The ruthless emperor in the late Ming Dynasty forced Chongzhen to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 310 Porcelain Master
"I think of something that can replace the stone pond to dry salt."

After Zhu Cihong finished speaking, he ignored the astonishment and doubts of the stewards behind him, but ordered someone to bring a porcelain bowl.

When everyone looked at the porcelain bowl, their eyes were wide open, and they immediately understood what His Majesty meant, and there were constant pats on the horse.

"Wonderful, Your Majesty is truly a god-man. Porcelain is calcined at high temperature, so it is naturally not afraid of the scorching sun. Glazed porcelain is also not afraid of salt water corrosion. It is most suitable for drying salt."

"Yes, yes! It's wonderful, it's really wonderful."

Although everyone praised the sky, they all secretly thought in their hearts, they really answered that sentence, why not eat minced meat!
It is indeed very suitable to use porcelain to dry salt, but the price to be spent may be several times, or even ten times, higher than that of stone ponds.

Zhu Cihong didn't know what they were thinking, even if he knew, he wouldn't care, because he didn't consider the production cost at all, but only cared about whether it could be mass-produced quickly.

It is because Shichi cannot be mass-produced quickly, so even if the cost is low, he will not choose it. Porcelain is calcined with mud and can be mass-produced.

As long as a group of master kiln masters are transferred from Jingdezhen, what kind of porcelain cannot be fired?
So he nodded and said: "Of course, the salt-dried porcelain doesn't need to be so exquisite, as long as it is not afraid of salt water corrosion and sun exposure, the shape and size have to be redesigned."

He has already thought of the tiles in his previous life. He only needs to surround the four sides of the tiles and make them into a circle. Although one piece can’t be exposed to the sun, it can be mass-produced. million dollars.

Anyway, the materials are just some clay and calcined coal, and the labor can be ignored at all.

The reason why today's porcelain is so precious is because it needs to be carefully crafted, and there must be no flaws after firing. Not only is it time-consuming and laborious, but the rate of defective products is still high.

Porcelain that can be used to dry salt does not need to consider these at all, no matter how rough it is, as long as it does not leak, no matter how many flaws it has.

Zhu Cihong has always been a person who does what he says, but compared to the past, he came up with his own ideas and handed over the details to others. This time, he planned to personally supervise and participate.

Because he also wanted to burn the tiles by the way. If it can be produced in large quantities and at low cost, it will definitely be a very good industrial product.

Next, while Zhu Cihong ordered people to find a place with a large amount of clay in Yancheng County to build a kiln, he sent people back to Nanjing to ask Zhang Yan to get him one or two hundred old masters who could burn porcelain. The coal mines that are relatively close to Yancheng County should preferably be transported by water.

Clay is everywhere, and regardless of the quality, in just three days, I found a place with a lot of clay in the open terrain thirty miles south of the county seat.

When Zhu Cihong gave an order, thousands of people got busy. First, they built ordinary kilns for firing refractory bricks, and ordinary blue bricks and tiles.

Then refractory bricks were used to cut professional kilns, and the fired bricks and tiles were used to build bungalows. The emperor personally supervised the work.

Zhu Cihong also had to lament the hard work of people in this era. Thousands of people just spent a month turning a wasteland into a huge brick factory.

At this time, more than 200 master craftsmen transferred from Jingdezhen had also arrived. As Zhu Cihong had explained in advance, these 200 masters were not top porcelain firing masters, and they could only be regarded as average.

But even at an average level, it is more than enough. When the real top masters come, they will be wasted and their skills will be ruined.

No, the two hundred porcelain-burning masters who came here hurriedly looked at each other in dismay after listening to Emperor Xiao Zhu's explanation.

I thought that being recruited by the imperial court in a hurry, or ordered by His Majesty himself, would be such a big deal that they would be asked to burn some rare treasures.

But now, looking at the broken things on the table, I can't help but say, that's it?
In the past month, Zhu Cihong has not been idle, but has asked masters who can burn pottery to make some samples, and a lot of them have been fired.

In fact, there are some plates of different sizes, the small one is the size of a washbasin, and the largest one is as big as a dustpan, but maybe because the heat is not well controlled, or the pottery is not good enough, there is almost no one that satisfies him.

Either there are cracks, or it is pottery, which cannot be called porcelain at all, especially the one with a large dustpan, the cracks around it are very large, and it cannot be used at all.

"Do you all understand? Can these problems be solved? I don't want how exquisite your work is. As long as it doesn't crack, it's thicker or rougher, it doesn't matter. Of course, it's best to use porcelain. If it doesn't work, pottery can also be glazed. Accept! As long as you can produce something that satisfies me, I will reward you greatly!"

Zhu Cihong ordered them to start work immediately after making a promise.

And all the masters were also very excited, almost as if they had been beaten with chicken blood.

Sure enough, with the participation of this group of professional master craftsmen, more than a dozen finished products were fired in just two kilns. Although the porcelain plates were of different sizes, they were almost all porcelain, and there was no pottery.

Zhu Cihong couldn't stop talking, they were both made of mud, and they were all made of charcoal in a kiln, but the effects were so different that people couldn't see the way.

"That's right. For this model, it only needs half of the finished product rate to be considered a success."

Zhu Cihong caressed the largest porcelain dish that looked like a dustpan, and couldn't put it down.

"Return to Your Majesty, if you give the younger ones some more time, you can make it thinner, and add more patterns on the inside and outside."

A master craftsman said cautiously, and the others also nodded frequently. Obviously, they were not satisfied with this porcelain. They were sure that this porcelain was definitely the worst and ugliest one they had ever made.

If this kind of porcelain is fired, if it is not smashed, it will smash its own signboard, so everyone wants to burn another one.

"No, it doesn't matter if it's thicker, and the pattern is even less necessary. The simpler the better, just burn it like this!"

Zhu Cihong immediately waved his hand and refused, saying that what he wanted was efficiency and yield. Adding some patterns, although it looks good, is useless at all. Although it is thinner and lighter, the yield will definitely increase after one kiln is fired. decline.

"Yes!"

Naturally, everyone didn't dare to refute the emperor's words and they all answered quickly.

Next, Zhu Cihong transferred a full 1 people over, built one earthen kiln after another, and personally formulated a series of production processes.

That is, a group of two master craftsmen and a hundred assistants are in charge of a kiln and a workshop. Each group competes with each other, which group burns the most finished products every month, and which group gets the highest wages and bonuses.

The soil, mud and coking coal are separated separately, and each group is only responsible for making rough and calcining in the future.

In addition to this dustpan-sized porcelain plate for drying salt for crystallization, a large water tank is also needed to hold sea water. Fortunately, the water tank is much simpler than porcelain, and ordinary pottery masters can easily burn it out. As for ceramic tiles Zhu Cihong didn't mount his horse immediately.

He plans to design a complete sun-dried salt process.

(End of this chapter)