Just after Ding Qi set the direction of the tribe's next step, the tribe came with good news, the group of reindeer had increased by nearly twenty reindeer babies in one day, and most of the female reindeer gave birth to baby reindeer, almost doubling the number of the entire reindeer herd.

This is a good sign for the new year, and it is always a festive thing!

The doctor witch deer even took advantage of this to boast that this was a miracle brought by the Aragami! Ding Qi also went to visit the group of reindeer and baby reindeer, and arranged for Tu and several other slaves to take special care of the group of young reindeer and doe. even took out some refined salt to make light salt water to supplement the nutrients of the mother doe, and the reindeer king also took the opportunity to deduct some of it into his stomach, and he became more and more attached to Ding Qi.

It always expressed great excitement about Tinki's arrival, firstly because of the salt, and secondly, it seemed to like Tinchi from the bottom of its heart. It was going round and round in the herd of fawns, as if to show or show off to Tinch, and look, these are all my children!

If you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools!

At present, the cave kilns used by the tribe are small, especially when firing red bricks and pottery, the output of a time is small, and the manpower and material resources occupied are large, so it is necessary to increase the volume of the two, increase the output, reduce the workload, and increase the production capacity.

The cave kiln is designed by digging down from the ground when the smelting furnace was built during the Qing tribe, which is referred to as the sunken cave kiln. The ash kiln of the Qing tribe can also be called a sunken ash kiln.

In a place where the soil is relatively solid and will not form a waterlogging area, a four-square pit with a length and width of 15 meters and a depth of 10 meters is dug first, the south side is the entrance and exit of the square pit, a slope of five meters wide is dug, the east and west sides are two holes for burning bricks, and the north side is a cave kiln for burning pottery. The excavated earthworks were all piled up not far away and used as raw materials for post-production bricks and pottery.

Then began to arrange people to dig a hole with a height of two meters and a width of one meter at the bottom of the three sides of the pit, that is, the kiln door, and began to dig deep to the left and right sides and the front and top after the kiln door was two meters deep, so as to expand the area of the hole and form the kiln chamber of the circular dome, the diameter of the kiln chamber is seven meters, and the height is about seven and a half meters.

The cave door on the north side is two meters from the bottom of the pit, and there are steps up and down. The kiln chamber is small, with a diameter of three meters and a height of three meters at the top of the kiln, mainly because the number of fired pottery is still far less than the number of bricks, and there is no need to build that large.

After the kiln was built, three flues with a length and width of 40 centimeters were excavated at the position facing the kiln door, that is, the rear of the kiln chamber, and a flue of 50 centimeters in length and width was also dug out in the middle of the kiln roof, commonly known as the chimney. After the flue is marked, it is easier to dig at first, and when it goes deep into the soil, it has to be dug with a shovel attached to a long wooden pole to dig up to the ground.

A 20-centimeter-diameter air inlet was dug on each side of the kiln door, and two large bellows were newly built to supply air to the inside.

The successful manufacture of the bellows is due to the woodworking planer, saw and tenon structure he proposed, as well as the ingenuity and ability of Jing. After Ding Qi explained the principle of bellows to him after returning from the Green Tribe, he spent five days making the first bellows with the help of several people, and after another day of adjustment, they were able to make this bellows in small batches.

This kind of bellows is the same as the bellows used for cooking in rural areas, which is a double-acting piston bellows, except that a bamboo pole about five centimeters thick and connected to the bamboo knot is connected to the outlet, which can direct the wind to the place where it is needed. The effect of the bellows is good, especially the modified bellows, which can be used by two people to push the push rod and drum a large amount of air into the kiln, so as to speed up the charcoal burning speed and lift it quickly

The high temperature in the kiln greatly accelerates the firing speed of bricks or pottery.

However, this sunken cave kiln has a disadvantage, that is, the time to burn a kiln is a bit long. It takes two days to load the kiln each time, two days to leave the kiln, ten days to fire, three days to cool with water or natural cooling, and seventeen days to burn a kiln brick.

But it also has advantages, the number of bricks burned is considerable, a kiln can probably burn seven to eighty thousand ordinary bricks. Moreover, it is able to determine whether the bricks to be fired are green or red bricks based on the amount of air entered. The green brick is the product of anoxic cooling at the end of firing, but Ding Qi does not know, only that it is the product of cooling with water.

Ding Qi had done an experiment before, and when he burned the red bricks, he poured water directly into them when they were all burned red, according to the knowledge he learned on the Internet before crossing over. But after the water vapor disappears and the temperature of the bricks drops, the red bricks are still burned, and only the most corner is the green bricks. The reason is that after splashing water, the kiln is not well closed, and the air can also enter the inside, which is considered natural cooling, and there is no anoxic environment, so it is naturally red brick.

But he changed a way by himself, that is, at the end of the firing, the smoke exhaust port and the air inlet of the kiln were sealed, so that the air did not enter, and an oxygen-deficient environment was formed in the kiln, and green bricks or green tiles could be formed without splashing water, but the cooling time was slightly longer and the kiln was slow.

Therefore, Ding Qi is still ready to make a large number of red bricks and red tiles, and the green bricks or green tiles will be fired according to the needs, such as the blue brick and large tile houses in the countryside in the past, which Ding Qi likes very much.

These three sunken cave kilns, it took the entire tribe nearly 20 days, all the staff went into battle to dig, the kiln body was also reinforced, the kiln door was stacked with red bricks burned before, I believe that after burning once, the whole kiln will be stronger. In order to prevent rainwater from pouring into the pit, Ding Qi also asked Jing and them to build a large wooden shed just to prevent rain.

Burning bricks is a time-consuming and labor-intensive physical work, which requires a lot of manpower and time, plus the time for making and drying bricks in the early stage, it takes about 25 days to produce a kiln brick, and if you look at it from the perspective of making bricks in a cycle, this time will gradually decrease to about 20 days.

But after 20 days of digging the cave, the temperature is getting higher and higher, it has returned to the zero degree line, the snow has begun to melt, and it is estimated that it will melt in about another 20 days, and then the tribe will prepare to go to the location of the original deer tribe and carry out exchange activities with other tribes. They didn't have much time to burn the bricks, so they had to focus on pottery, weapons, and metal tools.

At the same time as the construction of the cave kiln, Ding Qi built a new sunken ash kiln at the site of the original ash kiln, which was the same shape as the ash kiln dug by the Qing tribe. These two kilns were used to make metal weapons and tools.

This time to make metal utensils, in addition to the previous mold, Ding Qi tried to use a sand casting process to make bronze pots, which is the previous method of casting aluminum pots and aluminum spoons in the countryside. At that time, every household used aluminum pots, and many households bought ready-made pots when the pot master entered the village. People who lived through that era more or less know how people cast it, and the key is that the model is made well.

As a last resort, Ding Qi made a clay pot with a round bottom by himself, and used it as a mold for turning sand after firing.

The sand is the mud and sand found by Ding Qi after a large circle around, and after drying and removing miscellaneous sieves a few times, the fine sand is added with water to form green sand and put aside for later use.

Take the clay pot, fill it with wet fine sand, press the porcelain, buckle it upside down on a flat wooden board, gently lift the clay pot, and make the inner model of the pot. Then place the clay pot in a wooden plank trough higher than the clay pot, around

Fill it with wet fine sand, and after compacting, make a hole in the bottom with a wooden stick to serve as an entrance to the cast bronze juice.

Then the clay pot is gently taken out, and then the wooden plank groove is tightly buckled upside down on the inner model, without deviation, otherwise it will cause the uneven thickness of the bronze pot wall or even the production failure.

This is Ding Qi's impression to carry out this kind of sand casting, and he still needs to make improvements to remove the shortcomings of uneven thickness just mentioned.

However, looking at the first bronze pot he made, Ding Qi was still quite satisfied. It's just that the bronze stick at the bottom of the pot makes people look awkward, so I had to take out a multi-functional Swiss Army knife and saw it off with a steel file. That night, Ding Qi ate a fried pork slices with winter bamboo shoots fried in a bronze pot, and the taste seemed to be better than that made in the clay pot before.

Large-scale production was in full swing throughout the tribe, with bronze weapons and tools such as axes, saws, shovels, spears, and bronze nails.

The spear is a weapon that Ding Qi has wanted to make for a long time, and in ancient times, the spear was a weapon that occupied an unshakable position among cold weapons, and it could be used with a knife for perfect attack and defense. Previously, the hunters were allowed to practice bayonet skills, which were also used to accompany the spear. The spear will be one of the three weapons that must be used by the hunters, the other two being the bow and arrow, and the sword. These bronze spears are equipped with long, sturdy wooden poles, and the spear head is covered by an animal skin sleeve, which can be removed and used in battle.

Bronze nails are large and small, long and short, and there are also the kind of grasping nails used on the girders, which are used to make wooden furniture and even build house beams in the future.

In addition, Ding Qi also asked everyone to cast several round pliers similar to crucible pliers, so that it was easy to take out the clay pot containing bronze juice. There was still a lack of fire tongs before, and this kind of crucible tongs is better to use, more convenient and safer when casting.

In terms of pottery, it is mainly the pottery pots, pottery bowls, and pottery spoons used by the tribe, and the larger pottery jars and pottery pots are ready to be exchanged except for daily use, and these pottery are the main force of exchange, hoping to exchange for more resources and manpower.

According to the information obtained from the exchange with the leader of the Heli tribe, there may be as many as ten tribes in this exchange meeting, and the leader of the Blue Tiger promised to recommend the Ding tribe to those who went to exchange power stones. Of course, there may also be some tribes that have come through the three tribes of Greystone, such as the Blackwater tribe, and Ding Qi suspects that the other party will definitely send someone over to participate. According to the description of Xue and Dan, this Blackwater tribe is also a large tribe with strong aggression, so it is still necessary to prepare in advance.

Soon, the snow melted, spring came, the spring of the tribe arrived.

It was the first primordial spring that Tinch had ever experienced, and it was more beautiful and memorable than any he had ever experienced. All kinds of animals come alive, and the sounds of birds and beasts echo in the world around them, giving people a sense of unreality.

The sun is already appearing more and more often than before, and there will be a sun in about three to five days. This makes the birds and beasts who have not been seen for a long time very excited and excited, especially active on the days when the sun comes out.

The spring is hidden among the branches, in the river, on the surface of the lake, among the green leaves of the grass that has just emerged, and in the eyebrows and smiles of the tribesmen.

All this made Ding Qi, who was about to set off, more and more happy and comfortable. This kind of life makes Ding Qi think that this is the life he wants, a city without cement and steel, and no pressure to survive. He is like a free elf, wandering in the breath of spring in primitive society, flying higher and higher, and becoming more and more unrestrained and comfortable.