From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 103 Pottery
After the female mouse became pregnant, the total number of pregnant women in the family soared to eight, including Grape and the female goat.

Fortunately, these pregnant women did not need Chen Zhou's careful care, especially the female goats and grapes, who did not even need to be fed, which saved him a lot of worry.

……

Starting from July 7, Chen Zhou's "pottery making plan" officially started.

Nearly a year has passed, and most of the tips for pottery and porcelain making taught by the old man on the forum have disappeared from his mind. Fortunately, he wrote these things down in a notebook early on, otherwise he would have to start from scratch.

The "tips" of the brother on the forum are mainly based on his experience in porcelain making, and there are only a few lines about pottery making.

It explains that if the pottery to be fired is relatively large, it cannot be formed at once with a whole piece of clay. Instead, the clay must be kneaded into long strips and stacked up in circles.

After the pottery is fired, you can test whether it is usable by knocking it or holding water in it.

In addition, the tips from the forum brother also mentioned:
Large pottery vessels, such as jars and pottery jars, cannot be made entirely of mud unless the clay is of extremely high quality.

Just like building reinforced concrete structures, in order to stabilize the shape of the pottery, it is best to place some woven vines or branches in the mud, which can significantly increase the probability of firing large pottery.

In addition, the mud for making pottery also has its own requirements. You can use red clay, white clay or black clay. When mixing the mud, it is best to add some sand.

As for the ratio of soil and sand, the guy on the forum did not explain it, so Chen Zhou could only figure it out on his own.

……

Mud was plentiful on Chen Zhou, in all sorts of colors, from the white soil produced on the island to the edible soil that remained untouched in the house.

There is no need to worry about the mud mixing technique——

He had mixed mud countless times to build the house, and he had already memorized the ratio of mud and water.

Since there was no shortage of materials, on the 26th, Chen Zhou went straight to the point - building a pottery kiln.

The ultimate goal of making pottery must be to fire large glazed jars, but that is the ultimate goal, and things have to be done step by step for now.

Chen Zhou decided to build a small pottery kiln to test the waters first.

He dug a stove pit directly on the platform, then molded the mud into blocks and built them around the stove pit.

A clay board needs to be made in the middle of the pottery kiln to allow fire to pass through - I also learned this from the "little trick" of an old man on the forum.

According to my brother, the clay slab on which the pottery is placed must be thick enough.

The surface of the clay tablet needs to be punched with circular holes of uniform size and neatly distributed to allow the flames to drill through the holes and lick the unfired pottery.

Chen Zhou has a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder in his work. In order to make qualified clay tablets, he specially circled out a regular mold with wooden boards.

Mix the ratio of mud and water, stuff white mud with just the right hardness into the mold, smooth the edges, and shave the surface.

When the white mud was regular enough, he used a ruler to print squares of even length and width on the mud board. Finally, he drew a circle in the middle of the square and dug out the mud inside the circle with a dagger.

After repairing this cylindrical hole, repeat the same process to make the next hole.

After all the holes were dug and the wooden frames around them were removed, Chen Zhou moved the clay slabs to the table on the platform to dry them. Once they were dry and hard, they could be taken to the pottery kiln for use.

After making the first clay tablet, Chen Zhou made seven more in succession as backup, and then continued to build the pottery kiln.

A small pottery kiln does not require much technical expertise and can be built quickly after reserving the flue.

Light the firewood, build a fire in the hearth, and burn the inside of the hard pottery kiln.

After completing the preparations, Chen Zhou waited patiently for the entire afternoon.

During this time, he took out the edible soil stored in the cave, dug some river sand and sea sand, squatted on the ground to adjust the ratio of mud and sand, trying to find a suitable ratio.

Finally, the white clay board was dried and the last piece of the puzzle for firing the pottery kiln was assembled.

On the evening of the 26th, red flames were lit, and several palm-sized pottery pieces prepared by Chen Zhou were put into the kiln for firing.

Looking down from the top of the small kiln, one can observe the tips of the flames like living snakes crawling up from the holes in the clay slabs, constantly burning the bottoms of the small pottery pieces.

The burning temperature of firewood is not as high as that of charcoal. Chen Zhou was not sure whether the first burning would be successful, so he took out the fire and lit a bonfire on the side, and fried the meat in a frying pan in advance to prepare dinner.

While frying the meat, he added firewood to the bottom of the kiln several times.

After the flames in the kiln gradually died down and the heat had almost dissipated, he used two long wooden sticks to pick out the fired small pottery and observe the firing results.

For this firing, Chen Zhou prepared a total of six small pottery pieces.

These included a very crude little fat dog, two little pottery kittens, and three small teacups.

Judging from the firing results, this firing can be said to be a complete failure.

The fire was too strong and all the small teacups were burned.

The two kitten pottery pieces were also burned and cracked.

Only the little fat dog, thanks to its large size and thick materials, has not been completely disfigured, and the outline of the "dog" can still be vaguely seen.

Chen Zhou knocked on the shell of the puppy pottery with a dagger and heard a slightly solid sound. He felt that the pottery should be close to success, so he kept it.

After it had cooled completely, he showed this strange-looking "little fat dog" to Lai Fu while Lai Fu was eating, hoping to see its happy expression.

Unexpectedly, Lai Fu didn't even bother to look at the piece of junk in Chen Zhou's hand. He just stared at the frying meat with a firm gaze, which made Chen Zhou criticize him for not understanding art.

……

In the more than a week after the first firing of pottery on the 26th, Chen Zhou has been studying issues such as the proportion of clay, the temperature in the furnace, and the firing time.

If a guy on the forum misses a sentence, it often means the sacrifice of more than a dozen or even dozens of pottery pieces.

There were so many failures that he even dug a pit to bury the "defective products".

Relying on his understanding of metal heat treatment and the way of thinking cultivated by the modern education system, Chen Zhou built his own pottery-making experience in his mind using lines of data in a notebook.

In the following days, more and more small pottery pieces were successfully fired.

Small cups, teacups, flower pots and all kinds of ceramic dolls fill the bedroom windowsill.

In addition to the improvement in firing success rate, Chen Zhou's skills in kneading the blanks have also improved significantly.

Currently, his most satisfying work is a square teapot.

To make this vessel, he used the technique of kneading clay into sticks and then stacking them up layer by layer.

After the outer wall of the teapot in the shape of the "Michelin Tire Man" is roughly formed, a hole is dug out on one side of the pot wall and the prefabricated teapot spout is installed.

Then install the teapot handle on the other side.

After the rough blank is made, Chen Zhou has to use a dagger or iron sheet to smooth the gaps between the clay sticks, trim the entire vessel to make it sufficiently symmetrical and regular, and finally deal with the unevenness inside the teapot, before completing the preparation of the entire teapot.

The preliminary preparation work for the square teapot took more than seven hours. When firing it, Chen Zhou was nervous, fearing that his hard work would be ruined.

Fortunately, the result did not disappoint him. This square pot, which was made with a manufacturing process similar to that of porcelain, withstood the test of fire and transformed into a real practical item, combining beauty and functionality. However, since pottery has no glaze, although this square pot does not leak, it will naturally absorb some water after being filled with water for a long time, so it is not perfect.

Regarding the glazing part, the brother on the forum also mentioned it in the "tips", but it is generally brief.

It only said that the glaze slurry is made of mud, lime and some rocks, with the ratio being approximately ten to one.

As for the specific ingredients in the glaze slurry.

There was no detailed introduction as to what this "mud" was and what this "ash" was. Needless to say, he had to figure it out on his own.

……

On August 8, after finishing the firing of a new kiln of pottery and seeing that all the pottery in the kiln had no obvious cracks, deformations or other major problems, Chen Zhou felt that it was time to build a large-scale pottery kiln and begin preparing for the jars and pots.

He struggled for a while about what material to use to build the large pottery kiln, and finally decided to use white clay.

This is because although the cut stone bricks are hard, they are not resistant to high temperatures. Using them to build houses or walls is fine, but they will definitely collapse if used to build pottery kilns.

In terms of burning resistance, white clay is professional.

……

Unlike small pottery kilns, large pottery kilns are built entirely with white mud bricks. The higher the bricks, the greater the pressure on the bottom, and the risk of collapse also increases.

During the construction of the kiln, Chen Zhou added crushed rice straw and wheat stalks to the white mud bricks, and also penetrated wooden poles from top to bottom.

By making full use of the mechanical properties of the material, the bearing capacity of the components can be improved and the structural strength of the pottery kiln can be strengthened.

……

Small pottery kilns are round, while large pottery kilns are square. They are about two meters above the ground, and the internal furnace is large enough to hold a small jar or a dozen larger pots and jars.

Construction began on August 8th and the large pottery kiln was not completed until August 5th.

Affected by Chen Zhou's obsessive-compulsive disorder, the appearance of the entire pottery kiln is very regular, which is incompatible with the platform covered with broken sand and gravel and the crudely built cave.

Because the pottery kiln is too large and is divided into three parts: the two-layer furnace at the bottom and the pottery firing area above, the internal hardening process cannot be completed in one go.

As early as the bottom furnace was built and the latest model of white mud boards were placed inside to dry, Chen Zhou filled the furnace with firewood, started a fierce fire and burned it fiercely.

Once the upper pottery firing area and smoke vent are completed, a new round of hardening will begin.

Mud bricks are huge and require a lot of firewood and time.

To this end, Chen Zhou prepared a mountain of firewood, which he burned from the early morning of the 9th to dusk. He only stopped adding firewood when it got dark and he felt hungry, and let the embers in the furnace die out.

……

It is the end of the dry season and there is still no sign of rain on the island.

Although the cave was in the shade, Chen Zhou was sweating profusely under the blazing fire after watching the fire and adding firewood all day.

During the day, he drank a whole bucket of boiled water and went to the toilet countless times, washing away the sand and soil on the edge of the platform to form a small groove from top to bottom.

In the evening, after adding the last load of firewood, he sat down exhausted on a low stool, shaking off the sweat from his forehead. He didn't even have the strength to speak.

Even if he kept replenishing water, he couldn't keep up with the consumption. Chen Zhou felt that if he did this kind of work for a few more days, he would live several days less.

Fortunately, this kind of torture-like work is not common. After five busy days, the pottery kiln firing finally came to an end.

In the future, pottery making will no longer involve such hard and tiring work, but will become a delicate job that tests craftsmanship and creativity.

Chen Zhou is quite confident in this regard.

……

On the evening of the 9th, he drank a glass of light salt water to replenish some of the deficiency in his body. After a simple dinner, he fell on the bed and fell asleep in less than five seconds.

……

As August approached, the rainy season was gradually approaching. Worried that the pottery kiln would be damaged by the rain, Chen Zhou began to move wood again, preparing to build a rain shelter for the pottery kiln.

However, before starting work on the rain shelter, he still had one important thing to do - the second batch of rice was ripe.

The seedlings of this batch of rice, barley and wheat were planted on May 5th. Unconsciously, more than three months have passed. After flowering and seeding, they have grown to full size.

The rice from the last batch of rice had long been eaten up by Chen Zhou.

In the past month, the bread was almost gone and he had no staple food. He even took out the black bread sticks that were as hard as bricks and as unpalatable as pig food, cut them into slices and cooked them.

The total amount of this batch of rice was much larger than the first batch. Excluding the rice reserved for seeds, the remaining rice was enough for him to survive for another month.

……

On August 8, Chen Zhou harvested the second batch of mature rice.

As with the first batch of rice, he laid out the ears of rice on a platform to dry and built the framework of a rain shelter.

That afternoon, a dark cloud floated in from the sea, covering the stars and the moon, and there was a faint sign that the rainy season was approaching.

Chen Zhou collected the rice that was drying overnight and put a thick canvas on the top of the awning to prevent it from getting wet by the night rain and causing the rice to become moldy or damaging the pottery kiln.

August 8th is the date when the 11st reward arrives. Feeling that it will rain on the night of the 21th or the early morning of the 10th, Chen Zhou took out his unused leather raincoat in preparation for going out tomorrow.

During this time, the sealskin raincoat was hung on the bedroom wall. He would regularly apply oil to the raincoat to maintain it and extend its service life.

……

That night, as he expected, a drizzle fell on the island.

The cave's bedroom had a paved floor and flickered softly with oil lamps.

At the small desk in front of the window, in front of an open notebook, Chen Zhou was writing furiously, recording his thoughts and experiences from firing pottery during this period.

Firing large pottery is an important step in island life and a qualitative leap in improving the quality of life.

Once large pottery is successfully fired, technical problems such as kitchen chimneys, wood-burning equipment, liquid containers, and soybean paste production can all be easily solved.

In addition, Chen Zhou also found the joy of creation in the process of making pottery.

Life on the island was so long, he planned to cultivate a few more hobbies to kill his free time.

Painting is one option, fishing is one option, and pottery making and porcelain firing are also one.

And after the charcoal kiln was built, he wanted to try to mix the glaze and burn some porcelain pieces.

He thought that even if his skills in making porcelain were far from comparable to those of professional craftsmen and the porcelain he made was not valuable, he could still take away a few of his masterpieces as souvenirs when he left the island.

(End of this chapter)