Release that Witch - Chapter 12

[Chapter 12 Firing]

Roland stood in the backyard of the firing room waiting for the first batch of cement to come out.

This brick house was specially designed by him for cement production. It is about fifteen meters long and four meters wide.

There is a door at the front and back, the difference is that the front door is as wide as possible for people to carry materials.

The back door is only one person wide, allowing Anna to sneak into the firing room.

For this reason, he also built a wall around the half-waist of the house, enclosing the second half of the firing room, and the entrance and exit were guarded by knights—they were all Carter’s subordinates, and their loyalty was beyond doubt.

The production process of cement is very simple. The limestone is crushed into powder and then mixed with clay and iron powder. The clinker is calcined by dry method or wet method, and then ground together with gypsum.

The raw materials are very common, and iron powder is difficult to produce in large quantities, but the key lies in the calcination temperature of the clinker.

Roland didn’t remember the exact temperature needed to burn the cement, and even if he remembered, he couldn’t measure and control the temperature—whether it was an infrared thermometer or a thermocouple temperature gun, it was infinitely more complicated than cement.

He only knows that this temperature is almost similar to the melting point of iron, and the calcination process is also a difficulty in the production of cement.

As far as the era of underdeveloped smelting technology is concerned, maintaining the blast furnace temperature has always been a problem that plagues everyone.

The heat loss of ordinary open furnace is extremely large, and it is difficult to keep the furnace temperature above 1200 degrees.

And the reverberatory furnace needs a high-temperature-resistant liner, so he couldn’t think of how to make refractory bricks for a while.

The traditional iron-making blast furnace is even worse. The temperature may be able to meet the standard, but if the cement is calcined only by the narrow and long chamber, I am afraid that it will not be able to burn enough amount after the demon month is over.

Therefore, the firing room designed by Roland did not have any heating measures at all, and he relied on Anna.

The artificially crushed small-grain limestone is mixed with clay, mixed with water and stirred to form a slurry, which is evenly spread in the firing room.

Then the knight locked the gate and cleared the handyman.

Anna entered through the back door and let the flames bake the slurry on the ground until the iron rods that were placed in the room melted.

Roland was a little restless, this was his first step to station in Border Town.

The plan to build a city wall in three months is just empty talk if the cement cannot be made.

Without the city wall blocking it, I’m afraid no one would want to stick to this ghostly place.

Whether it is real history or fictional literature, if you want to farm well, a stable base is essential.

“Your Highness, the thing you mentioned can really stick stones together?” Carter Lannis, who was guarding the fourth prince, asked.

Although the prince told him that this was the latest research result of the Graycastle Alchemy Workshop, he was still skeptical.

After all, those people have never produced any truly reliable alchemy products.

“Who knows? Anyway, that’s what they said,” Roland spread his hands.

In this world, alchemy and astrology are collectively called the art of sages, and they are very popular in mainland countries.

The royal family generally trains its own alchemists and astrologers for refining secret medicine and predicting fate.

For ordinary people, these studies are too high-level, so that they have a blind faith.

Considering this, Roland naturally brought the source of the cement formula to the alchemy workshop.

As for whether the chief knight believes it or not, it doesn’t matter at all.

The flame from the window gradually died down, and it seemed that it was finished.

Roland stood up suddenly, drove Carter out of the yard, and waited alone in front of the back door of the brick house.

The iron door was pushed open with a creak, and Anna walked out with a stiff body.

Roland put the robe on her immediately, and brought her a glass of water, “How is it?”

The witch’s face was dusty. Although wet-process cement had low dust emission, the scorching air would still bring up dust during calcination.

For her who cannot wear a mask, it is obviously not too comfortable to stay inside for tens of minutes.

She coughed twice, nodded and said, “The mud has turned into ashes.”

Roland couldn’t wait for the temperature in the firing room to drop low enough. He wrapped a wet towel around his head, grabbed a shovel and got into the back door.

The hot air surrounded him in an instant, and he felt a little difficult to breathe for a while, and the skin on his hands was sore.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take much time to shovel a handful of ashes, otherwise staying in this environment for a few minutes may cause high temperature shock.

“Is this what you want?” Anna asked after putting on the witch suit.

“It looks very similar.” Roland spread the powder evenly and felt its residual temperature with his fingers. “Whether it works or not will not be known until we try it.”

“what’s it for?”

“Building houses, bridges, and roads, there are too many places that can be used. If it can be successful, the people’s residences will not be afraid of wind and cold in the future, and they will not be destroyed by heavy rain and heavy snow.” He patted the little boy with his other hand. The girl’s head, “It was made by you.”

Anna looked down.

He didn’t know if it was an illusion, but he felt that the girl’s breathing became faster.

Theoretically, the fired clinker is ground with gypsum to adjust its hardening time.

But there was no need to think about it so much at this time. After a short rest, Roland shoveled out two more, and then called Carter who was standing outside the courtyard, and asked him to prepare cement mortar according to the ratio of three parts of ash powder to one part of river sand.

The chief knight didn’t mind doing some rough work at all. For him, doing this kind of thing was much better than fighting for His Highness in Graycastle or hooking up with a noble lady on a trip.

Since there is no iron powder added to the raw materials, the color of the prepared cement slurry is light and grayish white.

Roland poured them all on one stone brick, and then buckled the other one on.

The cement setting time is about four hours. Considering the instability of the trial product, he plans to wait until tomorrow to see the result.

Early the next morning, Roland hurriedly took Carter and Anna to the backyard of the firing room.

Pushing open the door, he noticed that the cement had solidified on the outside, and the UU Reading www.sonicmtl.com was tightly joined to the two stone bricks.

The consolidated surface looks uneven, with hoarfrost in places.

Roland squatted down, scraped off the hoarfrost produced by the alkalization reaction, and pressed the hardened cement with his fingers. He was delighted by the touch—the surface of the cement was firm and hard to the touch, completely different from the tactile feeling after the tamped soil, even if you use your nails to force it Unbuttoned, there is no way to leave a trace on it.

After receiving the hint from the fourth prince, Carter first tried to lift the stone brick, but failed.

He kicked hard from the side several times until the joint between the cement and the ground was broken, and the two stone bricks were still firmly bonded together.

Finally he swung the hilt of his sword and struck them hard, but he could only knock off a small corner.

“Is this the effect of ‘cement’?” Carter immediately realized its effect, “it’s incredible.

Yesterday flowed like a melted candle, only one night was solid as a rock.

With this kind of thing, the city wall can be built as fast as you want.

With enough stones, we can even build a wall around the border in five years!

”

“What’s the use of that?” Roland said disapprovingly, “No matter how tall the fence is, it can’t stop the enemies from within. I’d rather turn the dilapidated wooden houses in Border Town into solid concrete houses, so that my citizens don’t have to Fear of being left homeless after a natural disaster.”

“…” The chief knight was stunned for a moment. He really didn’t expect the fourth prince, who had all kinds of bad habits of nobles, to say such a thing.

“You will see later,” Roland reaffirmed the path he was going to take – for many traversers, technology is the primary productive force.

But here, witches are the primary productivity.

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[End of this Chapter]