Early the next morning, the whole Li family got into action. Li Hui took seven or eight servants including Dachun Dazhuang and Tian Mengmengliang and set out for Fuzhou Mountain. They brought pickaxes, chisels and other tools down to the cave to dig out the soda ash.
Azhu and Jiang Sheng took the remaining three servants to the market to buy oil, quicklime, iron pots, pots and other items, and then rushed to a dilapidated rented house on the outskirts of Dongchanggan.
The two teams moved separately, and by late afternoon, they gathered in a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Dongchanggan.
This house is indeed very dilapidated, and the area is quite large, but the walls are covered with weeds and trees, and the house is dilapidated and has not been lived in for who knows how many years.
In the past few days, when Li Hui was looking for raw materials for making, he almost went all over Jiankang City. The dilapidated house in Dongchangqian was discovered at that time. Li Hui thought at that time that it was a large open space, remote and
It was not disturbing, and it was the most suitable location for a soap making workshop. It might have been ruined because it was close to a cemetery. At that time, Li Hui kept it in mind and asked Jiang Sheng to find and rent it at the owner's house who had moved to Dongchangqian.
Come down.
In fact, Li Hui did not realize that it was so difficult to find raw materials at the time, and later regretted renting and wasting his money. But now it seems that he was prepared for a rainy day.
After everyone gathered, Li Hui began to assign tasks. Jiang Sheng led three people to repair the wall and repair the gate of the wall. Azhu and a maid cleaned the house and spread the straw mats they brought for temporary accommodation. The remaining people followed General Li Hui.
A small pool in the yard was cleared and filled with water, and quicklime was poured in to make lime water. At the same time, the heating stove and other facilities were repaired with earth and stone.
A group of people worked until dark and rested for the night in a broken house. Early the next morning, after the lime water was clarified, a large-scale activity of making caustic soda began.
After mixing a large amount of caustic soda and lime water, a heating and dissolving reaction is carried out to evaporate the water, and then the precipitate is filtered to obtain a solution of caustic soda. The concentration of the solution produced according to a certain ratio of raw materials and the time of evaporation and precipitation is basically the same, so that all
Store in large water tanks for later use.
After a day of preparation, the three large water tanks were filled with caustic soda solution. After that, Li Hui began the most important and tedious process before formal soap making. That is to determine the ratio of oil and alkali.
, find the most appropriate ratio.
Li Hui could only do this process himself, constantly trying various ratios, conducting ratio experiments with a small amount of raw materials, and recording the data and results with a pen. Finally, Li Hui found the most suitable ratio. Using vegetable oil and
At present, the concentration of alkaline water is about one to five, which produces the most soap.
This process of finding the matching ratio took Li Hui a day and a night. Everyone around him was bored. They didn't understand how Li Hui had such patience to complete this process. In their opinion, they really didn't understand that Li Hui
What's the point of doing this?
But for Li Hui, he understands that these are processes that must be treated strictly and carefully. The data records and experimental data at this moment will make the subsequent large-scale preparation process smoother and serve as a correct guide.
.
Moreover, Li Hui did not feel bored. Instead, he had the feeling of dreaming back to the laboratory of later generations. In later generations, the experiments in the laboratory were a hundred times more complicated and torturous than this. There were also hundreds of times more data variables. If one data change, the rest
If they all have to be linked together, that would make people bald.
Of course, the current saponification ratio is the data under the current situation. If you use animal oil or other oils later, you still need to repeat this test process to find the best ratio.
On the morning of the third day, large-scale preparation began. Two servants were responsible for lighting the fire, two were responsible for adding and transporting materials, Dachun Dazhuang was responsible for stirring, Li Hui and a male servant were responsible for salvaging the soap mud. A Zhu and the maid were responsible for assisting
.
After a large amount of materials are added, heating begins, and then the oil is added in proportion to the constant stirring reaction. The whole process is long and tense, but because the heating method reacts quickly, it is much faster than the cold method. As the light yellow color
The soap sludge continued to precipitate, and the soap making was a great success.
A few hours later, the three barrels of oil purchased were all used up, as were the two large tanks of alkaline water. The dug out soap sludge was all filled into wooden lattice molds for drying and shaping.
The preliminary preparations were thorough. In addition to the square wooden molds, Li Hui also made several round and petal-shaped molds. He also tried to mix petal juice into the soap mud to make the color of the soap mud look better, and
Has a light floral scent.
In order to obtain the juice of these petals, Ah Zhu had to pick all the flowers that were blooming everywhere in Xie Xuan's house, crush them and squeeze the juice, and use them as test samples. So that the flower beds in Xie Xuan's house are now bare.
Even the flower bones were pulled out.
In any case, after a day of intense work, Li Hui got what he wanted. More than a hundred pieces of soap mud of various shapes and colors lay quietly in the template to dry and shape.
After dark, Li Hui had dinner and came to the venue with a lantern to check the degree of setting of the soap mud. Ah Zhu came with him to check. The two people checked each piece of soap. There was no abnormality and the soap mud had gradually dried.
It was finalized, and both of them breathed a sigh of relief.
"Hey, it's finally done, Zhu'er. The hard work these days has paid off. Look, they are so beautiful in rows." Li Hui sighed.
Azhu nodded and sighed: "That's good. But all our money has been spent. More than 100,000 yuan is gone. The cost is too high. We only got these 100 yuan for more than 100,000 yuan."
A bar of soap costs an average of dry money each. I don’t know if it can be sold. If it can’t be sold, it will be troublesome.”
Li Hui laughed and said, "If we can't sell it, our whole family will just eat soap."
Ah Zhu said angrily: "Oh, I'm really worried, I'm not joking."
Li Hui hung the lantern on the wooden shelf, held her hand and walked slowly along the grassy path. The surroundings were quiet, and there were insects chirping in the grass.
"Azhu, don't worry. Wool comes from sheep. Although the cost is high, the price we sell it for is also high. If the cost is 1000 yuan, we will sell it for 5000 yuan. If it costs more than 100,000 yuan, we will have to earn back 500,000 yuan.
"Li Hui said in a low voice.
"Ah? It's so expensive? Who should I sell it to? How can ordinary people afford it? If it were me, I would rather wash rice water with saponins." Azhu said.
Li Hui squeezed her little hand and said with a smile: "It's not for ordinary people. This thing is for sale to rich people. We will sell it to rich families, officials and nobles, whoever has money will make a profit."
It's these people's money. They don't care about the money, as long as it is really useful. Yes, five thousand dollars seems to be cheap, and one dollar costs tens of thousands."
Ah Zhu stared at Li Hui in a daze with his mouth open.
"I need to add some gimmicks to increase my value. I'll buy some colored paper tomorrow to package it. It's best to make a small box and put it in to make it look high-end and classy. I also need a good name. Oops, I forgot to engrave the seal. Now.
It's too late, so I can only carve it directly on the soap tomorrow. Azhu, what do you think of a good name for this soap?" Li Huidao.
Ah Zhu didn't think about it in such detail. She was a little shocked that the young master actually had so many chores in his mind.
"I...I can't think of it. I'd better choose the name, Young Master. I don't know much about this. I'll buy some colored paper tomorrow. I still have some money left. It's enough to buy colored paper..."
Li Hui nodded and seemed to be talking to himself: "What's the name? Safeguard? Rejoice? Clean and Pure? It doesn't seem to be very good, it's very tacky, and it's not original. It's too elegant and too deliberate.
Hmm...how about calling it Ningzhi? It expresses both feelings and emotions."
Ah Zhu was confused and didn't know what Li Hui meant. He just nodded blankly.
"Condensed fat, um, very good. The poem says: Hands are as soft as silk, skin is like condensed fat, smile is beautiful, and beautiful eyes are looking forward to it. It gives people a feeling that it will become more beautiful after using it. At the same time, this soap is made from condensed oil.
Cheng, haha, wonderful. Let’s use this name." Li Hui laughed.
Azhu also understood it and thought it was very good. He admired the young master even more for his erudition and his ability to speak well.
"How to sell...? Open a shop? That's not good, there is no need for it for the time being. If we want to take a high-end route and sell exclusively to wealthy people from aristocratic families, we must start from the wealthy families to generate word of mouth and lead the trend. The ready-made way is
There, wouldn't it be a waste of natural resources if we don't use it? Hahaha, I have it, I know how to do it." Li Hui seemed to be talking to himself, and seemed to be discussing with Ah Zhu. He kept talking to himself.
Ah Zhu breathed a sigh of relief, clasped Li Hui's palm with her little hand, and hugged his whole arm. She thought: Fortunately, the young master is here, Zhou Xiang thinks about everything, so he doesn't have to worry at all, the young master has many ideas.
The next morning, all the soap had solidified and formed. Everyone took it out piece by piece, holding it in their hands and looking at it carefully. They were surprised that they got something like this that they had never seen before after so much trouble.
The soaps added with flower juice are pink in color and have a faint floral fragrance, which is hard to put down.
Li Hui personally trimmed and smoothed the surrounding rough edges. Then Li Hui used a bamboo tip to carve the word "Ningzhi" on the front, and painted a piece of orchid or bamboo on the back as decoration. When Azhu bought the colored paper, one by one
Wrap it up and seal it with colored thread, making it look like a snack. Li Hui abandoned the wooden box packaging, which was more expensive and could not be obtained for a while.
In one day, more than 120 soaps were packed. Azhu carefully packed the boxes into the car and took them home. Li Hui left two servants here to guard the courtyard. He will not make more soaps until this batch of soaps is sold.
The next batch, the things here need to be preserved and guarded.
After a total of eight days, Li Hui's soap-making business was finally completed. What was left was how to sell it at a high price.