Li Laosi took out a silver ingot worth ten taels and put it on the table and said: "Shopkeeper, my master will give you ten taels. You can find some experienced craftsmen!"
The jade owner looked at Li Laosi's money and said with a wry smile: "My lord, if you hire away the jade craftsman, the shop will close. Even if you give me fifty taels, I can't let you do it."
Hire my jadesmith."
Li Laosi and Li Zhi looked at each other, and Li Zhi said: "Shopkeeper, you gave us the old master, and you can train a few new people to polish jade."
The shopkeeper said: "My lord, these jade craftsmen's skills are passed down from ancestors. They are passed down from son to son, not from son-in-law. When the old jade craftsman is gone, it will take a new jade craftsman who knows how many years to learn the skill. How can it be cultivated overnight?"
For the sake of the small profit of the small shop, I don’t want to rob the jade craftsman of the small shop.”
When Li Zhi heard this, he asked: "These jade carving skills are passed down from ancestors, not the skills you taught?"
The shopkeeper didn't react for a moment, and nodded and said: "The shop also hires these jade craftsmen for a monthly fee. They are all skills passed down from their families. What is the skill of the shop?"
After saying this, the shopkeeper realized that he regretted a little, and secretly thought that the official had to skip him and directly hire a jade craftsman.
Li Zhi smiled and said, "In that case, we won't talk to you anymore."
Li Zhi led a group of people out of Jade Alley and stayed at an inn. After resting for a while, Li Zhi found the innkeeper and said, "Innkeeper, I have something to ask you!"
When the shopkeeper saw Li Zhi's official uniform, he knelt down to salute, but Li Zhi helped him up.
"I'm going to hire some craftsmen who know how to polish jade. Do you recognize them?"
The shopkeeper asked honestly: "What kind of jade craftsman does the official want? If it is a top-notch craftsman who can do some skillful work and can decorate, drill and penetrate the jade, the salary will be high.
And it’s not easy to hire. If it’s an ordinary jade craftsman who only cuts jade and ties pottery, there are many of them in our county, and they usually cost two taels a month.”
Li Zhi asked: "Do ordinary craftsmen polish the edges and polish jade?"
The innkeeper said: "Of course you can, how can you be considered a jade craftsman if you don't know this?"
Li Zhi nodded and said: "Then you can find me a few skilled ordinary jade craftsmen who are good at polishing and polishing. I want to hire five people, and I will give each of them three taels of silver per month. One day
Provide three meals, three meals with meat, and give them fifteen taels of silver each for moving expenses, and let them work in Fanjiazhuang, Tianjin!" After saying this, Li Zhi took out two taels of silver and put it on the table and said: "
This money is given to you as an introduction fee."
The shopkeeper's face suddenly beamed with smile, and he said: "I will go and help you!"
Seeing the beaming face of the shopkeeper, Li Laosi added: "Shopkeeper, you have found the right person! If you find a craftsman who doesn't know how to do things, my official will not be able to deal with it!"
The shopkeeper quickly said: "You know, the people know it!"
The next night, the shopkeeper brought nine jade craftsmen to the inn and introduced them to Li Zhi. Li Zhi glanced at the nine people and said, "Why did you find so many people?"
The shopkeeper said: "They are all willing to come after hearing the official's monthly payment. These nine people are all veterans. Let the official choose five people."
After hearing what the shopkeeper said, the nine jade craftsmen all looked at Li Zhi nervously, fearing that Li Zhi would not want them.
Li Zhi glanced at the nine people and said, "Who are the ones who got married?"
Then six older jade craftsmen stood up and said that they were married. Li Zhi glanced at these six people, nodded, eliminated the oldest one, and selected the other five.
These five jade craftsmen have money to get married, which shows that their current income level is good, and they are naturally skilled craftsmen. The other three bachelors have no money to get married, so their level is difficult to estimate. Li Zhi could not test the level of these jade craftsmen for a while.
, can only be evaluated simply using this rough method.
The five jade craftsmen who had become a family were chosen by Li Zhi. They were overjoyed and secretly thought that their income had increased by half. The new owner also provided three meals with meat. Where could such a good thing be found?
Li Zhi found the craftsmen, immediately paid fifteen taels of moving fees, and urged the craftsmen to move to Fanjiazhuang immediately to organize the production of reading glasses.
On January 27, the ninth year of Chongzhen, the jade craftsmen moved their belongings and jade grinding tools from Yutian to Fanjiazhuang and began to produce reading glasses for Li Zhi.
The first step in making reading glasses is to make a mold. Li Zhi drew the drawings and hired a blacksmith to make twenty glass lens molds with different curvatures. The glass craftsmen poured annealed glass hot liquid into these molds.
, press out the convex glass piece, and then hand the convex glass lens to the jade craftsman for processing.
Jade craftsmen have to polish the rough-pressed glass pieces into convex lenses with a single focus.
The operation of jade craftsmen grinding glass pieces is called milling in jade making. The craftsmen use the tool "milling" to finely grind the surface of the glass. During the specific operation, the jade worker holds the glass with his left hand and holds it against the rotating glass.
The edge of the steel plate. There is a basin filled with water and red sand at one end of the table. The jade worker uses his right hand to scoop up the sand and pour it on the glass. The hard jade sand is paired with a rotating and sharp edge.
The blade can be used to grind off unnecessary parts of the glass.
The lens is not finished until it is ground out, it still needs to be polished.
Polishing is divided into two steps: wood polishing and leather polishing.
Wooden buckets are generally made of gourd pulp. The tool structure used during operation is a board connected to a wooden shaft, which drives the circular wooden bucket to rotate, and polishes the lens with the help of stone sand. The hardness of the stone sand used in this step is relatively high
Low, generally quartz sand is used.
Then there is leather grinding: during leather grinding, a round bucket made of cowhide is used to rotate and rub the lens, and the lens is ground into a smooth and translucent glass lens.
After polishing, the reading lenses are ready. Li Zhi asked the craftsmen to put the lenses into the wooden frame, and they became reading glasses.
The power of reading glasses is based on the length of the focal length. Li Zhi calculated the approximate length of one meter from his own height, made an iron meter ruler, and then multiplied the reciprocal of the focal length of each lens by one hundred to obtain each lens.
degree.
The lenses made for the first time range from 100 degrees to 800 degrees.
Li Zhi found a few literate old men to do experiments and asked them to try on reading glasses of various degrees. After these old people put on reading glasses with appropriate degrees, they found that they could see documents clearly at close range. One by one,
Shout miraculous.
The things invented by Mr. Cheng are always so incredible.
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Thanks to Gui He for the 500 reward, thank you! Thanks to Xiao Xiaojinyi for the 100 rainy night walk.
