Casting copper coins is a bit troublesome, but Xu Chen has been slowly accumulating the skill of casting copper coins since the very beginning.
Every time he used molten copper liquid to cast utensils, it would never be completely used up. There would always be some left over, and the copper liquid was cast into copper coins by him.
In the first few times, I used simple clay molds, but the different sizes looked a bit uncomfortable, so I chose a mold that I was most satisfied with and made several pottery molds. Each pottery mold could cast four copper coins.
These copper coins are all the same size, each weighing about half a tael, and have the Chinese characters "一文" written on them.
Over 200 such copper coins were accumulated one after another, and Fang Yun now kept them in his room.
According to the value set by Xu Chen, one copper coin can buy one pound of copper.
At present, the Uzbek people can smelt about 500 kilograms of copper per month in the peak season. From mining to transportation, processing, wood cutting, and smelting, the number of people participating in the entire Uzbek tribe is about forty, and each person is calculated according to one kilogram per day.
The distribution of grain and meat is half a catty, and a month's consumption is 1,200 catties of grain and 600 catties of meat.
After this conversion, the purchasing power of one copper coin is about five kilograms of grain or two and a half kilograms of meat.
However, this does not include various factors such as tool loss and time consumption.
In addition, this is currency, not a real equivalent of wealth, and the purchasing power is only an imaginary number. Therefore, the purchase value of this piece of money is not stable, and each tribe can bargain based on the goods being traded.
Xu Chen only needs to exchange it for the Uzbek people at the price of one pound of copper, and then the Uzbek people can exchange it for the food they think is enough.
Of course, in order to keep the purchasing power of copper coins stable, Xu Chen needed to price the goods that the Ba people sold and traded themselves, such as exchanging one penny for a pottery bowl or five kilograms of wheat and bean grains, two penny for an ordinary animal skin, etc.
As for food such as fish and meat, the price is not fixed. At present, when food is not sufficient, it will definitely be cheaper in summer and autumn, and more expensive in winter and spring, and it is not necessarily possible to buy it if you have money. After all, except for the Ba people, most people
The food reserves of some tribes are not enough to meet one year's consumption.
The larger the size of the goods that copper coins can be exchanged for, the more complex the craftsmanship, and the more expensive the price will naturally be.
A medium-sized ax weighs five kilograms, and other metals such as lead and tin are also used in it. The smelting also requires the use of charcoal, installation of wooden handles, polishing and other processes. This ax definitely cannot be measured according to the value of copper. In the past,
Xu Chen always exchanged ten pounds of copper for one pound of bronze, so the ax was worth fifty cents.
According to normal conversion, it is worth at least two hundred and fifty kilograms of grain, which is about the annual output of seven or eight acres of land, enough to feed one person for nearly a year.
It is indeed expensive, but a copper ax can be used for decades or even hundreds of years if it is well maintained. Coupled with the increased production and work efficiency of a copper ax, it is reasonable in calculation.
As for the vehicles, they are even more complicated and expensive. A wheelbarrow costs at least a hundred coins, a human-powered cart costs two hundred coins, and a horse-drawn carriage costs three hundred coins and upwards. A month of copper smelting by the Uzbek people can probably be exchanged for a few wheelbarrows or more.
It looks like two carts and a carriage.
In addition, Xu Chen will not set special prices for large items for the time being. He only needs to roughly stipulate how much food can be bought from the Ba people for one penny.
After all, food is the hard currency right now. You can live without pottery, bronze, carriages and horses, but you can't eat for a day.
Therefore, at present, it is the simplest and most effective way to roughly anchor copper coins to grain. The prices of other items can be converted into grain, so that the stability of the value of copper coins can be roughly guaranteed.
The more copper the Uzbek people smelt, the more copper coins they can exchange for, and the more things they can buy. After they get used to using money, currency can replace the current barter transaction model, and real commerce can begin.
Only then can it develop slowly.
However, Xiang Yun only has more than 200 coins in hand. If he wants to maintain sufficient circulation among the three small tribes of the Ba, Wu, and Hu tribes, he will need at least one to two thousand coins, so Xu Chen must cast money quickly.
A batch of copper coins came out.
In the next few days, Xu Chen was busy going out early and returning late.
Apart from patrolling the Temple of the Ancient Mother, which is being expanded, the God's Eye Altar on the top of the hill at the entrance of the valley, and the dam and ditch on the other side of the river, most of the time is spent in the smelting workshop casting money.
Making money is very simple, just pour the molten copper liquid into the pottery mold, let it cool for a few minutes, open it, use copper pliers to cut off the connecting burrs while it is hot, throw it into a basin to cool down, and then take it out and have the edges polished smooth.
One copper coin is all it takes.
At present, there are only three sets of pottery molds, and only twelve can be cast at a time. Each casting round takes about ten minutes. Because of the slow speed, the crucible can only melt about ten kilograms of copper-tin alloy at one time, and only two can be made in a day.
It looks like hundreds of coins, but the casting is not the slowest, but is polished. Each copper coin must be carefully rounded with a whetstone, and some that are damaged must be recast.
Therefore, although this money can make transactions simple and convenient, for the Ba people, it is a project that consumes manpower, material resources and time.
Six days later, Xu Chen saw that all the winter tasks arranged by the Ba people were gradually on track. Thousands of copper coins had been minted. He estimated that the people from the Gonghuo Alliance had returned to their respective tribes and had begun to work.
He wanted to explore the paths connecting various tribes, so he no longer wasted time and set out on horseback with a team of more than ten people to inspect the various tribes' road construction plans.
At present, the Ba tribe already has nearly fifty horses, large and small. With sufficient horse power, they no longer need to walk when traveling far away. However, many of the original tame horses have been exchanged, and there are more than ten more horses that cannot be ridden.
It's a wild horse, so the number of people accompanying it can't be too many.
In addition to Gu Ju's two personal buglers and flag officers, he was accompanied by Feng, the captain and commander, and nine of the most powerful hunters in cavalry and archery.
The three leaders, Mo, Ju, and Gao, stayed behind to be responsible for hunting and guarding the Ba people. They also supervised the expansion of the Gumu Temple, the God's Eye Altar and the river embankment and ditch projects. They were also responsible for patrolling along the Bawu Avenue to ensure that the Hu people cut wood and burn charcoal.
and the safety of traveling among tribes.
In addition, Mo Du has to lead a team once a month to the Mongolian tribe to retrieve salt. By the way, he also has to go to the Lei tribe to exchange various tribes for salt and pottery and other leather goods, lead smelted by the Five Ghost tribe, and tin smelted by the poor tribe.
Transporting it back has become a routine business. He has been there many times and is very familiar with the waterway.
The first stop Xu Chen arrived at was the Uzbek people.
Two days ago, the Wu tribe had received the news that Xu Chen would be coming today, so Long had already prepared with several fully armed riders. After meeting, they briefly exchanged a few words and headed to the Ji tribe while it was still early.
And go.
Xu Chen walked back and forth on the road from the Wu tribe to the Ji tribe when he was rescuing the Cang tribe. Many places were in river valleys and mountains, making it difficult to travel. Fortunately, for the sake of safety, these primitive tribes generally did not go directly over the mountains when traveling between them.
Instead of walking on the ridge, we walked along the river valleys and areas with sparse vegetation, so the path was very clear, which was in line with the terrain characteristics of road construction.
Long Long has taken a group of hunters back and forth three times on this road recently. With the addition of horses, they have slightly more frequent interactions with the Ji Clan's Muya Clan, so they are quite familiar with the road conditions along the way.
At least where these people can walk, riding horses is not a big problem in most places, and many places pass directly through river valleys. There is a lack of water in autumn and winter, so the traffic conditions are pretty good.
However, you can walk on the river beach in autumn and winter, but definitely not in spring and summer. During the rainy season, most of the valley rivers will be flooded. Therefore, if you want to ensure that it can be passed through in all seasons, this road must be built in a place where water cannot be flooded, like
Like the Bawu Avenue, the roadbed is cut down and the roadbed is cut down to pass through the hillside.
But in areas that cannot be flooded, you need to carefully observe the traces left by previous water erosion.
Therefore, a group of more than ten people held up flags and hooted, and rode horses along the vast canyons and forests. When they encountered some narrow or seemingly complicated places, they had to dismount their horses to observe and discuss carefully, and at the same time, they had to draw a new volume.
Mark the route map that comes out. When you encounter some places with abrupt cliffs or huge boulders blocking the road that seem impossible to build, you also need to mark it with cinnabar. Let Long and others recently arrange for people to explore a larger area nearby to find a simpler and more suitable route.
path of.
In fact, the straight-line distance from the Wu tribe to the Ji tribe is no more than fifteen miles. If you are not afraid of the wolves, bears, tigers and leopards in the primitive mountain forests, you can just take a shortcut over two mountains.
But you can only walk on foot, not on horseback.
What's more, ordinary tribal hunters would not take the risk to climb these inaccessible mountains.
Therefore, the communication between these mountain tribes was along the zigzag paths of valleys and rivers, and the journey was long.
After walking and stopping for nearly two hours, a group of people came to a valley intersection.
After walking about ten miles further, you will reach the Ji Clan. This is basically the hunting range of the Ji Clan.
But here, a group of people stopped.
Because this is a fork in the road where two valleys meet, you can go to the northwest to reach the Muya Clan, to the west you can go straight to the Ji Clan, and to the east you can go to the Hu Clan.
Directly ahead in the direction of the Ji clan is a slightly low saddle-shaped hill, which is much shorter than the nearby mountains, forming a pass that is just passable.
Maogongling, this is the name Xu Chen marked on the map.
The origin of this name is that a tiger was hunted here during the last rescue of the Cang people.