Having already held a meeting and dividing the work of extracting oil from wooden barrels, Ding Qi began to work on the second task, which was to study how to make paper.

When Ding Qi was in school, he learned that Chinese papermaking was improved by Cai Lun in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. He used bark, hemp and cloth, fishing nets and other raw materials, through frustration, pounding, frying, drying and other processes to make paper, is the origin of modern paper. This kind of paper, which is easy to find raw materials, is very cheap, and the quality has also improved, and it is gradually becoming more popular. In order to commemorate Cai Lun's achievements, later generations called this kind of paper "Cai Hou paper".

And now, what Tinch is going to do is make paper, and he has been tormented crazy by the days without paper. Of course, this is not the main reason for his papermaking, the main reason is to facilitate the recording and dissemination of knowledge.

At present, the only things that the tribe has are some broken fishing nets and sawdust, and hemp is not available for the time being, so the papermaking materials that can be considered are mainly tree bark, reeds on the edge of the South Lake, weeds, and straw left over after the future rice harvest, including the aforementioned broken fishing nets and sawdust. As for bamboo, Ding Qi didn't think about it for the time being, it was too difficult to decompose and not good for pulping.

When I was a child, there was a paper mill a kilometer from the village, and the surrounding villagers would transport unused wheat straw, corn stalks and even tree bark to sell a few pocket money to supplement the family. When Ding Qi is fine, he will take a few friends to the paper mill to dig earthworms and go back to the river by the village to fish.

As a frequent visitor, he has an idea of the environment of the paper mill. The straws, bark and other materials that have been piled up outside for a long time, lime, the boiler workshop that continuously transports the straws inside, the mud piles of the straws transported from the workshop, and the pulp pond that exudes a pungent smell are all childhood scenes in Ding Qi's memory.

Coupled with the dissemination of handmade papermaking knowledge on the CCTV record channel, Ding Dxing felt that he had learned a lot of theoretical knowledge.

So, he was ready to use the knowledge he had to start making paper.

A few people were arranged to collect broken fishing nets and sawdust, another five or six people were arranged to cut reeds and weeds by the South Lake to dry, and some people took bronze shovels to collect bark in the relocated forest farm. Arrange for the flower to find the largest clay pot in the tribe, and arrange for the thorn to make a bamboo grate or wooden grate according to the style of the largest clay pot found by the flower, and a steamer made of wood.

Finally, Ding Qi took a few people to a place away from the rice fields and horse farms by the South Lake, and selected a site to prepare for the construction of a paper field.

Because papermaking is very polluting and produces a lot of wastewater, Ding Qi can only choose a slightly higher rocky beach and a place where wild grass does not grow as a paper factory, not too far from the lake, and it is convenient to get water.

When the site was selected, it began to arrange for people to dig a pit in the flat ground with bricks, and build a large pond with bricks, which was used to make pulp. Not far away, a shed was built for cooking the raw materials for pulping, a wooden shed for storing lime, and wooden planks were used to shelter from the wind and rain.

Speaking of lime, you may have guessed how Ding Qi was going to make pulp. That's right, it's lime pulping. This pulping method is the pulping method summarized by Ding Qi according to the pictures in his memory. Ding Qi didn't know if there was any chemical reaction going on, and he vaguely thought that it was the alkalinity of the lime that accelerated the pulping of the fibers in the plant. At the same time, lime also plays a role in bleaching and removing impurities.

What Ding Qi is going to do now is to conduct a small batch experiment, using reeds and weeds that are better pulped to make straw paper, which is also the simplest paper product. As long as this can be done, the paper obtained from pulping bark, hemp and wood will be better in the next step.

Some people are digging pits and building ponds, while others are starting to use guillotines to cut the reeds left over from the previous reeds into 10-centimeter-long sections, and then cut some dry weeds and mix the two materials together. The forage is then washed in a large clay jar to remove some impurities such as dirt and stones. Then sprinkle some quicklime powder into the washed grass and stir well.

Since it was the first time to do it, he didn't know how many proportions were right, so Ding Qi was ready to start at the lowest level, that is, the ratio of lime weight to forage weight was 1:10. The stirred forage is set aside to ferment for a period of time, using the heat generated by quicklime for natural fermentation.

Then start boiling water and grass in a clay pot, cover the steamer, and steam slowly. In the process of cooking, it is necessary to keep stirring, so that the material can be fully cooked, and the pulp can be obtained quickly, shortening the pulping time. Ding Qi didn't have a score in his mind about the specific steaming time, so he could only observe while steaming, but it would take three hours to prepare.

While he watched here, Ding Qi asked a few people to go to Butterfly to get back the mat she had arranged for her to make, and to find Jing Na to arrange a large wooden barrel for him to make. The wooden barrel is used as a pulp pool for making paper, and the mat is used as a paper curtain.

There are not many paper curtains, only five, mainly because the bamboo strips with only three hair thicknesses are really difficult to make. In order to obtain these bamboo strips, Ding Qi specially made a basket-making tool, a scraping machine.

On a bronze plate, Tinch carved out five holes, which he had drilled little by little with the versatile Swiss Army knife in his hand. The five holes go from big to small, from five millimeters to the last two millimeters, but it takes a lot of work.

Bamboo strips are threaded through the largest holes, and the tribes larger than the holes are removed in the process of extraction. Then thread it through the hole underneath and pull it out to continue removing the excess. And so on until the target bamboo strip is reached. This process took too long, not to mention the time it took to break the bamboo strips before.

The bamboo strips were made, and the butterflies began to weave the mats, that is, the paper curtains. This has extremely high requirements for the rope, that is, the rope cannot be too thick, only about a millimeter thin, but Qiao'er's group of people are tossed and dizzy. Thankfully, they finally completed the task.

With rope and bamboo strips, it is much faster for butterflies to weave paper curtains. It is 60 centimeters long and 50 centimeters wide, a total of five.

All the tools are ready, just wait for the pulp to be made.

The steamed pulp has not yet been finally formed. At this time, the pulp needs to be taken out of the pot for rinsing, and some impurities and raw meal in it need to be removed to avoid affecting the quality of the finished product. After rinsing, the pulp is fished out and put into the stone mortar for mortar pounding, so that the fibers in the pulp are fully separated, and the pulping work is completed at this time.

Ding Qi calculated that the steaming time was twice as long as the expected three hours, reaching six hours, not including the rinsing and mortar that followed. Mortar pounding is simple, rock they chisel out of the stone mortar and stone hammer, two people work together or one person uses the principle of leverage to carry out mortar pounding.

The prepared pulp is presented

Yellowish-white, slightly yellowish, not completely white, indicating that the amount of lime in it is still a little less, and you should increase it more next time you do it, and try the bleaching effect. However, Ding Qi is doing this for the first time, and it is good to be able to achieve such an effect.

Newton famously said, "The reason why I see far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants!" ”

Well, Ding Qi is successful because he has learned, seen and understood before. As long as the principle is known, the process is just broken down to achieve the goal. Just like the nature class he had taken before, the teacher talked about how to use waste newspapers to make paper, and that experiment was the lesson that made Ding Qi really understand the principles of papermaking.

Everything is ready, only the east wind is owed.

And whether Ding Qi is ultimately successful in papermaking depends on whether he can kick out the last kick.

While Ding Qi was preparing the pulp, another group of oil extractors received good news, after pressing the tung oil powder, the rich grease contained in it had seeped out under the joint squeezing of copper and stone, and merged together and flowed down the stone trough into the clay pot below.

The good news also inspired Ding Qi's fighting spirit, and he vowed to make the paper in one fell swoop.

The day after the pulp was made, Ding Qi, who had a good night's rest, took a group of people to the paper mill and poured prepared well water into the large wooden barrel made by Jing. The well water is clear, there are no impurities in it, and it will not affect the quality of the paper produced.

Then, Ding Qi poured a certain amount of pulp into the wooden barrel little by little, stirring while pouring until it was evenly mixed, and the pulp blending work was over. It's just that whether it succeeds or not, it also depends on the adhesion of the pulp. Ding Qi put his hand in first, and then scooped it up, looking at the distribution of pulp on his hand, Ding Qi was slightly disappointed. The pulp is still a little coarse, not delicate enough, and contains some raw meal that has not been thoroughly cooked. Moreover, Ding Qi's hand stayed in it for a short time, but the amount on his hand was not much, a thin layer. It seems that the amount of pulp is not enough, and the time of the paper curtain in the pulp barrel should also be increased.

But this is only a performance in the hand, and you will know what the copied paper looks like after you can use the paper curtain.

Throw a fist-sized ball of pulp into it again and continue to stir until it is smooth. Then Ding Qi picked up the paper curtain beside him, took a deep breath, and tightened the paper curtain with both hands, and sank it into the pulp bucket with his head down. After a slight pause, Ding Qi tilted and quickly dispensed the water, and the pulp adhered to the paper curtain during the water dispensing of the paper curtain, forming a paper layer about two millimeters thick.

The water quickly drained down the gap on the curtain, Ding Qi put the curtain face down on a wooden board, gently stirred the end of the curtain, slowly removed the paper on it, spread it on the board, and waited for it to dry.

After completing this piece of paper, the breath that Ding Qi had inhaled before was slowly spit out by him, and the mood that should have been excited gradually calmed down, giving Ding Qi a sense of relief.

No longer staying, Ding Qi once again submerged the water curtain into the pulp bucket, swung left and right, swayed back and forth, stopped and copied twice, quickly went straight up and down the water, and another piece of paper containing a lot of water was formed on the water curtain. Drain the water, place the curtain face down again, spread that piece of paper on the other board, and wait for it to finally dry.