Early the next morning, Xu Chen led a group of hunters on horseback down the Jicang River. Along the way, he carefully inspected the specific construction routes of the Cangqia section, made complete markings and plans on the traffic plan, and convened the Qia clan
After the Qia tribe and the Qu tribe who had already arrived explained their construction tasks, they rested overnight and returned to the Cang tribe again.
At this time, all the personnel participating in road construction from the six tribes of Bameng arrived. Xu Chen summoned the leaders of several tribes to assign tasks, and also led the teams of these tribes to the designated locations and made some adjustments to some of the more difficult areas.
After the construction instructions, five hunters were left to patrol and supervise the construction site. At the same time, the Cang and Qia tribes were also arranged to send some hunters to cooperate in maintaining the safety of the construction site, and to provide some meat supplies for each tribe through hunting along the way.
After five or six days of busy work, after all the work arrangements were completed, Xu Chen rode a horse to the Gonghuo Tribe and found that the road leading to the mouth of the Jicang River from the Gonghuo Tribe had started construction. Five tribes, including the Lei Tribe and the Five Ghost Tribe, had already begun construction.
Hundreds of people were already busy and busy along the Jicang River.
The old witch seemed to be in good condition, even better than the last time she went to the Ba tribe to attend the Mother's Day.
Wearing a blue cloak and holding a brand new witch's scepter, he looked full of energy.
The old witch's change made Xu Chen feel a lot more relaxed.
Although the old witch may not necessarily agree with the great witch inheritance of the Ba tribe, her attitude towards work is still admirable. As long as she is here, she can arrange the tasks of the Gonghuo tribe in an orderly manner, which even the little witch cannot keep up with.
ability.
As for the little witch from the Five Ghost Tribe and the twin sisters from the Wu Tribe, in Xu Chen's eyes, they are just like mascots that can only be admired and worshiped by people. It is the older clan leaders who really lead the development of the tribe.
After staying with the Gonghuo Tribe for two days, Xu Chen returned to the Ba Tribe, then plunged into the shipbuilding workshop, transformed into a poor carpenter, and started the second round of building wooden boats.
It’s already August, and the weather is neither too hot nor too cold. It’s already very dry and cool. This should be the most comfortable time of the year.
There is only more than a month left before the Uzbek Nationality Conference.
The water in both the valley river and the Wulong River has dropped to a relatively normal level, exposing large areas of river beach where wild beasts of all sizes have begun to appear on the river beach to feed.
Xu Chen and a few carpenters danced and jingled their axes in the workshop every day, and Feng led a group of hunters in rowing boats to hunt and fish back and forth on the south bank of the Wulong River every day. Life seemed simple, but it was very lively and comfortable.
In mid-August, another brand new wooden boat was launched.
This wooden boat is larger and better made. With a hull that is ten meters long and two meters wide, it can float stably on the water even with ten people on board.
The ship is not only equipped with railings, but also uses fixed-position large oars, and a scull is also installed at the stern. The entire ship can be operated by seven people at the same time. When tested in a gentle river bend, the speed was very good, and it was easy to turn around during operation.
Very flexible.
Xu Chen personally led people to conduct the first water test and felt very satisfied.
To put it bluntly, a wooden boat is just a watertight wooden box.
Therefore, the biggest difficulty is not leaking.
No matter how beautiful it is, it is useless if it leaks. If it can row faster than it sinks, it is not as good as a raft.
Therefore, Xu Chen’s goal from the beginning to the end of shipbuilding is to ensure that it is watertight first, and then consider the appearance.
At present, there is no high-adhesion waterproof glue like those of later generations, so the method of dealing with water leakage is relatively barbaric and primitive.
First, use a thick enough wooden board to plan the joint part to the point where there are almost no gaps. The smaller the boat, the less difficult it is. The larger the boat, the more difficult it is to handle and the greater the possibility of water leakage.
It's not enough to just plan the boards; the joints of the boards must also be firmly fixed together.
Therefore, when building the ship, Xu Chen could only try to reduce the number of wood joints, that is, to choose as big a tree as possible to make the wooden boards. The second step was to add wooden nails, and drill holes with a hand drill on the joint surface of the wooden boards and then nail them in.
Strong wooden nails, and the third step is to apply a layer of heated and melted rosin on the joint surface, and then join the two boards together while they are hot.
In this way, the first pass of wood joint processing is completed. After all the splicing of the wooden boat is completed and the appearance is planed, the gaps are filled and smoothed again with mud paste made by heating and mixing rosin and lime.
Due to technical reasons and material reasons, this cannot absolutely prevent leakage. However, as the wooden boat is put into the water and soaked, the wood absorbs water and swells, and some seemingly leaking gaps will slowly stop leaking.
Of course, this is also a double-edged sword. During this process of repeated soaking, expansion and water drying, the wooden boards will continue to expand, contract, crack and deform. Over time, the boat will gradually become useless.
Especially since the wooden boards have not yet been treated with water and anti-corrosion.
These new boats are almost in contact with the logs and water, which will deform and rot faster.
But Xu Chen didn't have much choice.
Originally, the Jia tribe had found tung trees, and last autumn the Jia tribe also collected and sent hundreds of jins of tung fruits, but Xu Chen was too lazy to work because they were too few, so they were still left in the warehouse of the kiln.
Xu Chen actually knows the method of extracting oil, but it is more troublesome.
When I followed the survey team in Yunnan and Guizhou, I could still see ancient oil-pressing workshops in some Miao villages in mountainous areas. In fact, the method is very simple, which is to hollow out the middle of a large tree with hard wood, cut and polish it to form a groove, and then cut and polish it.
The oil crops are cleaned, sun-dried, crushed, steamed and made into oil cakes, which are put into wooden troughs. Then wooden wedges are continuously driven into the oil cakes to squeeze them, and the oil inside is slowly squeezed out.
This method of oil extraction is said to have lasted for thousands of years and has been around since the Qin and Han Dynasties.
Tung oil is a common oil crop in Miao villages in Yunnan and Guizhou. Local people are accustomed to using tung seeds to extract oil, which is used to process stilted buildings and various furniture, fishing boats and fishing nets.
Although I know the method, it is very time-consuming and labor-intensive and requires a whole set of equipment.
Picking, cleaning, and drying are all easy to say, but drying requires a special drying furnace, and crushing requires a large stone mill or even a stone mill. The finer the crushing, the more oil will be produced. This thing is not for eating.
, as long as it is thick enough to be swallowed, if it is not broken well enough, most of the fat may not be squeezed out in the end.
The steaming process is also very troublesome, and a large pot and special steamer must be made.
As for the last process, making oil cakes and pressing oil is also very troublesome. Xu Chen saw in the Miao village that they used circles of iron hoops to flatten the straw and steamed tung seed powder before putting them in, because they kept hammering into the wood.
The squeezing force during the wedging process will be very large, and ordinary materials simply cannot withstand such large pressure and will break.
The oil press made of giant wood also takes up a lot of space and requires a specially built oil press workshop.
Precisely because it looked simple but actually had many processes and complicated equipment, Xu Chen was not in a hurry to make tung oil.
What's more, the Jia tribe's current collection of tung trees is too small, and a hundred pounds is not worth the effort.
In addition, the wooden boats currently being built are very small, and the wood is not valuable. As long as they are guaranteed to last for one or two years, Xu Chen does not expect these boats to last seven or eight years or even several generations. If they are broken, they will be rebuilt.
In just two years, when you need to build a large sailboat that can accommodate dozens of people, you may need to consider various anti-corrosion, moisture-proof, and waterproof paints.
In fact, he has already found lacquer, and there is a huge amount of it, right near the Cicha tribe. It's just that it's more troublesome to collect it, and it's also very troublesome to come and go.
Nowadays, the land is sparsely populated, the roads are impassable, and wild animals are rampant. Even if he wants to do many things, he is unable to do it. What's more, he does not have enough manpower and energy to develop these resources on a large scale. He can only slowly wait for the time to mature.
August flies by and enters September.
The road construction project is progressing smoothly, and the hunters who patrol and supervise it come back every five days or so to report on the progress of the project. Most of the road sections are now completed, with only the last few more difficult areas still being completed.
Although it is said to be a difficult area, it is actually some valleys, streams or relatively steep and rugged places. It is necessary to fill in and raise the roadbed or build bridge piers to build wooden bridges. It is just that the amount of work is larger. These projects were used to build roads between various tribes.
Basically I have encountered it.
The tribes that have been completed recently are returning home one after another, and the remaining finishing work will be completed within a few days.
During the entire road construction, each tribe conducted a personnel rotation, so the labor intensity was not too high. The work sections that each tribe was responsible for were the same as when the Bawu Avenue was built. Some accommodation and food were built with felled wood along the way.
Resting cabin.
Therefore, after the road is built, these wooden houses along the way will gradually become resting places for hunters or passers-by. According to Xu Chen’s guidelines for tribes to live scattered along the road during Mother’s Day, some of these places may be very
Soon people will start to settle and reclaim the wasteland, which will become lively.
The current situation is that the tribes are too independent and too far apart.
In the past, the reason for keeping a distance was that it was difficult to find suitable caves and environments for living, so we had to go deep into the mountains and old forests. In addition, the tribes mainly relied on hunting and gathering for a living. They relied on God's will for food and clothing, which required a lot of effort.
Only the territory can ensure the survival of the tribe.
But times have completely changed now.
Living depends on building a house, eating depends on farming, and wearing linen can be used. Although you still need to rely on animal skins to keep out the cold in winter, animal skins can definitely only be regarded as a supplement.
What's more, the winter in this era is very short, only one month will be cold enough to snow, and the chance is very small. For five consecutive years, Xu Chen has never seen a heavy snowfall close to the mountains, and it was even so cold that it snowed.
Ice is rarely seen.
Therefore, animal skins are mainly used to keep women, children, old and young, and the young and strong can basically survive with linen clothes.