Whether it's the hardening process of the quill's handle or the nib processing of the quill pen, Shu Hui can easily do it with the equipment he has obtained from the system, but he can't do it.

Because Shu Hui is now going to summarize a complete set of processes that can be promoted. Therefore, not only should we not rely on a one-of-a-kind system, but we must also simplify the production process as much as possible, so that those who master it can make their own quill pens at home.

If not, in fact, the simplest metal nib has already had several drafts in Shu Hui's heart after thinking for most of the day. However, pen and ink merchants who have mastered the traditional stationery channel will not want to see their income drastically reduced, and may refuse to produce and sell hard pens.

In carrying out this revolution in the way of writing, Shu Hui chose a slightly backward but more unstoppable simple feather than the more advanced but potentially humanly controlled complex metal.

Replacing complexity with simplicity to drive change, and then replacing the backward with the advanced for upgrading, will be far less resistant than directly confronting traditional and vested interests in one step.

Shu Hui copied more than 200 of the "Flirting Wind" that had not yet been processed with the nib of the pen with the summoning altar. If it weren't for the fact that there were not many chicken and duck feathers as sacrifices, and there were other uses, he would probably have directly copied a few kilograms.

"Come on, Ao Guang, and do a good job of these pens." Shu Hui saw that he asked people to prepare chicken and duck feathers and plant ashes as sacrifices, and Ao Guang was almost rested, so he grabbed a sparrowhawk feather and carved it for him.

Then he took out a sparrowhawk feather, and said to the red fish: "Find someone to take this feather and let the silversmith make a beautiful pipe to put on it, so that people may hold it like a spoon." Feathers can't slide up and down, the more beautiful the better. ”

After thinking about it, the silver pen barrel was still a little low, so he added: "Use red gold to hit another one." ”

Hongyu took the order and left, but Ao Guang had a difficult face: "Young master, can you use a sewing needle if you drill holes?" ”

Before, he didn't see many dozens of feathers, and he didn't bother to think about it, but now he has learned a lot...... Let him use a dagger to drill holes in these dozens of harder sparrowhawk feathers, making him feel as if he was mentally retarded.

"Uh...... Of course you can......" Shu Hui looked embarrassed, he had seen the sewing needle before, but he didn't think about it for a while, so he simply asked, "Are there any other good proposals?" ”

There really is, Ao Guang said bluntly: "You can use scissors directly to engrave the tip of the pen, and the scissors are a little thinner than the dagger." ”

This time, Shu Hui was really surprised: "Isn't iron the best steel?" There are even scissors that can be thinner than iron? ”

Ao Guang looked dazed and didn't know how to answer. He can't keep up with the young master's thinking at all, and it is true that iron can make the sharpest sword, but what does it have to do with the thickness......

The scissors of the Tang Dynasty were somewhat like the spring scissors of later generations, which were bent into a ring by a single wire, and then forged and polished at both ends to create opposite blades. Because there is no good fixation between the blades, it is only suitable for trimming soft things.

But here you only need to use its sharpness and compactness, and take out one end to use as an ordinary small carving knife.

After dozens of "flirting pens" with the same parts except for the nib, Shu Hui tried them one by one.

In addition to finding the most suitable nib shape for writing by combining the previous chicken, duck and goose quills, it was also discovered that the previous daggers were actually defective.

Shu Hui's best flirtatious pen can even write more than 30 words with a single dip in ink, which has reached the level of writing nearly half with a thinner metal nib.

However, in addition to the more uniform inking process, the reason for this effect is that the flirtatious pen is larger than the quill pen and can store more ink.

But Shu Hui is not writing papers, is it necessary to compare everything so clearly? He just needs to know that the quill is easy to use, and the top of the flirtatious pen is easy to use, and that's enough.

He used all the remaining sacrifices to summon the best of the most flirtatious pens, and prepared to wrap them as gifts and give them to people who were pleasing to the eye or useful.

Seeing Redfish come back from another errand, it seems to be boring again. After all, it's usually only a microphone, and it's boring to live. In order to prevent her from embroidering or staring at him when she was bored, Shu Hui decided not to let her be idle as much as possible.

And since you think of configuring ink, of course, sooner rather than later.

"Redfish will find someone to prepare some alum, gallnut and gum. The best gum is acacia gum, if not, peach gum can also be used. ”

"Yes, young master!" The redfish is leaving......

"Wait, prepare some papers of all kinds, expensive and cheap." If you want to use a new type of ink, of course, you have to have an interview on a variety of papers.

"Okay, young master!"

Faced with the red fish's slow movements, Shu Hui was also a little helpless. I didn't finish my words for a while, and I was despised again, as if I would add another sentence at any time......

"Uh...... If you have alum, buy some alum. ”

"Got it, young master!"

Looking at the red fish's abrupt and brisk pace, Shu Hui felt very shameless.

"I seem to have seen through it...... Shu Hui pondered, "but I'm still a child, so I don't have to worry about these details." ”

……

It wasn't until the afternoon of the next day that things were ready.

Most of this time is spent on boiling glue.

Acacia gum is best used to make ink, which is a little knowledge that Shu Hui saw in the encyclopedia in his previous life. However, the encyclopedia only says that China also has acacia, but does not say that it is native to Oceania and Africa.

Although there are also a small number of subspecies in South Asia, it is not found in other regions for a while because it does not have much economic value at this time.

So Shu Hui now has to use peach gum instead. Shu Hui doesn't know if there is a better gum, but if this ink is a success, then it is natural that someone will make local improvements to it.

It's late autumn now, but fortunately, peach gum is also a warm and tonic Chinese medicine, which can be bought from pharmacies like bile alum, green alum and gallnut. It took more than ten hours to grind, soak and boil, and now I finally got a pot of sticky peach gum soup.

Although things were ready, the configuration steps made it difficult for Shu Hui.

The ink configured by Shu Hui is an ordinary metal gallic ink, which is composed of the tannic acid in the gallnut and the gallic acid hydrolyzed by the tannic acid and the colored metal ions to synthesize an insoluble solid in water and develop color.

The size of the carbon black of pine smoke ink is between three and 100 microns, because it has many smoke and dust particles that have agglomerated and cannot be completely eliminated even if it is glued and pounded tens of thousands of times. Metal complexes made by complexation reactions are almost all at the nanometer level.

The smaller the particle size, the more evenly dispersed it is in the ink, the less likely it is to clog the capillary tube of the quill.

In addition, the color depth of Songyan's carbon black is basically fixed, and the color concentration that can be increased by using thicker ink is relatively limited. Shuhui's current ink also has a certain advantage in this regard, it can achieve the same color depth as ink in a smaller amount.

Peach gum is to increase the viscosity of the ink, and at the same time, it also allows the colored metal complexes inside to be better suspended and not settled. In other words, it slows down or even avoids ink delamination due to longevity.

In addition, Shu Hui also expects that it can make the ink more constricted when writing, so that it will not be too wide.

Originally, the theory was established, and all the materials were ready, but when they arrived here, Shu Hui was stuck.

Of course, the thicker the ink, the darker the color. However, whether it is to dissolve tannic acid from gallnut, or to free metal ions from bile alum or alum, or to make peach gum more soluble, it is inevitable to use water.

And because the debris has to be filtered out after dissolution before the reaction, it is not possible to do more than two things at the same time with the same water, which leads to twice as much water as expected in the final mixing.

Shu Hui weighed it repeatedly and decided to boil the peach gum into a paste, and then stir it fully in the ink after the reaction, so that there would be less water.

The water of gallic is indispensable in any case, and bile alum and green alum must first be turned into a solution before reacting with tannic acid, and these two really cannot be changed.

However, some of the water can be evaporated by heating at the end of the reaction.

"Red fish, find a few people, and melt these gall alum and green alum in hot water. Don't add too much water, it doesn't matter if it doesn't dissolve, and then use a fine silk cloth to filter out the impurities inside. ”

"Ao Guang, let people boil the gallnut into juice, boil it thicker, I just need the water on it."

After instructing the two of them, Shu Hui took a bowl filled with half a bowl of cold water, dipped it in water with chopsticks and looked at it, and then scooped out a spoonful of viscous juice from the pot of peach gum and dissolved it into the cold water.

After whipping for a while, his shoulder, which he insisted on exercising every day, began to sore. Then I dipped my chopsticks in the water and looked at it, and it did become a little thicker - the water didn't drip from the chopsticks as easily as it did just now.

Nodding, at least the peach gum is completely feasible to use to make ink. And the dosage was much lower than he expected, and he was relieved that he didn't need to be too high in concentration.

It took a lot of time to boil out this pot of peach gum, and if the required concentration was too high and had to be dissolved in ink with peach gum dry powder, it would be a nightmare.

Alum is ferrous sulfate heptahydrate, and bile alum is copper sulfate pentahydrate. They contain ferrous and copper ions, respectively, and appear light green and blue in solution.

When the alum is mixed into ink, the ferrous ions will be oxidized into iron ions in the air, making the entire complex black. This is the common blue-black ink in later generations, and its other name is iron tannins ink.

After the ingredients were prepared, Shu Hui took a bowl of green alum liquid, dripped the gallnut soup into it little by little, and instructed: "Red fish, take a chopstick and stir the bowl of water below." ”

With the dripping of gallic soup, the green alum solution emits a strange blue color at the position of the water droplets, and gradually spreads out, like fireworks blooming in the night sky reflected on the surface of the clear blue lake.

But this is just Shu Hui's feelings, Hongyu and the others have never seen what the so-called fireworks are.

Hongyu was not surprised to see that the water in the bowl changed color with the soup that Shu Hui dripped into, and meticulously carried out the task given to her by Shu Hui. It's just a change of color, it's too common, and the dye will change color several times when dyeing the cloth.

Moreover, she is a person who has seen the young master's supernatural powers.

"Young Master, is this a dye?" Redfish thinks that this color is somewhat similar to indigo.

"It's not a dye, this ink is used to dye clothes, and after a few washes, it will be very light." Shu Hui replied casually, but then his heart moved: "If you are afraid that the color is too light, maybe you can add some dye to it." ”

Dye can even enter the fibers of silk, so it is very suitable for ink. I just don't know how much it costs, but it's definitely cheaper than ink ingots anyway.

And speaking of dyes, Shu Hui suddenly remembered that he had learned a plant called indigo in chemistry class back then. This kind of indigo should be very widely used now, and it is especially important: he seems to know that there is a process that can greatly increase the production of dyes produced from this indigo?

When I think about it, I can always think of it at some point. When Shu Hui found that the blue in the bowl was no longer darker, but due to the addition of gallic soup, it was slowly diluted and lightened, so he stopped the movement in his hand.

Since the raw materials used are excessive, and the resulting solution is a saturated solution, Shu Hui briefly wrote down the appropriate ratio of the two saturated solutions on a piece of paper on the side.

By this point, the ink was almost finished. Shu Hui asked Hongyu to line up several pieces of paper with different advantages and disadvantages that he bought, and dipped a flirtatious pen in ink to write a few words on them, and each piece of paper was dipped in ink again.

What made him speechless was that the slaves and maids who bought them "want all the expensive and cheap" according to his orders, and bought back a few pieces of paper with gold leaf that Shu Hui despised before, in addition to paper with musk and other spices, all of which were boring things.

Looking at the handwriting on the paper, the color is indeed very light, and it is faster and wider than the ink.

Shu Hui touched her chin and chose to concentrate first between concentrating first or adding glue first.

This step of concentration can be boiled in a small furnace, or it can be dried under the sun, or it can be dried in the shade naturally, anyway, there are many methods.

Shu Hui decided to use his air conditioner, which can regulate the temperature and humidity, and put it here at a two-pronged rate, and the ink is literally thickening at a speed that is visible to the naked eye.

Because the porcelain bowl is opaque, it is difficult to judge whether precipitation has occurred through the ink on the surface. It was Shu Hui who poured the ink into a large clay pot and spread it into a thin layer, which could also accelerate the volatilization.

When the bottom of the pot began to settle, Shu Hui stopped intervening. Ferrous tannins itself is a precipitate, but because of the electrical properties of the surface, it can also be suspended in water to a certain extent, and now it is clear that this suspension capacity has reached its limit.

Shu Hui dipped it in ink and tested it on various papers, the color was still a little light, but it didn't affect reading. However, after comparing the amount of materials, Shu Hui found that the cost was slightly higher, because the yield of gallic was relatively low.

Now the price is not high, but because there are not many Chinese medicines that use it, the situation will be completely different after the popularization of blue and black ink. Since my goal is to popularize blue-black ink to reduce the cost of writing, I can't just think about the present and ignore the situation after the real popularization.

"Fortunately, there was a reminder from the red fish just now, otherwise I'm afraid I wouldn't have thought of the blue indigo for a while." Make up your mind and ask someone to find some blue indigo as an additive as soon as possible.

Today's indigo uses more easily restored woad rather than indigo, but the indigo in Shu Hui's impression was also planted and introduced to Japan during the Sui Dynasty.

After the condensed ink has reached a color concentration that can be written normally, the next step is to add glue. After gluing, the color particles can be dispersed for a longer period of time, and can prevent ink formation to a certain extent.

After thinking about it, he took a cup of ink from a teacup to add peach gum, and then told the red fish to fetch an egg.

Egg whites can also make the ink thicker, but it is less fresher than peach gum.

This time, Shu Hui added much more slowly, he asked Ao Guang to constantly stir the ink and peach gum in the teacup, and he himself tested it on paper after each glue was added.

It wasn't until Shu Hui's flirtatious pen in his hand was a little out of ink that he stopped. After carefully comparing the handwriting on the paper, combined with his own writing experience, Shu Hui recorded the best amount of glue on the side.

Of course, this amount is more vague, after all, he doesn't know how thick the glue he scooped out of the pot is.

To Shu Hui's surprise, the egg white used just with the mentality of giving it a try has better performance than peach gum. However, egg whites are spoiled easily and have a higher cost, which makes it excluded from Shuhui's final choice from the beginning.

Tannic acid, gallic acid, and peach gum are all organic substances, and they all have the problem of spoilage. However, ink ingots are also facing the embarrassment of corruption, so they can't be made too big.

In Shu Hui's expectation, as long as the ink can last for ten days without rotting, it will be considered a success. If you really can't do it, you can also add some Chinese medicine to preservatives in it like ink ingots.

Blue and black ink - into!

By the time he completed this set of actions, several people were very tired. However, the materials are ready, so the gallium is also used to make ink.

The results were disappointing. Shu Hui thought that ferrous tannins were blue-black ink, so copper tannin, which was also easy to obtain, was pure blue ink - in terms of results, this was obviously wishful thinking.

The ink configured with gallium is not only lighter in color, but also very easy to precipitate, which is really not the material for making ink.

This made Shu Hui breathe a sigh of relief inexplicably, it seems that the next steps can be saved, he is already tired and listless.

In his invisible Red Fish and Ao Guang's hearts, he also quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

They're more tired, okay!