The third division finally took the method of making white sugar from the queen's hands, and Zhao Zhen lost such a big entry, and his hands were immediately tight, and it was difficult to raise the rewards that should be given to officials and relatives and the forbidden army in Beijing during the New Year's Festival and sacrifices. At this time, find a way for the emperor to make money, that is, to send charcoal in the snow.

However, the sales of white sugar are gradually expanding, and it is not easy to find an industry with the same level of profits immediately. But fortunately, Li Buqi knew that there were actually many glass-making craftsmen in the Great Song Dynasty.

In fact, the Chinese burned glass in the pre-Qin Dynasty, but for a long time, the popular glass in China was to use lead-containing compounds as the main raw material, called glass, and the silicate glass obtained from the West was called glass. The advantage of firing glass from lead-containing compounds is that it only requires a lower temperature, but the resulting glass has poor transparency. Therefore, in China, glaze is mainly imitated as jade as decoration.

Glassworking is an essential skill for those who study chemistry, and I also learned a lot about glass back then. Li Buqi believes that in fact, in the Great Song Dynasty, if you want to make glass, you only need a few recipes and a suitable glass kiln. As long as the liquid glass is burned, it depends on the craftsmen who have been fiddling with the glass for decades, what kind of shape, annealing and other skills are exquisite.

Doesn't it just need a higher temperature to make silicate glass, and it's enough to get a copper furnace temperature, right? Among the craftsmen who came this time was a coppersmith, and he made a small copper furnace according to Li Buqi's request.

But the ingredients are also crucial. Li Buqi personally directed the flotation of the purest river sand, and also set up a large urn to recrystallize the trona to obtain pure sodium carbonate. Li Buqi then directed the copper furnace to be filled with river sand, sodium carbonate, lime, fluorite, pure saltpeter and arsenic in proportion, and then ignited and blew the wind, and to the exclamations of the craftsmen, the mixed solids gradually melted into a viscous translucent liquid.

Li Buqi ordered the head of the glass craftsman: "Now stir vigorously until it is transparent and no obvious bubbles can be seen." ”

Li Buqi is now canonized as a celestial by the craftsmen, and his orders are carried out to the letter, and the craftsmen take turns stirring the glass. With constant stirring and further increases in temperature, the molten glass in the furnace gradually becomes transparent, and no visible bubbles are visible to the naked eye. The following is not what Li Buqi can teach craftsmen, they skillfully take out some glass to make various shapes, and then put it into the annealing kiln for annealing.

The first furnace of glass made a fish tank, two Guanyin bottles, and a tray. When these four things have cooled down, people hold them in their hands and let out a sigh of admiration: "It's so transparent!" "It's better than the glass from the big food." "It's so light." "What price do you think this thing can sell for?" "What are you kidding? It's priceless! ”

It's priceless, hehe. Li Buqi waved his hand in a chic manner: "How to make such glass well, how to make it cheap depends on you." I hope that soon something like this will be able to enter the homes of ordinary people. ”

After doing a major event, Li Buqi called two veterinarians again: "How is the matter arranged for you?" ”

The two veterinarians hurriedly replied: "According to the instructions of the lift, we have selected thirty-five small, thick and particularly robust piglets from the two hundred and twenty-seven piglets as breeding pigs, and all of them have been registered. ”

"Okay, let's get started. Remember, I'll show you a few times, and then I'll watch you do it a few times, and you'll deal with the rest of the pigs yourself. When you are familiar with your hands, you will have to bring apprentices. You must study hard. Li Buqi explained. The two veterinarians only spoke in unison.

The domestic pigs of the Great Song Dynasty still retain too many wild boar genes, and they are basically lean pigs, but what is lacking in this era is fat, so Li Buqi had to improve the pig breed by himself. His plan is to first select breeding pigs that are closer to domestic pigs for breeding, and collect excellent pig breeds from different regions for crossbreeding, and strive to breed high-quality breeds such as Yorkshire and Great White Pigs within 50 years. Only by eating meat can there be combat effectiveness, how can soldiers have meat to eat every day without good pig breeds?

Those who are not used as breeding pigs cannot be wasted, so they are castrated. Before crossing the road, I saw that the pigs raised in the countryside were castrated, and many people bought piglets at the market and castrated them on the side of the road. At that time, I saw a lot of castrations.

The specially made surgical instruments are soaked in medical alcohol, and the parts of the pig that are ready for surgery are scrubbed clean with alcohol, and then the operation is performed, and the wound is sutured with silk threads soaked in medical alcohol. It's as simple as that, and the two veterinarians are very skilled in one day. Three people castrated more than twenty pigs in one day.

In this era, pork was regarded as cheap meat because it had a relatively large fishy taste. Castrated pigs not only have less fishy pork, but also because pigs are greedy and sleepy and unwilling to move, they are most likely to gain fat, and there is more fat in the meat. In addition, there is an alcohol workshop next to it, and so many sake lees are always consumed, and it is just right to feed the pigs, and I believe that you will be able to eat fragrant pork at this time next year.

In July, the city of Tokyo was already blowing a glass fever when the weather turned cooler. There was a batch of crystal clear and exquisite glassware on the market, which made people go crazy, and although the glass shop guy repeatedly stated that the glass would be very cheap in the future, there were still people who bought a glass fish tank at great expense, saying that they were going to go home and hide it and pass it on to future generations.

The emperor and a few nobles who knew the inside story were secretly happy, but some sand and alkali burned things could be exchanged for copper coins like a hill, who would have thought about the speed of making money? Now Li Buqi is a cash cow in their eyes.

It is precisely for this reason that at the test site, Li Buqi said whatever he wanted, and no one dared to beep. So Li Buqi asked the craftsmen to build larger glass kilns, but the order to keep only glassware produced at a low speed was faithfully carried out. A large amount of glass was made into small flat plates for the windows of the palace, and as for fish tanks, vases, dishes, etc., they could be sold at any price. Only by selling it expensively can Li Buqi have enough profit support to develop new formulas and improve the process.

These things were mainly done by craftsmen, and when the weather cooled down, Li Buqi shifted his focus to the selection and breeding of horses and donkeys.

Now the test site has more than 70 stallions, including Qingtang horses, Hexi horses and Khitan horses. Tan Baosi, who has retired horses, said that Qingtang horses are good at running in the mountains, but not good at running on flat ground; Hexi horses are tall but have poor stamina; Khitan horses are good at walking, but they are small and have poor weight-bearing capacity. Among these three types of horses, especially Khitan horses, they are all smuggled and therefore of poor quality. Therefore, Tan Baosi actually disapproved of Li Bu's abandonment of Khitan horses and crossbreeding with Hexi horses and Qingtang horses.

But the so-called Khitan horse is a Mongolian horse, not only strong endurance but also resistant to coarse materials, and the large-scale maneuver of the Mongolian army relied on him.

Western countries have a small territory and are divided into fragments by one lord after another, and the war horses of the West mainly fight in small territories, and do not have high requirements for long-distance mobility capabilities, and the shortcomings of serious dependence on logistics are not easy to expose. Therefore, the war horse of the West is developing in the direction of being big and powerful, and there are serious shortcomings in long-distance endurance and environmental adaptability.

However, the combat characteristics of the Chinese army are that it needs to maneuver in a wide range, so the war horses must have strong endurance and must minimize their dependence on logistics. Therefore, Mongolian horses are the best hybrid females.

These shepherds left behind by Chunze Prison are more experienced than Li Buqi in matching horses and donkeys. Li Buqi just had to tell them which horses to mate with each other. Professional people do professional things, which is worry-free.