From Robinson Crusoe

The rainy season arrived as expected, bringing heavy rainfall, and then slowly drove away the dark clouds.

Only a faint rainbow was left in the mist on the shoulders of the distant mountains, spanning the forest, magnificent.

Outdoor activities were no longer restricted, and the leather raincoat was coated with a layer of seal oil, completing its work.

The surface of the wide-brimmed hat with the leather peeling off was mottled, and the thin leather could almost be torn by hand. This "old friend" who had put in a lot of effort was placed in a wooden box by Chen Zhou. He decided to weave a few straw hats with straw himself to achieve "hat freedom".

……

Construction inside the cave is still going on.

The weather is getting hotter and hotter. In order to preserve food, the priority of ice cellars in the kitchen is gradually increasing.

In addition, it is also important to expand the storage room and open a mouse breeding room - the kittens are getting bigger and bigger, becoming more and more naughty, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to control their curiosity. They often jump onto the roof of the mouse pen and the "apartment building" of the poison testers to spy on their lives.

……

On October 10, Chen Zhou obtained a fountain pen and a small bottle of ink. At the same time, the stone mill built in the wooden and stone wall was finally completed, and he could finally grind wheat into flour.

Of course, the stone mill has only taken shape as a circle at present, and he still needs to continue processing and adjusting it.

But that was nothing compared to the most difficult task of cutting stone.

In order to eat noodle cakes or dumpling soup as soon as possible, Chen Zhou worked overtime and completed the stone mill on October 10. The results were great after trial use.

Although the flour ground from the stone mill is not as fine as modern flour, it is a rare delicacy for him.

After eating a few big meals of noodles, Chen Zhou ground some coarse salt with a stone mill.

After entering the dry season, without the disruption of rain, his salt drying field can operate normally again. Now he raises many sheep and consumes a lot of salt. If he only relies on the salt dried in the last dry season, it will not last long.

……

After the problem of the stone mill was solved, the space in the cave became even more limited.

Earthen rice hullers, foot-operated pestles and stone mills are not small-sized machines and are afraid of wind, sun and rain. Putting them in the kitchen will make the already limited space even worse.

Chen Zhou originally wanted to study pottery making first, but then he thought that after the pottery was successfully fired, he would need to make room for the pots and jars, so he decided to expand the cave first and dig the ice cellar that had been on the agenda for a long time.

After making a plan, I was busy and before I knew it, it was the day for the 26th mysterious reward to be delivered.

On October 25th, he took Lai Fu to the beach, tidied up the wooden and stone walls, took away the two newly cut "steel pickaxe heads", and checked the reward.

After crossing the invisible threshold of the first anniversary, life gradually got back on track. Except that the quality of life is far different from that of modern people, there are no particularly big difficulties.

Under this premise, the rewards sent to the island brought less and less help to Chen Zhou, even though the rewards themselves were not bad, and were even quite good.

The 26th reward is the classic four-piece bedding set, including a quilt cover, a duvet cover, two pillowcases and a bed sheet.

The size of the four-piece set is in line with the standard of a double bed. It uses silver-gray non-falling velvet. The material is very solid and it can be seen that it is not cheap.

Unfortunately, the ceiling of the cave had not been installed yet - this was the work Chen Zhou had planned to complete during the rainy season. Unexpectedly, a book on rattan weaving crafts suddenly appeared, causing him to capture a flock of sheep, completely disrupting his plans.

Cave dwellings without ceilings often suffer from the same old problem, with dirt falling from top to bottom. In such an environment, no matter how good the furniture is, it is impossible to keep it clean.

Although Chen Zhou really wanted to change into a four-piece suit and enjoy the softness and warmth of modern fabrics, he couldn't. He could only stuff the four-piece suit into a wooden box and spread it on the bed after the ceiling was installed and the room was clean.

……

Without the use of explosives, even with a more durable steel pickaxe, the speed of expanding the cave would still not be fast enough.

In a week, Chen Zhou only opened up about six square meters of space.

The reason why the speed is so slow is, on the one hand, because of limited manpower, and on the other hand, because Chen Zhou does not have much time.

Crops, pets, study, animal husbandry, and small events that occur from time to time always consume a lot of time. The time that can actually be used to dig sand and gravel and develop caves is only about five or six hours a day.

Chen Zhou is a very hard-working person who can spare five or six hours. If it were an African black guy or an Indian guy, it would take him one or two months to finish these six square meters.

……

Although six square meters is not a large area, it is more than enough to place three grain processing machines, and even two wooden shelves for storing sundries.

After days of digging, Chen Zhou was somewhat bored with this boring work.

Since October 10, he has devoted himself to pottery making.

Pottery making is a very creative and novel job for him.

The kneaded rough blank is placed in the pottery kiln and fired by flames. Various problems may arise, or it may remain intact.

This process is somewhat similar to opening a blind box.

The unknown is always something that people look forward to and are curious about, especially the unknown that does not pose any danger.

……

The guy on the forum mentioned in his "Guide to Firing Ceramics" that firing ceramics is an ancient and complicated craft. For those who are not familiar with this craft, the fastest way to master it is to practice more and practice makes perfect.

During the process of making pottery, Chen Zhou deeply agreed with this statement.

He first discovered that his process of shaping clay was too slow, so he made a hand-cranked potter's wheel to help him shape the clay into pots or bottles.

Then, he cut the ironwood and made several different shapes of trimming knives to outline the details of the pottery.

Most of the pottery he had kneaded by hand before had fingerprints on it and the surface was rough and uneven, which made him, a perfectionist, very uncomfortable.

After making these tools, he decided to go all the way and built a shed outside the cave, put a few short tables in it, and built his own "pottery studio."

After starting to make pottery on October 10, he spent the whole day mixing clay and making fire, becoming more and more addicted to it.

After building the studio, this addiction became more and more out of control and continued day after day. Before I knew it, it was November 11th, the day when the 9th mysterious reward arrived.

……

Before this, although Chen Zhou had always been looking forward to the mysterious reward, he had never particularly and strongly desired anything.

On November 11, he finally had his first very clear wish - he wanted a textbook to teach him how to make pottery, or at least a thermometer to measure the temperature inside the kiln.

Judging the flame temperature based on experience is too painful and unreliable.

If the request for teaching materials or thermometers is too demanding, Chen Zhou hopes that the Space-Time Administration can be merciful and give him dozens of bags of minerals for preparing glazes. He really wants to glaze the pottery he makes.

Apart from pottery and sculpture, there are few jobs in the world that can bring out both his design and painting talents.

Moreover, there are differences between glaze color and painting.

When the glaze is outlined on the surface of the pottery and after firing, it may present different colors and patterns. This unique "artwork" is even more fascinating.

Of course, the rewards are numerous and even if the Spacetime Administration can really hear the challengers' voices, it can't be a "wishing machine". All Chen Zhou can do is hope. ...

When he arrived at the beach that day and saw the cardboard box in the middle of the wooden and stone wall, Chen Zhou's eyes lit up and he really felt a little hopeful.

In the center of the sand, there is a flat, not-too-large cardboard box. Judging from the outside, it is very likely that there is a book inside the box.

It is possible that there is a high-temperature thermometer inside, but as far as Chen Zhou knows, high-temperature thermometers are generally not so small and are not flat.

He opened the box with great joy, but was greatly disappointed by what was inside.

It was a set of knives, including a slicing knife, a boning knife, a kitchen knife, and a fruit knife.

The surface of the blade has Damascus patterns, but these Damascus patterns are not like the small daggers that come with the axe, which look like they were burned by lasers. Instead, they are complex patterns produced by folding and forging.

This feature is most evident on slicing and boning knives.

The stripes of varying depths and metallic luster are like waves, covering the entire blade with a unique sense of movement.

In addition to this set of knives, the box also comes with a solid wooden knife holder, but the wood used for the knife holder is not very good.

Chen Zhou plans to make a separate knife holder for this set of valuable kitchen knives when he has time.

There is a lack of everything on the island except wood.

Under the knife rack, there were a pair of kitchen shears and a whetstone. The whetstone felt very delicate and gave Chen Zhou the feeling that it was much better than the grinding wheel for sharpening knives that he brought off the boat.

……

He usually uses the kitchen knife he brought from the ship to cook.

To be honest, the metallurgical technology in the 17th century was really backward, and materials science was still in its embryonic stage. The metals used in various instruments had very poor corrosion resistance. The knives on the ship were often contaminated with seawater when cutting fish, and were seriously affected by corrosion.

This results in the blade being rusty, with some dents and scars left by fallen iron pieces, and sometimes even debris falling off if you rub it hard with a rag.

In modern society, scrap metal collectors are unwilling to accept such broken knives. They are usually thrown into the trash can and sent directly to the scrap yard for recycling.

Because the iron knife is too big and the axe cannot cut the vegetables, when dealing with larger ingredients, Chen Zhou can only be patient and cut slowly with this broken kitchen knife.

When it comes to the more delicate and detailed work stages, he takes out Robinson's dagger or "fake Damascus knife" and handles it carefully.

Although this set of knives is not the "pottery skill book" or high temperature thermometer he wants most, it is also a great help in improving the quality of life.

Chen Zhou was somewhat disappointed when he didn't see the book he was most looking forward to when he unpacked the package.

But this kind of disappointment of "getting a good deal and still acting cute" soon turned into secret joy.

This can be seen from the way he carefully put several knives, which were individually inserted in leather sheaths, into his mountaineering bag one by one to prevent them from being damaged by colliding with each other.

……

The new knives gave Chen Zhou more room to display his culinary skills, but unfortunately his knife skills were terrible.

It looks good when cut into chunks or slices, but when it comes to delicate work like shredding, the food is either thick like strips or in pieces with uneven thickness. Once put into the pan, it becomes diced directly. When it is served, people who don't know would think it is a dish made by an Indian chef.

After trying to stir-fry the shredded pork several times and producing a few unappetizing "diarrhea product imitators", Chen Zhou chose to give up and continued to tinker with his pottery.

……

Chen Zhou always felt that he was not a very smart person, and in many aspects, he even seemed a little clumsy.

But he believed that he was diligent enough and could concentrate and spend twice as much or more time as others to learn, practice, think and summarize experiences and lessons.

When he was in school, he once learned a saying: "If you study without thinking, you will be confused; if you think without studying, you will be in danger."

Thinking is always right. After all, no one can guarantee that they will never make mistakes, and careful thinking can avoid many low-level mistakes.

Chen Zhou fired batch after batch of pottery, and each time he recorded in detail on the white clay board the amount of fuel used, the ratio of the clay, the thickness of the pottery, the size of the pottery, the different shapes of the pottery, and even the differences in weather and temperature, and made comparisons and summaries.

These data, which consumed a lot of fuel and mud, were transferred to paper and turned into accurate laws and inferred principles.

The newly arrived pens and inks are involved in this process.

I have to say that a fountain pen that costs tens of thousands of dollars feels different to use. It writes so smoothly.

It took nearly a month in total.

On November 11, before the arrival of the 23th mysterious reward, Chen Zhou's pottery making technique finally made a breakthrough.

He successfully fired a batch of real medium and large pottery!
The reason why we use the word "batch" instead of "individual" is because the kiln contained a total of three 60-centimeter-high pottery jars, all of which were fired successfully without any damage or cracks.

This represents his continuous thinking, summarizing and improvement, which finally led to qualitative change from quantitative change.

Starting from the brief teachings from an old friend on the forum, after a long period of practice, I have achieved initial perfection in the pottery-making process.

The wheel shaping work before firing the pottery in this kiln, the shade drying work after shaping, and the final firing work in the kiln all conform to the correct procedures summarized and speculated by Chen Zhou.

He even made reasonable judgments about the temperature inside the kiln, which was the most difficult to control, based on the changes in the flames.

From the initial step of mixing the clay to the time the pottery is fired from the kiln, there were no mistakes at all, and only then were three complete pottery jars fired without any deformation or cracks.

These three larger and more beautifully shaped pottery jars meant that Chen Zhou would no longer lack vessels for storing water.

It also means that he can make tableware, flower pots, washbasins and other containers needed in life by himself in the future, and be self-sufficient without external support.

At the same time, he can also bake some small jars for catching octopuses to add some new dishes to his table - he learned about this ingenious tool for catching octopuses when watching videos about sea-hunting.

The small jar for catching octopuses is smaller than a fist, with a very narrow opening and holes punched on it. The jars are strung together with a rope and sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Octopuses like to dig holes, and when they see small jars, they always go in. Once the fishermen pull the rope, they can't leave the jar for a while and are pulled up to be used as food.

In addition to the small pottery jar, Chen Zhou's long-cherished "pottery chimney" also found its way.

As long as a batch of qualified ceramic chimneys can be fired, the smoke exhaust problem of the kitchen stove can be solved.

The fire wall and the planned fireplace also became feasible.

There was also the pressure well brought down from the ship. The reason why Chen Zhou had not started digging the well was not only because he did not know where the water source was and was afraid of wasting his efforts after digging for several days, but also because he had another concern: there was no well pipe to lower it.

It is basically impossible to pump out drinking water from a well without a well pipe. There will definitely be a lot of mud and impurities in it, which will not only affect the taste, but may also clog the water pressure well.

And the benefits of successful pottery making go far beyond these.

From dining utensils needed for daily life, to decorations such as vases and incense burners, to utensils such as flower pots and fish tanks, to handicrafts such as ceramic statues and ceramic toys, to practical items such as ceramic bricks and tiles, pickle jars, and wine jars.

A skill that can be mastered and gradually improved can bring so much convenience to life.

No wonder Chen Zhou was so happy after taking out the three pottery jars that he drank half a bottle of wine in one breath, picked up his fishing rod excitedly and ran to the river to fish for the whole afternoon. (End of this chapter)