The work of continuously boiling the bark made the workers very bored. They were all discussing what the prince wanted to do, and he actually got into trouble with the useless bark.
The workers have poured out a large amount of hot and turbid water, and now the four pottery jars are boiling with clean water.
Medvedt also used a long wooden pole to provoke the giant and turned up the bark of the tree to find out.
They have been boiled and flaccid, like birch leaves that have been soaked in water for a long time. No! The bark has indeed been soaked for so long that it becomes very brittle and can be easily crushed into powder by hand.
Wait a minute, is this what the prince wants?
A lot of preparations for papermaking were completed in these days. Medved was neither deaf nor blind. He saw the group of carpenters suddenly finding winter work and actually stopped the prince to wait. task. What he focused on was not how much these people would get paid, but what they were doing.
Women who had textiles and carpenters jointly made a batch of screens. Based on Medved's knowledge, the first thing he thought of was what he saw at the New Roseburg Mill.
Aric's second daughter-in-law spent money to build a mill, and the wheat grains were ground into powder. These sieves were then used to further sieve into subdivided grains, thus making delicacies that only the big shots were entitled to enjoy.
This tool is not a rare thing in Novgorod at all. It is used to sift fine clay powder, and the sifted powder can be fired into the best pottery.
"Either he is drying flour, or he wants to make pottery. His wives and concubines are all trained to be skilled craftsmen, and the women from the White Tree Manor have very dexterous hands..."
After much thought , he never imagined that it had something to do with papermaking, or the production of so-called "cork boards".
The agreed three-day period has arrived. It is the morning of the fourth day. Rurik, who is wearing large wooden-framed sunglasses, is dressed like a little polar bear. He is bringing along a group of wives and concubines dressed similarly. Came to inspect the goods.
Prince Rurik, he actually has a pair of huge black eyes, and half of his face is actually eyes? !
The workers were startled. They all cast curious glances and watched helplessly as this group of people took off their eye protection tools to reveal their true colors.
Sunglasses are meant for life in the snowy winter. This kind of equipment has become a project for the Principality of Ross to make money from abroad. Just don’t expect it to make a lot of money. However, men with a little financial resources will buy it so that during winter hunting, fishing, logging and other operations, they will not be blinded by the dazzling sunlight reflected from the snow.
"Is everything done?" Rurik asked enthusiastically.
Medway ordered the curious men to step back, then punched his chest and saluted: "I promise with honor that I have completed the task you assigned well."
"I See the results before judging your actions. Stop boiling and pour out all the water. No matter what the bark looks like, pour it out."
NowThe four pottery urns were too hot, so the linen cloth wiped off the black charcoal wrapped on the outside, and the dough balls were pasted on them. The pancakes would be cooked in a short while.
The flames were extinguished, and the boiling water was poured out. When the pottery urns had cooled enough, they were pushed down on the snowdrift "cushion pad" made by the crowd. The next work is like digging out furnace ashes, except that what comes out is only yellowish white and seems to be mixed with some brown substances.
Medved explained cautiously: "Sir, you should be able to guess that if one is boiled, the meat will be boiled into pulp and the bones will be boiled into pieces. The bark of these trees is very fragile. , now they all seem to be scum, unless what you need is scum.”
Rurik couldn’t conceal his joy after seeing these so-called barks for a few days. He saw these steaming things with his own eyes. Stacked together, they completely lost the appearance of tree bark.
Most of them still maintain the basic shape of flakes, but the boundaries of the shapes are very blurry.
Rurik simply pulled out his dagger and stabbed it. A special feeling spread from his fingers to his head.
"Ah! It's like the toilet is blocked by a lot of toilet paper mixed with bamboo and wood. It's just a big pile of stuff in this color!"
It's pure white. There is not much toilet paper left in Rurik’s memory. The yellow-brown toilet paper seems to contain the power of nature and has quietly become the mainstream. From a utilitarian point of view, various plant pulps are often yellow-brown. It can be processed and used, but it needs to be decolored to white. For single-use toilet paper, this biochemical decolorization step can be omitted.
Normal writing paper is naturally pure white. To produce pure white paper, I am afraid that we lack the ability to produce pure white paper. Traditional decolorizing and degreasing methods such as boiling water can only be done as well as possible.
Rurik could conclude that the bark only seemed to maintain its shape, and the fibers inside were almost in a state of being broken but not broken.
Perhaps the effect will be better if it is boiled for a few more days. Look at the overturned pottery urn, it is no longer the same. Seems broken but not broken? Then help it turn into powder.
"Very good, you all did a good job."
Rurik put away his sword and praised Medved's work, and then said: "I will follow the agreement and I'll pay you today." He raised his voice in order to be heard by the workers present and the hundreds of spectators.
"I want to continue to employ you. I need strong Slavic warriors, and I think you all can do it. Come on, accept my new arrangement."
Dang Shu The skins began to be moved, and Rurik further learned that they had become paper in a sense.
The public stone mortar in the White Tree Manor that was specially used for pounding oats was requisitioned by Rurik. The moist and soft bark that had been boiled for three days and three nights was thrown in, and the conical stone hammer began to pound. Just as grains of wheat are pounded into powder, these barks will also become powder.
In the past, Baishu Manor had not been exposed to rotating stone millstones and rolling stone rollers.The materials had to be transported from afar, and secondly, the mechanical structure of the equipment for processing grains was already very complex. It was difficult for them to build it independently without advanced knowledge.
The slightly shaped bark was eventually smashed into powder. In the process, they were further dehydrated, and finally became something that could stick to each other in Rurik's hand. They are not sticky at all and absorb water efficiently on their own.
If there is anything to describe them, it is probably toilet paper that has absorbed water and then been dehydrated and shredded.
These rough and mutually adhering things become pulp when put into water.
The next thing is that the strong Slavic men can get their revenge and leave happily. Next is the time for the Duke and his wives.
The melted snow water was filtered slightly and then poured into five large wooden troughs that were originally used for dyeing twine.
Of course, White Tree Manor has this kind of large-scale water-storing wooden equipment to meet its own needs. In this way, Rurik doesn’t even have to think about making troughs to hold the pulp himself. A batch can be provided locally. Wood troughs that work great.
In a large wooden house stood Rurik's wives and concubines. Everyone else avoided them. In front of the curious wives and concubines, Rurik pointed at the water that had turned into five waves of suspended water. Wooden trough for water: "The bark is turned into tiny objects, and they will adhere to the sieve we made. When a layer of paste is applied, we will take out the sieve, push the water with wooden boards, and then put the sieve The net is placed in the corner. We have been working on this for many days and have paid a lot of money. The success or failure depends on you!"
The girls held their breath, as if they really decided success or failure! person.
Rurik clapped his hands at the end: "Let's get started!"
Papermaking has entered the final step, and it is also the most critical step. Fortunately, everything is under Rurik's control In control.
Of course there is a certain amount of luck involved. If he only got pure fiber, the paper he made would be good for wiping toilet paper, but not suitable for writing. Birch bark also contains a lot of lignin, but it is boiled for three days and three nights and then pounded into powder. The long structure of the lignin is not completely destroyed.
The suspended fibers begin to adhere to the screen, and the wooden board immediately presses off the surface moisture, and the entire screen begins to dry in the shade.
This room was decorated after all, with as many as fifteen oil lamps placed on the walls. A slow-burning blend of seal and whale blubber. Although the flames were weak, the temperature in the entire house was maintained at about 3°C.
Rurik and his wives were working in cold water, which was not suitable but also helpless.
After all the hard work, the pulp is still not used up, but all the screens have begun to dry, and the entire house is filled with erected screens. At first glance, they look like the heat sink of a machine. Pestled.
They began to rest, drink some hot honey and chrysanthemum water to warm themselves and wait for a perfect result.
They did not wait long.
When the paper begins to dry in the shade,They are already paper, the moisture dissipates freely and the paper remains attached to the screen.
They did this in one morning and came to inspect the goods just after sunset.
The long-burning oil lamps kept the whole room from being cold. The screens were still standing neatly, and the remaining pulp in the five wooden troughs was still suspended.
Rurik simply peeled off the paper with his own hands. This was due to the lignin inside. The rougher paper felt like kraft paper to Rurik, not to mention, its color was also similar. The coat color of calves from local cows (a type of brown European cattle).
The paper is easy to peel off. Its texture is relatively hard, but fortunately it did not break after being bent.
It is said that a piece of paper cannot be folded eight times. He did not challenge the limit this time. He folded it four times to verify that there was no sign of breakage. Isn't this done?
The wives and concubines who didn't know what was going on watched their men playing with the so-called cork boards, and they whispered to each other.
When they saw Rurik’s arrogant smile, they were convinced that they had succeeded.
Svetlana asked sweetly: "Have we succeeded now?"
"Successful! Completely successful. Come on, all of you!" Rurik He simply roared in excitement, raising his right fist as if to call for thousands of troops to charge. "Put all...the cork boards together. Oh no, maybe I have to give it a simpler name now. I've decided, let's call it paper."
In Europe, or old Rome and old Greece In this world, the word describing paper is probably pronounced "paper". It is papyrus, structurally very similar to oriental paper.
This word is originally the Phoenician language word "papyros". The Phoenician city Byblos monopolized the Mediterranean papyrus trade. Papyrus also gave the city its name. The city-state imported papyrus from Egypt. Papyrus was exported to the entire Aegean world in Greece and the Levant, and it was very prosperous to make a fortune from this.
The word "paper" has a deep meaning. At least its syllables are short enough to be pronounced catchy, unlike the previous "cork board", which is actually a combination of three words.
Rurik successfully made birch bark paper, and his intuition told him that this material could be used for writing immediately.
All the papers were peeled off, and the sizes of the fifty pieces of paper were exactly the same due to the standard mesh, except that the edges were inevitably rough.
The paper can be cut twice, split into two with a knife, to become good paper that can be written on both sides.
All the papers were gathered in Rurik's hands. The heavy weight was extremely gratifying, as if he was holding an equal weight of gold.
Since there is still hope for fertility, let’s pursue the victory before things can get any more exciting!
The era has entered here, at the end of 834 AD, a new papermaking technology from the far East, different from papyrus technology, was born in the forests of Northeast Europe!
Since the Eastern Roman Empire lost control of Egypt, the supply of papyrus collapsed, causing some in the empire to pick up expensive parchment as writing materials.
Rurik knew the importance of paper to a civilization. It is a carrier of information, and it can transmit anyone's thoughts to distant places, or even to people thousands of years later.
Of course, Rurik's need for paper is extremely urgent. For the first time since its birth, the Principality of Rus has to calculate massive amounts of data, survey and map the total farmland in the entire Lake Ilmen area, and the impact on Novgorod. The preliminary census of Rhodes and surrounding farms is indeed a huge national project.
He asked his wives and concubines to use all the remaining paper pulp overnight, while he himself used the quill pen, dipping the tip of the pen with the traditional ink he brought from his hometown in Roseburg, and scribbling on the paper.
He is not scribbling, after all, paper is very precious. He drew some solid geometric patterns, what is a tetrahedron, what is a cube, and more complex drawings.
It turns out that as far as writing is concerned, these rough papers really have the texture of kraft paper, even rougher. Fortunately, the so-called pen is actually the flight feather of a wild duck or a domestic chicken. It was widely used to make arrow feathers, and now it is suitable for use as a writing pen. There is no need to worry about wearing out the nib. This kind of quill pen is essentially a consumable. In order to collect statistics on a large amount of data, Rurik has already prepared a batch of spare feathers. There is no need to worry about running out of them. At worst, he will catch the chickens and pluck them out, and the remaining feathers will be used. The chicken can also be used to make soup.
The ink made by traditional crafts contains a certain amount of grease, and writing on this kind of paper will indeed not form a large cloud.
A sense of excitement dominated Rurik's body. When the girls dragged their tired bodies and told him that the matter was done, he ordered everyone to go to bed, but he had to continue to face each other in the room. Alone with a burning oil lamp.
Because Rurik was already drawing a map, which was to copy the map of Europe that had been painted on the patchwork wooden board onto the paper.
Four pieces of paper were pieced together into one, and Rurik was drawing the outline of Europe based on his own memory. It could be said that he understood the structure of this vast world better than any scholar in this time and space. An outline is not enough, he needs to add further details. The general directions of mountains and rivers are marked, and the cities and small settlements of the Principality of Ross must be marked accurately!
This also includes other foreign cities that are unknown to the public.
This map of Europe can be continuously refined and revised. Although the map is drawn without any framed paper, the information of the map itself is actually worth ten thousand taels of gold. It is said that when a monarch dreams of conquering a large territory and building a prosperous new world, this map is the best guide.
It is Ross’s treasure, and it can only be Ross’s treasure!
Moreover, it is very small and very easy to place. As long as you pay attention to dry storage, it can be stored for a thousand years.