There are two wooden houses, a wooden shed and a straw shed used as a kitchen in the small courtyard. A total of five people live here permanently, including a craftsman, an apprentice and three veterans who were discharged from the army and resettled.
Seeing the steward and Odo come in, the five people immediately put down their work and came up to pay their respects. Especially the three retired veterans were extremely excited when they saw Odo.
Odo took the initiative to say hello to a few people, and also reminisced about the past with three injured and retired veterans.
"Mr. Odo, this wooden house is their house. They are not allowed to leave the courtyard on weekdays, so they live in this house. Paper-making materials are piled in the wooden shed, and the main place for making paper is that wooden house. Please follow me." The steward introduced Odo into the sturdy wooden house.
The first thing you see when you enter the door is a huge iron pot and stove. Firewood is burning in the furnace, and a pot full of bark is cooking in the big iron pot.
Beside the iron boiler stove is a water-powered forging hammer extending from the back wall. The water-powered hammer keeps hammering the bark that has turned into pulp in the large stone mortar.
Beside the big stone mortar is a large wooden water tank. Beside the water tank are fifty or sixty wooden frames about an arm's length neatly stacked. There is a thin cotton gauze in each wooden frame.
"Mr. Odo, after two years of exploration and countless failures, we have now basically mastered the papermaking process taught by you. Simply speaking, it is divided into eleven processes."
“The first step of aggregate: we mainly use the bark of spruce, fir, beech, oak and other high-quality woods left over from the carpentry workshop when making spear shafts and shields, and scrape off the green bark.
Step 2: Hang the peeled bark in the yard to expose it to the sun, dry it and store it for later use
Step 3: Soak: Place the dried bark in the river and let the running water soak it to remove impurities until the bark is complete. Until it becomes soft.
The fourth step is to mix the ash: first sift the plant ash through a sieve, and then place the soaked bark in it to allow the plant ash to evenly adhere to the bark. This step determines whether the paper is white or not. We tried it more than a hundred times before we succeeded.
Step 5: Steaming: Place the ash-covered bark in a pot of water, cover with linen cloth, and steam over firewood. The cooking time is usually more than a day until the bark is cooked and tender.
Step 6: Washing: After the bark is boiled, pick the boiled bark into the stream and let the river water wash away the plant ash attached to the bark. At the same time, wash it continuously with your hands and clean up some impurities and hard objects until there are no impurities left.
Step 7: Put the cleaned bark into a stone mortar and beat it repeatedly with a water hammer until the bark can spread naturally in the water.
Step 8: Fish out the pulp: Fill a wooden vat with 70% of clean water, then pour the mashed slurry into the water vat and mix repeatedly. Then use a paper mold sieve framed with fine cotton gauze to fish out the pulp in the water. After the pulp has settled on the white gauze, slowly tilt the paper mold sieve up, let the water drain and lift it to the sun to dry.
This process can only be completed by our craftsmen, because if you are not careful, the thickness of the paper will vary, and some may not even be formed at all.
Step 9: Drying the paper: Lift the paper out of the pulp together with the paper mold screen and expose it to the sun.
Step 10: Calendering: When the paper is 70 to 80% dry, use a porcelain bowl with smooth edges to gently polish the back of the paper mold to make the paper on the side next to the white gauze smoother and more lustrous.
The last step is to peel off the paper: after the paper is dried, first tear off a corner with your hands, and then use a smooth peeling wood chip to gently peel off the entire paper.
After the paper is peeled off, the quality is checked. If the paper meets the requirements, it will be locked in the big iron box and handed over to the civil affairs officer to be sealed in the wooden castle treasury. If the paper does not meet the requirements, it will be torn into pieces and thrown into the iron pot for re-cooking.
As the steward said, he took out a key from his belt and opened the large iron box. There was already half a box of pure white paper in the iron box.
Odo knelt down and picked up a piece of paper. The paper was light and dense, with a smooth and white surface. Compared with the yellow, rough and thick straw paper at the beginning, these finished products were smoother than the girl's skin.
“Lord Odo, the top fifty sheets were just peeled off yesterday. This is the best quality paper we have got so far. Apart from God, only adults can create such miracles.” The shock it will bring, if calculated based on the price of a book, the value of these papers is comparable to the same amount of silver coins. Although the small courtyard has spent 20,000 pfennigs and wasted countless materials and equipment to make these papers, its value will eventually be revealed to the world...
The steward thought of another thing and suppressed the excitement in his eyes. After hesitating for a long time, he asked Odo in a low voice: "Lord Odo, the carpentry workshop was recently ordered to make some small wooden blocks engraved with Latin letters, and the letters on those small wooden blocks are all engraved in reverse. What is this for? Is it related to these papers?"
After hearing this, Odo's face suddenly darkened, and he asked softly, "Tell me where did you know it from?"
The steward was suddenly shocked, knowing that he had said something he shouldn't have said and asked something he shouldn't have asked, "Lord Odo~I~I~"
"Speak quickly! Otherwise I will deal with you on the spot!" Odo suddenly became fierce.
"Yes~ it was what the steward of the carpentry workshop said when he took the civil officer's warrant into my hand and transferred the paper~" Beads of sweat broke out on the steward's forehead.
"Steward of the wood workshop? He is so brave!"
"Listen carefully, if anything in this small courtyard, even the most common process, is known to outsiders, you and your whole family will not be able to save your head!"
Odo turned around and pushed the steward away and walked straight out of the wooden house.
The steward wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked up at Otto who was leaving; a different look flashed in his eyes...
“…Sir, this year’s spring plowing is completely over. The six thousand acres of reclamation task you arranged before the expedition last year is expected to be completed before this autumn harvest. This task is one year ahead of schedule. By the autumn, there will be almost ten thousand acres of land in the valley south of the valley. Due to the promotion of the "Retting Method", these lands can still support four to five thousand residents after paying various taxes in full. However, after these wastelands are reclaimed, we have to go south and pass through the dense forest before we can find suitable land for us to reclaim. "
Matt held a quill in his hand and signed a request for additional funds for military uniforms submitted from the army command camp account. "I have explored everything south of the workshop. Less than sixty miles south along the river, there are three open wastelands like intervalleys. Plus some scattered riverlands and basins, if we are strong enough, we can still cultivate at least six There are 10,000 acres of fertile land, and there is a lot of land further south, but it is unlikely that we will be able to travel that far for a while. "
"Sir, I understand. I will send people through the dense forest to survey the wasteland south of the workshop during the off-season after the winter wheat is sown this year." Cooper's desire for land is uncontrollable now.
Matt stamped "agree" on the request for additional military uniform fees for the textile workshop, then put it aside and picked up another county report from various territories in Tyniec County and glanced at it for a few times. "Cooper, have you read the county status reported from various places in the county?"
Cooper stared at the birch bark in Art's hand, "Master, this county report I have compiled the documents sent from various places, and I have naturally read them. "
"Is this county news true?"
"Sir, it is generally true. The lords and gentry from all over the county do not dare to provoke you, so they do not dare to deceive you, but the concealment of Dingkou land will certainly not be forbidden."
"Didn't you order someone to search for mineral deposits? Our people learned through secret visits that there is a small copper mine in the mountainous area of Junbei, but the local lords concealed the mine in their submissions. They have been secretly exploiting it for profit over the years..."
The quill in Art's hand was squeezed tighter and tighter, "Let the inspector go around secretly and find one or two of the most typical reports and give them to me, and I will deal with them personally!"
"Yes! Master."
"By the way, tell the parish school that I will take time to teach those specially trained apprentices in the past two days. These people will become my assistants in controlling the county after completing their training. I have to meet them more."
Cooper quickly wrote down a few words on the birch bark in his hand.
"Sir, there are two more things I need to report to you. The first thing is that the woodworking workshop has carved fifteen complete sets of Latin letters according to your secret order. After testing, it can print text on white paper. We successfully printed two passages on the first page of the Bible!" Cooper said and handed Art a paper full of symbols sandwiched in birch bark.
At picked up the paper with the Bible printed on it, he was extremely excited, even though the writing on the paper was unevenly inked, sometimes thick and sometimes light, and there were dirt in several places.
However, this will be an epoch-making initiative, just like the passage on the paper - In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth...
"Master~Master!"
Cooper's shout brought Art's thoughts back to reality.
"Oh, by the way, you have one more thing?"
"Yes, sir, there is one more thing that is also related to the seal on this wooden block~" Old Cooper's tone dropped obviously, and his eyes were a little dodgy.
The smile on Art's face slowly melted, and his expression gradually became serious, "Get up."
At helped Old Cooper up, "When did you know about it?"
"Today at noon. At noon, the steward of the textile workshop ran to the wooden castle official office and found me. He told me that the steward of the carpentry workshop had told him about the sealing block. The night before yesterday, he heard several craftsmen in the carpentry workshop and the brewery clerks discussing this matter after getting drunk..."
"He was worried that the secret would be leaked, so he thought about it~"
"Master, I plan to rush to the workshop area overnight to deal with this matter!"
Matt's face was livid, "The spinning mill steward is a little awake and knows that someone stabbed the sky."
"You don't have to go, I already know about this matter. Just before lunch, Ron had already taken the guards to the workshop to deal with this matter." Art sat back on the armchair and continued to read the documents.
Old Cooper knew that this matter had become a big deal, and felt uneasy, "Master, I~"
"Okay, you are definitely responsible for the fact that you are the chief civil affairs officer and the official of the workshop, and your salary will be forfeited for three months. However, you have been busy with the affairs of the county recently, and it is impossible for everything to be perfect, so you don't need to bear too much pressure. Power. "
"The two top-secret magic arts of papermaking and printing will affect the future of all of us, and I cannot tolerate any problems. Ron will dig out all the insiders and hand them over to you. The woodworker must be executed, the adjutant of the workshop will be demoted to the woodworker, and the other leakers will be severely punished! The insiders are issued a silence order. "
"You ask the construction officer to build another independent courtyard in the workshop area, and put the craftsmen who make printing wooden blocks separately in the small courtyard and send peasants and soldiers to guard them. Let the craftsmen continue to improve, especially continue to research inks suitable for printing. In addition, you ask the parish school to arrange the Latin letters in the books and books with a frequency of occurrence. In the future, the most commonly used Latin letters will have more printing plates."
"In the future, there will be two courtyards for paper making and printing. It will be placed under the direct control of the Civil Affairs Officer and will be managed by you personally. Ron will also send people to help you." Art thought of the "snitch" spinning mill steward, "The spinning mill steward is very good at managing the textile workshop. , was immediately promoted to the position of adjutant and in charge of the affairs of the textile workshop. "
"Yes, sir! It's just the steward of the wood workshop~" Cooper hesitated to speak, and finally couldn't help but raise his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
Att raised his head and looked at the old man who was nearly fifty years old, with a hint of unbearability flashing in his eyes.
He slowly stood up again, picked up the wine glass from the wooden table, filled a glass of wine and handed it to Old Cooper, "Old guy, our power is getting bigger and bigger, and things like this will definitely happen in the future. Get used to it. Forget it, Bass He will be back next month, and I will ask him to deal with it in the name of the territorial judge. "Sir, I am a civil affairs official. I should not avoid such a thing. It is better for me to deal with it!" Cooper's eyes suddenly became firm.
Matt patted the old man's shoulder, raised his glass and clinked it with Cooper, "Old guy, next month is your fiftieth birthday, and little George is clamoring to hold a lively birthday party for his Grandpa Cooper."
Cooper was stunned for a moment, and tears suddenly appeared in his eyes...