Chapter 10： fired pottery

After working on the fish pond, Jiang Xuan started digging clay and making pottery.

On this day, he took a rattan basket and bone stalks and walked to the stream.

He shoveled away the soil with a lot of impurities on the surface first with a bone stalk, revealing the grayish-white fine clay underneath.

He dug a whole basket of clay, and then brought the clay to a flat ground beside the stream. He found a relatively flat slate, and placed a lump of clay on it, beating and rubbing it continuously.

"Clap clap clap..."

Clay is sticky, just like dough. The more you beat it, the stickier it becomes, and the smoother the surface becomes.

Afterwards, Jiang Xuan used a piece of bamboo to cut open the beaten clay, knead it into sticks of clay, and pinched a round cake-shaped pot base with his bare hands.

Then, he started making pottery blanks.

He first dipped some water on the base, and began to glue the mud strips to the base, and then stacked them one by one to form the shape of a clay pot.

It didn't take long for a rough clay pot with a diameter of more than 20 centimeters and a height of about 30 centimeters to take shape.

After the rough billet was formed, it was not very round. Jiang Xuan sprinkled a little water on the surface to try to make it rounder.

Finally, he made a lid that matched the clay pot and pinched a handle on the lid.

Chi Shao kept watching. After Jiang Xuan made the lid, she asked curiously, "Can it be fired into a clay pot?"

Actually, she really wanted to say, this is too easy, right? But didn't say it.

Uncaria, Shiloh, and Nanxing also looked at Jiang Xuan, because the process of making clay 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, and then an earthen kiln will be built, and the dried pottery blanks will be put into the earthen kiln and burned for a whole day. , after cooling, it is the real pottery that does not crack."

Chi Shao and the three teenagers couldn't understand the words "dry in the shade", "earth kiln" and "cooling".

The three teenagers who thought I was okay with me just now put away their contempt.

There is no accident with Chishao, if pottery was so easy to make, the pottery of the deer tribe would not be so rare in the past.

In fact, Chishao didn't know that the deer tribe, including many other tribes, thought the pottery was precious because the soil they used to make the pottery was random, and they didn't go through the process of drying in the shade.

They have not built a special earthen kiln, and there is no criterion for the temperature and time when firing pottery. .

On the other hand, Jiang Xuan's memories from his previous life are the crystallization of wisdom that countless generations of people have continuously improved and recorded. The success rate of making pottery in this way is naturally much higher.

In the end, Jiang Xuan made two heavy pots, two pots, and ten pots, and put them all in the corner of the bamboo house to dry in the shade.

The reason why it is placed in the bamboo house is that when it is dry in the shade, it is best to avoid the wind and no strong light. When it naturally emits water and dries, the pottery blank is not easily deformed.

This step is very important. If the pottery blank is not dry enough, the water vapor contained in the pottery clay will expand when fired, causing the pottery to break.

By the time these pottery blanks were finished, more than half a day had passed.

Chishao and the three juveniles watched for a while, then went hunting, fishing, and digging plant tubers. Winter is approaching, and food storage is more important.

Jiang Xuan ate a bit of fish and grilled two pieces of Huang Jing to eat.

Huangjing is also one of the herbs used by tribesmen, and it is widely distributed in the mountains of the Southern Wilderness.

Unlike wild ginger, which has a spicy taste, Huang Jing is slightly sweet after being roasted, and can be used to satisfy hunger. Tribes often dig it up as food.

After eating Huang Jing, Jiang Xuan opened a bamboo tube, which contained a jar of coagulated animal blood. He added some water to the bamboo tube, stirred it with bamboo chips, and then roasted the bamboo tube on the charcoal fire.

The green bamboo tube was burnt to black, and the animal blood inside was boiled with water.

Jiang Xuan opened the bamboo tube and ate the animal blood inside.

Since there is no salt, eating a large amount of mammalian meat and animal blood has become an important way to supplement salt.

Chishao and the others can drink raw blood directly when killing their prey without changing their faces, but Jiang Xuan is a little bit unacceptable, so he uses the method of adding water to a bamboo tube and boils the animal blood before eating, which is easier to accept.

After he was full, Jiang Xuan went to dig clay again, this time to build an earthen kiln.

In fact, ordinary soil can be used to build an earthen kiln, but ordinary earth is easy to crack when the kiln is fired. Jiang Xuan wants to use the earthen kiln for a long time, and it is better to build it with clay.

There are several ways to build an earthen kiln. Jiang Xuan chose a horizontal flame kiln that is simple to build and can fire multiple pieces of pottery at one time.

The front of the horizontal flame kiln is the stove door, the middle is the hearth, and at the end there is a cylindrical vent erected at a 90-degree angle.

When the stove door starts to burn, the air is heated and circulated upwards, passes through the long hearth, and is discharged from the cylindrical vent.

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 a rattan basket for transport.

Afterwards, 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, the stickiness and toughness of the clay would be greatly improved.

After the clay was stomped evenly, he began to build a kiln.

The process of building a kiln is very simple. First, a "U"-shaped mud wall is built, about half a meter high, and then dense wooden sticks are placed on the mud wall, and then the top can be capped with clay.

A gap is left at the end of the "U"-shaped mud wall, and then a cylindrical vent is built, and the end of the vent is about twice as high as the main body of the earthen kiln.

After it is built, it roughly looks like this "▄▍".

Finally, because the furnace of the earth kiln 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 re-blocked after the pottery blank is placed, sealed with mud, and opened after the pottery is fired.

When the earth kiln was finished, the sun was about to set. Jiang Xuan washed his hands and looked at the Hengyan kiln he built. He felt that there was no problem, and returned to the bamboo house satisfied.

Red Peony, Uncaria, Loach, and Nanxing have returned. Today, they caught some fish, caught a few bamboo chickens, and dug up a lot of edible taro, Huang Jing, and sweet potatoes.

For the next seven days, Jiang Xuan, Chi Shao and others went hunting, fishing, and digging plant tubers every day to store food for the winter.

During this period, they occasionally caught some relatively large prey. The meat of these prey can be eaten or hung above the fire to be smoked and dried. Animal skin mattress.

After seven days, the pottery blanks were dried in the shade, and the earth kiln was almost dry after being exposed to the wind and the sun.

Jiang Xuan immediately opened the kiln and fired pottery!

He carried half of the pottery blanks to the side of the kiln, buckled the pottery blanks upside down from the side opening, and put them into the hearth of the earthen kiln one by one, then plugged the gaps on the side of the earthen kiln and sealed them with mud. .

He also found a large amount of dead bamboo and dry wood, stacked them beside the earth kiln, took fire from the fire pit in the bamboo house, and started to burn the kiln.

"Crackling, crackling, crackling..."

In the earthen kiln, the flames quickly ignited, and the firepower was fierce.

"Huhuhu..."

At the cylindrical vent, the tail of the fire is high and low, 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 the others came to take a look from time to time out of curiosity.

He kept watch from day to night, until the moon was empty, then he stopped burning 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 decrease.

That night, Jiang Xuan had a beautiful dream. He dreamed that he had created a large tribe. The large tribe had a population of over 100,000, rich materials and a happy life...

Early the next morning, Jiang Xuan couldn't wait to come to the earth kiln and touched the earth kiln. The furnace wall was still warm.

"Open the kiln!"

Jiang Xuan rubbed his hands excitedly, 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 kiln, revealing pieces of brick-red pottery.

The first thing I took out was a heavy clay pot. There were no cracks in the pot, and the lid was intact. The firing was very successful.

"Dangdangdang..."

Jiang Xuan tapped the side of the pot with a wooden stick, and the pot made a crisp sound.

"It's well fired, we can use this clay pot to make soup in the future!"

Jiang Xuan laughed loudly. His biggest purpose in making pottery was to make soup, and now this purpose has been achieved.

"let me see."

Chi Shao took the pottery from Jiang Xuan's hand. It was very heavy. Although it wasn't particularly round, it was a real pottery!

"Xuan, you are amazing! You did it in one go!"

Chi Shao carefully placed the pot on the ground and praised Jiang Xuan from the bottom of her heart.

Uncaria, Shiloh, and Nanxing also cast their admiring glances at Jiang Xuan.

Jiang Xuan took out another pottery pot and five pottery bowls from the hearth.

The pottery pots were also fired very successfully, but for the pottery bowls, two of the five were cracked, and only three were intact.

Jiang Xuan handed the three pottery bowls to the three teenagers and said, "The pottery pot is used to cook soup, and the pottery pot is used to hold vegetables. There is one pottery bowl per person. These three will be given to you first."

"Really?"

"Xuan, you are so kind!"

"Great, we have pottery!"

The three teenagers hugged the pottery bowl excitedly, their excitement was beyond words, and they wished they could kiss Jiang Xuan.

Based on the firing experience this time, Jiang Xuan guessed that the thicker the pottery, the easier it may be to fire successfully, because it is not easy to crack.

On the contrary, the thin pottery like the pottery bowl is easy to burn and crack, so only three of the five bowls were successfully fired.

The success of the first batch of pottery gave Jiang Xuan great confidence. He also took out the other half of the pottery blank from the bamboo house, put it into the earthen kiln, sealed it, and set it on fire again.

This time it went even better. A day later, he got another clay pot, a pottery pot, and four pottery bowls. Only one pottery bowl cracked.

With the pottery, Jiang Xuan finally doesn't have to eat barbecue every day.

He boiled a pot of fish soup in a new clay pot. When he drank the steaming fish soup, his eyes filled with excitement and a feeling of happiness.

He never thought before that a sip of hot soup can make people feel happy.

After firing the pottery, Jiang Xuan spent a few days to build two small bamboo houses, one was built near the creek to the left of the bamboo house for bathing.

The other one was built on the right side of the bamboo house, a little further away from the bamboo house. He dug a pit in it and built bamboo rafts to make a dry toilet.

Taking a bath and going to the toilet is a very personal thing. Jiang Xuan came from the soul of the later generations, so he couldn't be as unrestrained as Uncaria and the others.

Chi Shao was the first to accept the bathroom and toilet. She likes this independent space.

The three teenagers didn't have any distaste for this either. After these days of contact, UU reading www. uukanshu. com They have already worshipped Jiang Xuan.

As long as Jiang Xuan built something, they all subconsciously thought it was a good thing, and they were all willing to try and use it.

Even chopsticks, they began to slowly accept it, because after having the ceramic bowl, they can only use chopsticks to put hot dishes into their beloved ceramic bowl.

Jiang Xuan uses his own efforts to continuously improve his life in this world, and has influenced the people around him.

…

Busy days always pass quickly. In the blink of an eye, autumn is gone, winter is coming, and snowflakes are floating in the sky.

In autumn, they caught a lot of prey, and some of the prey had thicker fur, which was peeled off. After drying, the fat was scraped off, and it could be made into animal skins to keep out the cold.

At Jiang Xuan's suggestion, they added a lot of plant ash to the water, and then put the dried animal skins down, soaking it for three days and three nights.

When these animal skins were washed and dried, they were pleasantly surprised to find that the animal skins soaked in grass and wood ash water were much softer than all the animal skins they had worn before.

This discovery made them very happy, and they even took the old animal skin coat they were wearing and soaked it again, because if the animal skin coat was too hard, it would be easy to get wind and not warm enough.

This winter, they have houses, fire pits, food, and soft animal skins to wear, and they can even drink steaming broth.

This is much better than when they used to be in the deer tribe.

The snow was getting heavier and heavier, and the earth soon turned white. Most of the animals hid in their caves and stayed up until the winter passed.

After it snowed, Jiang Xuan and others spent most of the time in the bamboo hut. Because it was too cold outside, their food and firewood were well prepared, so there was no need to go out and suffer.