Daqin Engineers

As soon as the bark gathered, Shen Bing asked the soldiers to chop it up.

Using a hatchet, chop it on the sawn log section, just like chop dumpling stuffing.

The soldiers thought it was to practice their strength, so they all enjoyed themselves.

It wasn't until Shen Bing packed all these chopped bark into large wooden barrels soaked in lime water that they realized that this was not the case.

Wei Wei asked curiously:

"Captain, these barks..."

Shen Bing is not easy to say clearly.

Because this was the first time he made paper, although he knew the process but was not sure whether it would be successful, he only replied:

"I have a magical effect."

Shen Bing made up his mind, in case Hu Bian didn't succeed in doing it, he would use it as an excuse.

Then Shen Bing threw in some rags, wheat stalks, red vines, and fish nets that were also chopped into small pieces to stir them together.

Then began pulping.

The pulping process is actually similar to the principle of making rattan, the purpose is to remove its impurities and leave only fibers.

The difference is that rattan armor requires the entire section of fibers that can be woven into armor, while paper requires broken, short, and small fibers that can be pulped.

This process takes the longest time. The ancients had a time-consuming local method of pulping:

Chop the straw and soak it in grey water, then pat it on the sunny stone slab.

Then let it withstand natural wind, sun, rain, corruption, oxidation and other processes. After a few months, it will become pulpy, and then rub it with water to make straw paper.

Although this method is convenient and not labor-intensive, it takes too long and Shen Bing cannot wait that long.

The faster method is to use the high temperature cooking method to disperse the wood fiber instead of agglomerating it.

This is a bit like a modern pressure cooker. After cooking for a long time, the lean pork or chicken will be crushed in one clip, and then mashed and roasted to remove the moisture and become the floss...

This effect is also needed for papermaking, which is to boil the bark wood fibers that are still clumped into pulp.

Although this time is much faster, it still has more than ten days.

To be exact, it should be sixteen days.

First cook for eight days, and then wash off the resin, mud, sand and other impurities when the wood fiber has not been melted or broken... This can improve the quality and color quality of the paper.

Then soak it in lime water and boil it for seven or forty-nine days... This sentence is crossed out, it is used for alchemy.

Fifteen or six days of cooking day and night is almost the same.

Then go to the next step: Put the steamed ingredients in a stone mortar for pounding rice.

Then put the mashed thing in a wooden barrel and mix it with some water to stir and stir, stir and stir... into a paste.

This is to allow the short wood fibers to be fully intertwined, so that the thickness of the paper produced is more uniform and more tensile.

At this point, there should be a bleaching process, which can make the paper look more comfortable.

But Shen Bing's requirements were not so high, so this step was omitted directly.

Finally, apply a layer of the paste-like pulp to the copy board, or sun or bake it, and then peel off a piece of paper.

Not to mention, Shen Bing was quite nervous when drying and uncovering the paper.

The reason was that he had thought about it for so many days and still didn't come up with any good excuses, and among them, the soldiers took turns watching the fire, cooking and washing for so long, saying that it was a joke.

If this fails, it will undermine the prestige of his captain!

I knew it shouldn't be so high-profile and should be secretive. Even if it fails, not many people know it.

But Shen Bing was still very lucky.

After the paper dries, move on to the next...Although it is cut off in the middle and the paper is still yellow, it still takes shape.

This made Shen Bing happy, and he finally had paper.

Wei Wei stared at a piece of paper in Shen Bing's hand. He didn't understand the use of the thing Shen Bing had made for so long.

Shen Bing didn't say much. He picked up his pen and dipped some ink on the paper and stroked a few strokes on the paper...Shen Bing didn't dare to write, joking, and writing brush writing in front of the ancients.

Perhaps because the wood fiber is not firm enough, the ink spreads quickly.

Shen Bing secretly said that the next time the pulping should be made thicker.

Wei Wei was stunned when he saw this scene:

"Lieutenant, this thing... can actually write?"

Shen Bing replied:

"Otherwise you tell me what I spent all this time doing with this thing?"

"You try?"

Speaking, Shen Bing took off another piece of paper, this time because of his experience, he took off the whole piece.

Wei Wei took the pen in response, hesitated and swiped it all over, but what he wrote was Qu Yuan's nine songs.

I don't want Wei Wei this military commander to have this kind of literary talent.

It was written like dragons and phoenixes, strong on the back of the paper, flexible and stretched... Shen Bing secretly rolled the paper he tried to put into his sleeve with an embarrassed look.

After a while, Wei Wei took the pen freely, looked at his work with satisfaction and sighed:

"This thing is very good, just like silk..."

"No, the subordinate thinks it is better than Nasibo."

"Especially this thing is still made of bark, isn't it..."

Thinking of this, Wei Wei widened his eyes and looked at Shen Bing.

Shen Bing nodded, the era of big papermaking is coming.

On the surface, papermaking just makes writing convenient and cheap.

But in fact, it is far from simple to study it carefully. Its appearance is even more important than modern computers.

The reason is that in ancient times, the dissemination and learning of information and knowledge was greatly restricted because there was no suitable recording medium.

For example, if a farmer wants to record and disseminate the manufacturing methods of the Shenbing Waterwheel and Rollover in detail, the text and pictures should be as simple as possible.

Because only in this way can the difficulty and time of writing on bamboo slips be reduced.

If there are too many texts and annotations, just a bag of bamboo slips will be needed just to make the waterwheel.

Even so, Xu Yingna would have dozens of people rushing to produce it overnight, and it would take several months to produce "On Agriculture" and distribute it all over the country.

Moreover, there is another problem after the simplified graphics: it is difficult to understand.

Even if I read it, I don't know what to do, just know that there is such a thing.

This was also the reason why many people had to go to Shen Bing's engineering camp to study in person.

Even if someone learns it and wants to record the manufacturing method and pass it on to future generations, there will still be simplification problems, so it is often passed on for several generations and lost due to less and less information.

But with paper, it's different.

Paper has the advantages of lightness, portability, low cost, and large amount of recorded information.

So you can record the production process in detail, as long as you want, as much as you want.

Later generations can follow this step by step after seeing this method, so it is easy to learn.

So knowledge and technology can easily complete the spread of space and time...Space refers to the breadth in the same period, and time refers to the span of time.

Therefore, papermaking is more than just making a piece of paper. It is an information revolution, the first information revolution in human history.