After the preparation of the garment factory was completed, the first thing to start was the production of armor.
The production of armor is more complicated than clothing, and the materials are more sophisticated.
But compared to the effect of clothes that require a fit and slimming, armor is much rougher.
Although humans have been using animal skins for tens of thousands of years, and the processing and processing has a long history, and the experience is not small, but in fact it only stays at simple fat processing and tanning. However, since Xu Chen invented a large number of bronze processing tools, now
Many tribes are already able to skillfully make many leather goods.
The Ba people are far ahead and can use animal skins of various thicknesses and hardness to make different horse gear and clothing and leather goods according to their needs.
Therefore, compared to making clothes, armor is easier to make.
What Xu Chen had to do was to design a unified leather armor style, then collect and select suitable animal skins for cutting and sewing.
We don’t seek to look good, but we seek to have a unified form and practical functions.
Xu Chen has never seen ancient leather armor with his own eyes, but he has seen many in movies and TV shows, and has accumulated so many years of experience. The style of the leather armor he has designed now is also very simple, using thick animal skins to make shoulder pads.
The chest protector, back protector, and other parts are made of relatively soft connecting parts.
The style is not much different from the previous armor, but the details will be more sophisticated and strong.
After cutting various animal skins according to uniform specifications, use a punch to punch small holes along the suture lines, and then use crochet hooks and hemp rope to sew them together firmly. Copper nails are also needed in some thicker and harder joints.
Carry out reinforcement.
Copper nails are still made of bronze with a relatively high tin content. The texture is relatively soft and can be cold worked. It can be stretched and deformed by hitting it with a copper hammer.
Leather armor production occupies two rooms, one is responsible for selection and cutting, and the other is processing and sewing, using assembly line operations.
The personnel were also selected from some tribes of the Ba and Gonghuo tribes who had early contact with leather armor. The cutting and processing were mainly men, while the sewing was mainly women, with seven or eight people each.
In order to make the armor look more elegant when worn on the body, some post-processing will be done with tung oil and various colors of paint after the leather armor is completed. In addition, each forbidden army will also make a red cloak to match the armor.
Red represents enthusiasm and has a very eye-catching visual impact.
The only one wearing red right now is the red-clothed witch from the temple. Her identity does not belong to any tribe, but belongs to the temple alone.
Xu Chen used red to decorate the Forbidden Army in order to reflect their unique identity.
From now on, whenever you see people in the royal city dressed in red, you must treat them specially, because they represent the palace and the temple, and represent His Majesty the Witch King and the high priest.
After the dyeing workshops and uniform factories gradually got back on track, time quickly entered March.
The temperature is getting higher and higher.
After six or seven days of soaking, the first batch of fabrics from the dyeing workshop began to be taken out to dry.
When Xu Chen rode his horse to the dyeing workshop again, he smelled a sour smell from a distance.
When he walked into the courtyard of the dyeing workshop and looked at the colorful dyeing cloths hanging on the arbor and courtyard, he almost fell off his horse due to the strong smell.
These dyes, which are made by directly beating plants, have been soaked for too long and have fermented and become sour.
Fortunately, the dye house is far away from the royal city and settlements, and the river beach is wide and bright, and relatively ventilated, otherwise the smell would be even stronger.
Aunt Qi and a group of women were still fishing out fabrics from various dyeing pools. There were dripping and flowing colorful dyestuffs everywhere on the ground, dyeing all the clay and ceramic tiles.
The smell under the dyed pergola is even worse.
Xu Chen held his nose and checked back and forth between the pergola and the dyeing pool. He found that the dyeing pool was filled with a layer of fermented bubbles. When he picked it up and stirred it, it gave off a stronger sour smell.
Fortunately, the fabrics have indeed been dyed through, and the colors look relatively uniform, but the fabrics are also covered in a lot of sour and smelly dye paste.
If left to dry like this, the fabric will definitely smell very unpleasant.
If this kind of fabric is directly sewn into clothes, it will definitely feel more refreshing when worn on the body.
Think about the plot.
A group of mighty Forbidden Army cavalry came from the front. Each one of them was arrogant and arrogant. As a result, they galloped past and knocked down the common people along the way.
When court officials appeared, passers-by covered their noses and mouths in fear and fled.
This situation is too bad.
At that time, it will not reflect the majesty of the royal city, but will gradually turn into a joke.
It seems that we have to find ways to improve the dyeing process.
Because most of the materials for making dye paste can only be harvested in spring and summer, and the temperature in summer is even higher, often reaching more than 40 degrees. In the next six or seven days, it is estimated that the dye pond will stink like a cesspool in two or three days.
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However, Xu Chen really doesn’t know how to dye cloth. In the past, dyeing cloth was simply mixed with plant juice and various mineral powders and then simply applied. It took at most half a day to dry, and then it was a piece of dyed cloth. It had never been like this.
Use large dyeing tanks for large-scale and long-term dip-dyeing processing.
When building a dyeing workshop this time, Xu Chen also tried his best to cross the river by feeling the stones. At the same time, he also hoped that the pigments could penetrate the hemp fiber as much as possible to make the color more uniform and stable.
But I didn't expect that it would actually stink.
"Chen Ga, Budu smells Ga!"
Seeing Xu Chen, Aunt Qi and a group of women gathered around and complained.
Although they have been accustomed to various mixed smells and various rotten smells left after slaughtering wild animals since they were young.
But this strong fermented sour smell still made them very uncomfortable.
Naturally, Xu Chen was even more uncomfortable with it. After a cursory observation between the pergola and the dye pool, he quickly retreated to the open space in the yard and took a deep breath.
"Qi Aunt, don't hang up these cloths in a hurry. Go to the river to rinse them briefly before drying them, otherwise the cloths will stink in the future!" Xu Chen reminded, covering his mouth and nose.
"It will make it look discolored after washing!" a woman said quickly.
Xu Chen smiled bitterly and shook his head and said: "There's nothing you can do about stripping, it's better than smelling. These cloths are used to make clothes. If they are too smelly, they can't be worn in the future and they will be wasted!"
"That's great!"
A group of women also knew that what Xu Chen said was true, so they quickly got busy again, taking down all the wet cloths that had been hung on the wooden rack, and carrying them in rattan baskets to the river not far away for cleaning.
Xu Chen also followed to see the situation.
A few strong women took out pieces of dyed cloth and put them into the river to wash. In an instant, the river water was dyed with red, blue, yellow and green colors. As the river flowed, the creek and the mouth of Jicang River were soon connected.
The clear river water in the ten-meter area was dyed into a colorful mixture of colors.
Xu Chen's face twitched when he saw it.
As long as the dyeing shop opens here, the river water nearby may not be clean in the future.
Fortunately, these are natural plant and mineral dyes, which do not pollute the environment too much and do not cause too much poison to the soil and water sources. The only problem is to find a way to solve the problem of fermentation odor.
After cleaning, the layer of dyestuff attached to the surface of the cloth has been rinsed away. The color does seem to be lighter, but the smell is also much lighter. If you don't get closer and smell it, you can hardly feel it.
It can be seen that cleaning can indeed effectively reduce odor.
As for the color…
Xu Chen thought for a while and felt that it was not a big problem. At least for now, these wet dyed cloths still dripping with colorful water drops were still dyed through. After drying, the color might be more obvious, because before
This is true for dyeing cloth.
Some fabrics do not look particularly bright after being dyed, but the color will show up after drying. Especially for cyan and red fabrics, the colors are very bland when they are first dyed, but the colors are very good after drying.
However, although cleaning can weaken the smell of deterioration and fermentation of the dye liquor, Xu Chen had to start thinking of ways to further process the dye liquor.
The dye paste that he thought could be easily dealt with before seemed to require some improvements in advance.
There is absolutely no way to completely purify the pigment right now.
However, there is still a way to remove as much as possible the organic matter in the plant dye slurry that is prone to fermentation and decay through filtration.
So after Xu Chen thought for a while, he called Qi Yi and the two responsible Ba women over and began to instruct them on the secondary treatment of the new dye paste before the next round of dyeing.
The processing process is very simple, that is, use a linen bag to squeeze and filter the spring dye slurry, leaving only the dye liquid.
In order to make the dyeing liquid cleaner, you can also use a rattan basket filled with clean sand to filter it again, and try to completely remove the organic impurities inside.
All that's left now is a relatively pure dye.
This dye is not pure, and it is not exactly the desired color, because there are many types of pigments in plants, including various chlorophylls, lutein, anthocyanins, etc., but not to mention now, even in a few hundred years
Years ago, I probably couldn’t think of a better way to extract a clean and pure dye, so filtration is the only thing that can be done at the moment.
Filtering twice will naturally increase the workload of the dyeing workshop, so Xu Chen decided to recruit a few more men to help.
As a result, the number of workers in the dyehouse increased further.
Three days later, the first batch of dried dyed cloth was delivered to the palace's clothing workshop.
This batch of cloth is mainly blue and black, with one hundred pieces each, and there are also thirty or forty pieces each of red, cyan and yellow.
After drying, the smell of the dyed cloth was not obvious and the color was relatively consistent, which Xu Chen felt was acceptable.
At present, the pieces of cloth hand-woven on waist looms are very small, two feet wide and four feet long. It takes at least three pieces to make a uniform or official uniform.
Xu Chen had no intention of starting research on making large-scale textile machines.
Although woodworking technology is no longer a big problem at the moment, given the current population and the self-sufficiency needs of each tribe, the promotion of large-scale looms does not make much sense, and will instead reduce the wealth gains of each tribe.
Because the R&D and manufacturing costs of large-scale weaving mechanisms are high, and a large amount of manpower and material resources are consumed for production and promotion. In addition, the spinning is done by hand, and the output is not high. Industrial weaving cannot be upgraded until the spinning machine is solved.
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In other words, even if the spinning machines and looms are completed, the current demand will not be able to support the industry, and eventually the industry will be abandoned if the production capacity cannot be increased.
On the contrary, this kind of original handmade production is most in line with the current era.