After eating lunch, Zhou Zhi went to the firewood room to take a look at the messy pile of goose feathers. Fortunately, the geese have a lot of feathers, and those small goose feathers can also be used, Zhou Zhi put them together, weighed them, and was secretly happy, "It's okay, it's enough." ”

Then Zhou Zhi went to Daddy Zhang's house to borrow an axe, two knives that Daddy Zhang didn't use for castrations, and some iron nails.

Many elms and willows were planted in the backyard of the Zhou family, and in the spring of this year, one of the willow trees happened to dry up and die for some reason. It's just right to be cut down and used for planks.

The willow tree was about half a foot in diameter, and Zhou Zhi cut it down with the help of an axe.

Peel the willow trunk with a kitchen knife, scrape it clean, and cut it into pieces about one and a half feet long and one foot long with an axe. The willow segments are slowly cut into planks about an inch thick with a kitchen knife. Finally, the planks are also scraped clean with a kitchen knife.

It doesn't take much effort to do it, but when you scrape the boards, you have to take your time and make them very smooth and free of burrs.

More than 30 planks were cleaned up, and two large rectangular planks about a foot long and a foot wide were made.

The materials are almost ready, and there is still a lack of a wooden pole, and the best wooden pole is jujube wood. Zhou Zhi didn't have a jujube tree at home, so he thought of the cemetery in the west of the village.

There is a large cemetery in the west of Baiyue Village, where poor people are buried when they die. After a long time, some graves don't even know whose family they belong to, so this cemetery has a name "mass grave".

In the mass grave, the one-man tall pine grass is overgrown with thorns, but there are many jujube trees of uneven thickness growing in it. Because there is no one to manage it, every time the dates are red circles, some children in the village risk being scratched by thorns to drop all the dates.

Zhou Zhi braved the light rain with an axe in his hand and quickly came to the mass grave, split the thorns, and found a straight jujube wood. After cutting and peeling the jujube wood, the jujube wood became a wooden pole more than three feet long and two inches in diameter.

Weigh it in your hand, it's just right. Hurriedly returning home, my sister Zhou Luyun was standing in the courtyard, looking at the wooden planks that Zhou Zhi had sorted out with a puzzled expression.

"Xiaozhi, what the hell are you going to do here?"

"Sister, you'll know later, Xiao Zhi wants to try to make something that can make my sister cook on the fire in the future with little effort." Zhou Zhi smiled slyly and sold Guan Zidao.

Seeing that Zhou Zhi's body was already soaked, but he was in high spirits, although Zhou Luyun felt sorry for his younger brother, it was not easy to call his younger brother into the house. Secretly, I thought that this brother was getting more and more strange, and I wanted to see what he could come up with.

Zhou Luyun no longer paid attention to Zhou Zhi, and went to the backyard with a dustpan to feed the chickens.

Zhou Zhi was busy again. First, a rectangular wooden box three feet long, one and a half feet high, and one foot wide was nailed out of those planks. The top side of the cuboid wooden box cannot be blocked for the time being.

A small hole is opened on the front and back sides of the wooden box, and then a relatively thin piece of wood is used as the door leaf and hung on the hole to become a "living door".

Use the two large wooden planks to make a splint, arrange the goose feathers neatly, and fix them all around the splint with cow tendon ropes. This is what the post-secular call is "cat ears", which is actually a piston.

Then make a round hole in the splint that is exactly the same diameter as the jujube bar. Put the splint gently into the wooden box from the top side of the wooden box, and finally open a small hole in the front of the wooden box, and insert the jujube wood bar along the hole, which is just fixed on the hole of the splint.

The end of the jujube wooden bar is nailed to a vertical handle, and the hand can hold it here when you use it.

The last process is to nail the top of the wooden box with a wooden board and nail it tightly.

By the way, one side of the wooden box should also make a square hole, commonly known as a "mouse hole", which is used for blowing wind.

In later generations, Zhou Zhi did not do carpentry work, but he saw carpentry work. Of course, the carpenter must have tools at hand, and it is rare that he can make such a device from memory with only these few simple tools in his hands now.

Looking at this rectangular wooden box, although it looked very rough and unsightly, Zhou Zhi's face still showed a smug and satisfied smile.

Speaking of which, crossing the Ming Dynasty has really exercised himself, and the work he has never done before can now be done.

Hold the vertical handle with your hand and gently pull it back and forth, with a "quack! Quack! There was a rhythmic sound, and the wind blew out of the "rat hole" at the bottom of the box.

It worked!

Zhou Zhi slapped his palms happily.

After almost a full afternoon, it was getting dark. Zhou Zhi moved the rectangular wooden box into the stove house.

At this time, my sister was already preparing dinner. Zhou Zhichao shouted excitedly to his sister, "Sister, what is this?" ”

"Xiao Zhi has been busy all afternoon, what is this for?" Zhou Luyun looked carefully at the cuboid wooden box in a circle, and asked with a puzzled expression.

"Blowing the wind, after having it, my sister will no longer need to fan the wind when cooking, and I don't have to worry about the smoke coming out of the house on a rainy day." Zhou Zhi said proudly.

"That's it, won't it?" Zhou Luyun was still stunned.

"Try it!"

Zhou Zhi said and put the wooden box on the side of the pot.

By the way, there should be a hole on one side of the pot, otherwise how to blow the wind into the stove? Without hesitation, Zhou Zhi smashed a hole in the side of the pot with an axe. The pot is made of adobe, so it can be easily broken.

The "mouse hole" was aimed at the hole of the pot, and the vertical handle was pulled around, and the wind blew into the stove.

"Tsk! Really! It's so easy to use! Zhou Luyun laughed.

She finally understood it, snatched the vertical handle from Zhou Zhi's hand, pulled it up, and was extremely happy.

"Xiaozhi, what's the name of this thing?"

"Let's call it the bellows!" Zhou Zhi pondered slightly, and seemed to think for a while before speaking softly.

In fact, in later generations, bellows were a must-have for northern farmers, especially in the seventies and eighties, and every family had them, which was not unusual.

When the bellows were invented, there is no way to verify. Anyway, Zhou Zhi found that he didn't have it at home, not at his neighbors' house, and never seen it in the entire Baiyue Village.

The two sisters and brothers laughed in the stove house, which alarmed Zhou He's mother in the back room. She walked out quietly, and was also surprised to see that Zhou Luyun was pulling the bellows, and there was no more smoke in the stove house.

At this moment, Aunt Li, a neighbor, shouted outside the courtyard, "Sister-in-law of the Zhou family, have you ever seen my fat dun?" ”

As she spoke, she stepped into the room. At a glance, I saw the bellows, circled around a few times, and said in surprise, "Oh, this thing is so useful, when did you build this thing?" ”

Knowing that it was Zhou Zhi who used an afternoon to build, he immediately praised Zhou Zhi, what Zhou Zhi is getting smarter and smarter, and he has opened his mind, and now he is like a wonder boy.

Aunt Li praised it and walked away.

She was originally a long-tongued woman, but after a while, the neighbors in the vicinity knew that the Zhou family boy had made a bellows, which saved a lot of effort in cooking on the fire.

As a result, the small bellows attracted a lot of people, and the small courtyard of the Zhou family was overcrowded for a while.

The bellows were simple and easy to make, and soon some people understood it and went home to imitate it. Everyone has a lot of eyes on Zhou Zhigao, and they all think that the Zhou family is going to produce talents, and this Zhou Zhi is extraordinary.

Zhou Zhi smiled at everyone with a humble face.

The little brother Zhou Shaocheng suddenly came back at this time, his little face was flushed, and he looked excited. He saw that there were many people in the courtyard of the house, and he didn't know what was going on, so he hurriedly entered the house and found that everyone was surrounding the wooden box to ask his brother Zhou Zhi this and that, and some people kept praising Zhou Zhi.

Brother Zhou Zhi has now become his idol, in order to behave in front of his brother, he lost no time in raising his little face, and said with a smug smile, "Brother, I listened to your words this afternoon, and beat Fat Dun in one place, and really beat Fat Dun to cry!" ”

Hearing this, everyone looked at each other, and Zhou Zhi was extremely embarrassed.