Li You's Tang Dynasty

Chapter 112 Blue Bricks and Red Bricks

"Sister, tell me, what exactly did your fifth brother spend?"

Li Shimin finished asking.

Li Mingda on the side began to talk: "First of all, it is the money for the workers' accommodation. Those workers are refugees and have no homes. What should I do? My fifth brother built a house and lived there for free.

Father, this is a sum of money, right? "

Li Shimin nodded: "That's right, I think Youer has done a good job in this regard. It is the royal style of my Li family to build houses for refugees to live in for free."

"Secondly, there is wages. Old people and children pay one guan, adults two and five. Let's make a round number with my father. The wages of more than 3000 people are three or four thousand guan a month. My brother saw that he was actually earning [-] guan a day.

But now I only earn more than 200 guan a day.

A large part of the money earned goes into the pockets of refugees, that is, workers.

In the end, I didn’t count the food these refugees had. My fifth brother prepared an egg in the morning, boiled pork bone or mutton bone soup at noon, and mutton in the evening.

Father, the fifth brother said, we can't lose those refugees, because they are the people of my Tang Dynasty, the people of the father, even if they don't make money, they must be settled properly! "

"Oh, if you do the calculations like this, Fifth Brother really doesn't make much money. Fifth Brother eats mutton for those refugees. Father, I know that some families have recruited people a while ago, but they are all servants. The best one is Wotou, Brother Wu has really paid a lot of money for these refugees." Li Zhi followed suit.

Li Shimin listened quietly while his two children were talking.

Followed by Li Shimin, he nodded in praise and said, "It's really in my heart, You'er has grown up!"

Li Shimin's affirmation almost didn't make Concubine Yin's tears fall. At this moment, Li Shimin continued: "Well, two days later, it's the family reunion day that I have decided. You'er should come in too!"

"That's great, I want to sit with Fifth Brother!" Li Mingda laughed happily,

"I also want to sit with Fifth Brother!" Li Zhi was not to be outdone.

"Ninth Brother. How old are you? You are still a boy. You actually rob Fifth Brother from me. Let me tell you, stop dreaming. Fifth Brother only likes me!" Li Mingda swore his sovereignty.

"Hmph, you've already cheated Fifth Brother [-] yuan. I won't cheat that much, so Fifth Brother will definitely like me. I can also help Fifth Brother with errands. Hehe, you can't." Li Zhi laughed badly .

For a while, Li Mingda had nothing to say, and followed Li Shimin, who was looking aside, to ask for help. Seeing his daughter's pitiful appearance, Li Shimin laughed loudly: "Son, don't worry, father. I will make a decree later, the decree is that your fifth brother must only like you, and always like you."

"Ah!" Li Mingda cheered in surprise, then kissed Li Shimin's cheek and shouted: "Long live the father!"

This sentence Long Live made Li Shimin even happier, and his smile never stopped.

Li You stood beside a blast furnace in Dunhua Workshop, and the fire was extinguished soon, followed by the cement powder that had been calcined and turned brown.

Except for Li You, the people standing on both sides didn't know what the cement powder was for.

Xue Rengui looked at the cement powder and asked Li You: "Wulang. This is all burnt to powder. Do you think this can build the strongest city wall, is it true or false?"

"Hehe!" Li You didn't answer Xue Rengui directly, but kept it a secret.

You must know that this cement can of course build the strongest city walls, not only that, but also houses, and the road surface can be said to be useful. However, if you want cement to play its best role, of course you need the best companion bricks of cement.

There were already bricks in the Tang Dynasty, that is, blue bricks.

Green bricks are very good. Green bricks have high density, no deformation, good frost resistance, anti-oxidation, water-proof bubbles, wear resistance, wind and rain erosion resistance, and will not rot for thousands of years.

Moreover, the green brick has strong air permeability and good water absorption, which can maintain indoor air humidity.The ancient Chinese "Qin bricks and Han tiles" can still be preserved after thousands of years, which is the best proof of the excellent performance of green bricks.

Even now, if you can find a few ancient green bricks that are hundreds of years old, you can touch them and they will still be smooth, and the thickness is only half of the current bricks, but the hardness can be compared with that of stone, and this texture can be used to make bricks carved.

If you want to burn blue bricks, you must first find suitable cultivated land, and the clay layer must be thick. Generally, such land must be good cultivated land.After removing some of the thin mud above, the clay was dug and transported to a large pond.

After adding water in proportion, the cows are driven into the big pond and trampled continuously. This is the same effect as when making clay sculptures by constantly beating the soil to remove debris and air bubbles and increase the viscosity.

After almost stepping on it, people jumped into the pond and stepped on it again, picking out some stones they stepped on.

Don't look at how relaxed they are, if you jump into the pool too, your legs will get stuck and you won't be able to pull them out.

The clay is then put into brick molds and extruded into shape.After the bricks are dried to a certain degree, they are fired in a brick kiln. After they are fired, they are cooled with water and the kiln is stuffy, so that the red high-priced iron oxides in the bricks are reduced to blue-gray low-priced iron oxides.

When burning the kiln, you have to stare at it day and night, and you can't sleep, otherwise a single doze will destroy a whole kiln of bricks.

The blue bricks have sharp edges and corners, and the walls have clear lines, and the white ash joints are very beautiful.However, the clay layer of cultivated land is only one or two meters thick, and firing green bricks to obtain clay will destroy many farmlands.

That's why Li You didn't want green bricks. At that time, he used green bricks because there was no cement and the quality of the green bricks was good. However, the cost of green bricks was high, and the damage was great, especially for farmland.

What kind of bricks will Li You use?

Of course, it is red bricks. Red bricks are not only simpler than green bricks, but also cheaper. Red bricks are made of red clay from the mountains. After crushing and mixing, they are pressed into shape by manual or mechanical methods. After the outside is fully baked, the fire is turned off to allow the kiln and bricks to cool.

That's it.

Of course, red bricks are definitely not as good as blue bricks. The surface of red bricks is full of pits and holes, and slag will fall off when you scratch it.A cart of red bricks fell on the ground, and there were not a few pieces with complete edges and corners.When the red brick is lifted to the height of a person, it will basically break when it falls on the ground, while the blue brick will only break in two if it is thrown hard.

Therefore, folk masters who perform brick splitting with one hand now use red bricks.

At this time, Li You looked at Xue Rengui and asked, "Brother-in-law, among these people, is there anyone who can burn bricks?"

"Brick burning.?" Xue Rengui shook his head slightly and said, "I'm not too sure about this, but I'll ask later. Even if we don't have one here, there must be someone in Chang'an City who knows how to burn bricks."

"Well brother-in-law, then you need to help me quickly find someone who can burn bricks. I want to prepare a batch of bricks. When burning, brother-in-law will also find some craftsmen who can build houses. I want to teach them to build a cement house. !"

"Cement houses.!" Xue Rengui looked at the cement powder that had just come out and asked, "Just use them.!"

Li You laughed and said, "That's right, just use them!"

　Some people say that blue bricks and red bricks are only watered when they leave the kiln. However, there is still a gap between blue bricks and red bricks. The quality lies there, and it cannot be processed from the same raw material. Of course I don't know much about it either. If there are professionals, you can popularize it. Thank you!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)