Chapter 238 Glassmaking (Part-1)

As a freedman turned slave, Azijak naturally yearned for freedom and his new appointment was undoubtedly a giant leap in that direction.

It was customary and an unspoken law in Adhania to free a slave of high status or one who earned his master a lot of money looking after his business after around a decade of service unless he committed any heinous crimes, and so Azihak naturally got to work, making the orders for the scissors, planning the expansion of the business and etc, eager to get back his freedom

But those were for later, as Alexander now hopped to another nearby very large shed, this one had been converted from a blacksmith's forge into making glass.

As a metallurgist. Alexander certainly knew the in-depth process of making glass with the most interesting thing about glass being that it was neither a solid nor a liquid but an amorphous solid, which was a state between those two states of matter.

This was because the atoms in glass were not ordered like a solid but also could not flow like a liquid, giving it the nickname superliquid- that is a liquid that was solid.

Alexandre, of course, was not just taught the theory of glass but as a practical course, he was once given the task of designing a factory with the capacity of making ten thousand pieces per day of any glassware of his choosing.

And thus for the next week, every day after class, he had to go to a nearby glass foundry and see how they ran their operation, what equipment they used, how they used it, how each of the machines were connected to the next relevant machine, what the workers there specifically do and how the end product was finally produced.

The glass manufacturing plant that Alexander chose made a variety of thing, primarily they made bottles of various sizes which was fully automated, but also beautiful art pieces such as intricate paper weight and showpieces that could be custom ordered and thus had to be handmade.

And over the week, Alexander basically had an industrial idea about how glass was made and then manipulated to give shape.

And after the week-long visit ended, he had to draw the full plant layout of his factory on a software, and list the name, model number, and quantity of every single piece of equipment he would have to use, ranging from huge, complex furnaces to the most simple glass blower, which was just a hollow steel rod.

He was then required to design their placements of the factory floor properly and sequentially, estimate the total equipment cost, and then estimate the total factory setup cost, from land, and labor to raw materials and even electricity costs.

And Alexander was then expected to finish writing this entire report just in the two-day weekend he was given and those seven days were hell for him.

(P.S. Author- Yes, that was me.)

But at the very end, Alexander could say confidently he knew the basics of glass making,

And though such basics had not helped Alexander in his previous life as he majored in steel production, in this life, it swore to be very useful.

As Alexander approached the shed, he found this shed to be much quieter than her next-door neighbor, the paper maker.

"Master, please," Takfiz gestured as the two guards guarding the door opened it to let their master inside.

And Alexander and co quickly entered.

The inside was bright, courtesy of the large windows on all sides, and inhabited by less than twenty men, all working away.

This number was certainly on the low side as the similarly sized paper-making shop had five times the number.

And the reason for this was obvious, glassmaking needed much more skill and was much harder to master.

So less qualified personnel was available.

"Master, welcome," The leader of this small group, a man named Gajopk quickly came forward to greet Alexander and after the usual small talk, Alexander got to the meat of the issue.

"So, how goes the glassmaking?" Alexander asked expectantly.

"Fantastic! Fantastic!" The slightly short man with a gorgeous mustache heavily nodded as he said so, praising Alexander exaggeratedly as he did, "My lord's glass-blowing technique is the greatest invention of this millennium. It has changed glassmaking forever!"

Alexander only gave a light smile at the sincere praise, thinking that the traditional way Adhania made glass was similar to the likes of ancient Egyptians or Babylonians.

They look sand or quartz and mixed it with plant ash, which was just the stuff that would be produce every time firewood was burnt, and then heated the mixture to a fairly low temperature of around seven hundred and fifty (750) centigrade in a clay pot, until it formed a ball of molten material.

This material, called faience, was then cooled, crushed, and sometimes mixed with coloring agents to make it red or blue. After coloring the glass would be funneled into a cylindrical container and heated a second time at a higher temperature.

Once the container cooled, it would be broken and the thick glass ingots that formed during the cooling process were removed.

This glass was very expensive and impure, looking like colored beads or marbles instead of the clear, transparent look one conjures up when one thinks of the word glass as they had not learned to separate the impurities from the sand like various metal ores that gave them a dull color, which was why they preferred to always color their glass.

And because of its impurity, and because it was really hard to shape the glass without the glass blowing tubes, it was really only affordable to the ultra-rich, who used them for window panels by putting multiple glass pieces together, used as small mirrors and even worn as jewelry like brackets and necklaces.

In fact, Alexander's neighbor, the Kuleef province was actually the glass-making capital of the country and even in this part of the world, allowing it to become the third most prosperous province of Adhania.

They made colored glass used in mosaics, inlaid into furniture, or formed into figurines.

Many colorful amulets were also created using semi-precious stone and small pieces of polished glass set into gold and embellished with enamels.

And the decorative glass pieces and figurines they made of Ramuh and other such gods, which were sometimes carefully carved to include details such as facial features, hair, and clothing were the region's specialty and a major source of income.

An income Alexander was deliberately trying to take a chunk off.

The Kuleefians also used another, more advanced method to make larger objects which was called core forming.

In this process, first, a mold would be made of clay and then wrapped in thin tubes of molten glass.

Then the mold would be heated as each tube of glass was added so the pieces would fuse around it.

Sometimes metal tools would be used to create patterns in the molten glass such as zig-zags and scales.

And once the vessel was completely encased, the outer glass would be polished smooth and the clay mold scraped out.

These intricately designed glass vessels were made to hold oils and perfumes, inlaid with metals that formed designs in the translucent material and were the exclusive possessions of the uber elite.

The olive oil that Mikaya was using came from such a bottle, its worth being thousands of times more than all the olive oil she will ever use in her lifetime.

In this way, glass often had the same value as semi-precious stones, its value only diminished by its problems of fragility, as a glass vase or figurine was very likely to be broken in transport.

But Alexander had a plan to solve this problem, by simply forming the glass into small, thick ingots and moving it with minimal threat of breakage and then selling it to artisans, who could melt them down and form the glass as they desired.

But before he could carry out his masterful plan, he first needed to make the glass.

And for this, he had set up this foundry inside a blacksmith's forge and gathered the raw materials.

First was the sand, more accurately the quartz, that was crushed and sieved multiple times to try and remove as much impurity as possible.

Then came the sodium carbonate from wood ash which was used as a flux.

Flux is a substance added to lower the melting point of another substance.

In this case, it was added to the quartz to lower the melting temperature of the glass from a mind-boggling two thousand degrees Celsius, (2000) to a more manageable twelve hundred (1200).

And at last came the limestone, which, while also acting as a secondary flux, primarily was used to prevent the glass from becoming water soluble and to increase its chemical structure by various complex means, making the glass, for lack of a better word 'better'.

These three ingredients mixed in the seventy-twenty-ten (70% quartz, 20% wood ash, and 10% limestone) proportion, along with traces of ground metal oxides like lead or iron for color, and thus came Alexander's glass.