
The process of building a kiln is very simple. First, build a "U"-shaped mud wall, about half a meter high, and then put dense wooden sticks on the mud wall, and then cap it with clay.
Leave a gap at the end of the "u" shaped mud wall, and then build a cylindrical vent. The end of the vent is about twice as high as the main body of the earthen kiln.
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After it is built, it will look roughly like this "▄▍".
Finally, because the earth kiln furnace is relatively long, it is very inconvenient to place the pottery blanks and take out the finished pottery. It is necessary to cut a semicircular gap on the side of the earth kiln.
This gap will be plugged again after the pottery is put in, sealed with mud, and then opened again after the pottery is fired.
When the earthen kiln was finished, the sun was almost setting. Jiang Xuan washed his hands and looked at the Hengyan kiln he had built. He felt that there was nothing wrong with it and returned to the bamboo house with satisfaction.
Red peony root, Uncaria, Stone Loach, and Nanxing have returned. They caught some fish today, caught a few bamboo chickens, and dug up a lot of edible taro, polygonatum, and yam.
In the next seven days, Jiang Xuan, Chi Shao and others went hunting, fishing, digging plant tubers and storing food for the winter every day.
During this period, they occasionally caught some relatively large prey. The meat of these prey could be eaten or hung over the fire pit to be smoked and dried. The fur was peeled off, stretched out to dry, and used to make warm animal skin clothing and clothing.
Animal skin mattress.
After seven days, the pottery was completely dried in the shade, and the earthen kiln was almost dry after being exposed to wind and sun.
Jiang Xuan immediately opened the kiln and fired pottery!
He carried half of the pottery to the side of the kiln, turned the pottery upside down from the side opening, and put it into the furnace of the kiln one by one. Then he plugged the gap on the side of the kiln and sealed it with mud.
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He also found a large amount of dead bamboo and dry firewood, piled them next to the earth kiln, took fire from the fire pit of the bamboo house, and started to burn the kiln.
"Crack, crackle, crackle..."
In the earth kiln, the flames quickly started burning, and the firepower was very strong.
"Huhuhu..."
At the cylindrical vent, the tail of the fire rises and falls, as if there is a blower below.
The next step is to wait patiently.
Jiang Xuan was guarding the fire here, and Chi Shao and others came over curiously to take a look from time to time.
He kept watch from day to night, until the moon was empty, then he stopped lighting the fire and went back to sleep.
The temperature in the earth kiln is still very high, and it will take a night to slowly come down.
That night, Jiang Xuan had a sweet dream. He dreamed that he had created a large tribe with a population of more than 100,000, abundant supplies, and a happy life...
Early the next morning, Jiang Xuan couldn't wait to come to the earthen kiln and touched the earthen kiln. The wall of the furnace was still warm.
"Open the kiln!"
Jiang Xuan rubbed his hands excitedly, and Chi Shao and others also ran over, waiting for Jiang Xuan to open the kiln.
Jiang Xuan used a sharp wooden stick to reopen the gap on the side of the earthen kiln, revealing pieces of pottery that had been fired into brick red.
The first thing I took out was a heavy clay pot. There were no cracks in the pot, including the lid. It was fired successfully.
"Dangdangdang..."
Jiang Xuan tapped the side of the clay pot with a wooden stick, and the pot made a crisp sound.
"The firing is very good. We can use this clay pot to make soup in the future!"
To be continued...