Chapter 228 - 103: Pottery Making
After the mother mouse got pregnant, along with Tizi and the mother goat, the total number of expectant mothers at home skyrocketed to eight.
Fortunately, Chen Zhou didn't have to meticulously care for these expectant mothers, especially Tizi and the mother goat, who didn't even need feeding, which saved him a lot of effort.
...
Starting from July 26, Chen Zhou's "Pottery Making Plan" officially commenced.
After nearly a year, most of the pottery and porcelain-making tips taught by the forum buddy had faded from his mind, so it was lucky he had diligently noted them down in his notebook, or he'd have to start from scratch again.
The forum buddy's "little tips" mainly focused on porcelain making, with only a few lines about pottery.
Among them, it mentioned that if the pottery being fired is relatively large, you can't mold it into shape using a single lump of clay at once. Instead, you should roll the clay into long strips and stack them layer by layer.
Once the pottery is done, you can test whether it's usable by tapping it or filling it with water.
Besides this, the forum buddy's tips also mentioned:
When making large pottery items like jars and vats, unless the quality of the clay is exceptionally high, you can't form them entirely out of clay.
Just like constructing a reinforced concrete building, in order to stabilize the shape of the pottery, it's best to place some woven vines or branches in the clay, which can significantly increase the probability of successfully firing large pottery.
Moreover, the clay used for pottery is also particular. You can use red clay, as well as white or black clay, and when mixing the clay, it's best to add some sand in.
As for the proportion of soil to sand, the forum buddy didn't specify, so Chen Zhou had to figure it out through trial and error.
...
Chen Zhou had plenty of clay, ranging from the white clay produced on the island to the untouched edible soil in the house, all in various colors.
There was no worry about the clay-mixing technique either—
He had mixed clay countless times when building the house, so he was well acquainted with the ratio of clay to water.
Since materials were not lacking, on the 26th, Chen Zhou went straight to the main task—building a pottery kiln.
The ultimate goal of making pottery is naturally to fire a large glazed vat, but that's the final objective. For now, things had to be taken one step at a time.
Chen Zhou decided to first build a small pottery kiln to test the waters.
He directly dug a stove pit on the platform and then molded the clay into blocks, laying them around the pit.
The middle of the pottery kiln required a clay slab for letting the fire through—this trick was also learned from the forum buddy's "little tips."
According to the buddy, this clay slab for placing pottery had to be sturdy enough.
Circular perforations, uniform in size and neatly distributed, needed to be made on the slab's surface to allow tongues of flame to dart through and lick the unfired pottery.
As Chen Zhou was somewhat obsessive, to create a qualified clay slab, he specially circled a regular mold using a wooden board.
He adjusted the clay to water ratio perfectly, filled the mold with white clay that had just the right hardness, trimmed the edges, and smoothed the surface.
Once the white clay was sufficiently regular, he marked evenly-sized squares on the slab with a ruler, drew circles in the center of the squares, and scooped out the clay within the circles with a dagger.
After tidying up this cylindrical hole, he proceeded in the same manner to make the next hole.
With all the holes dug, he dismantled the wooden frames around, moved the clay slab onto the table on the platform to dry, so when it dried and hardened, it could be used in the pottery kiln.
After finishing the first clay slab, Chen Zhou went on to make seven more clay slabs to spare, only then continuing to construct the pottery kiln.
The small pottery kiln didn't involve much technical complexity, and once the flue was reserved, it was soon set up.
Lighting the firewood, he kindled a fire in the stove to harden the kiln's interior.
After making all the necessary preparations, Chen Zhou patiently waited for an afternoon.
During which he took out some edible soil stored in the cave kiln and went to dig up some river sand and sea sand, squatting on the ground to test the clay to sand ratio in hopes of finding a suitable proportion.
Finally, when the white clay slab was dry, the last piece of the pottery kiln puzzle was assembled.
On the evening of the 26th, red flames rose, and Chen Zhou put a few palm-sized pieces of pottery he had shaped into the kiln for firing.
Looking down from above the small kiln, you could observe the tips of the flames, like living serpents, crawling through the holes in the clay slab, continually scorching the bottoms of the small pottery pieces.
The temperature of burning wood wasn't as high as charcoal, so Chen Zhou wasn't sure if the first firing would succeed. Therefore, he prepared a campfire beside it, using a frying pan to cook meat in advance for dinner.
While cooking the meat, he added wood to the kiln several times.
When the flames in the kiln gradually died down and the heat dissipated almost completely, he used two long wooden sticks to clip out the fired small pottery pieces to examine the results.
For this round of firing, Chen Zhou prepared a total of six small pottery items.
These included a very crude little fat dog, two small cat pottery pieces, and three small teacups.
Based on the firing results, this attempt was quite a failure.
The excessive heat caused all the small teacups to collapse.
The two small cat pottery pieces also cracked.
Only the little fat dog, owing to its large size and thick material, didn't completely disfigure, and you could just about make out the contours of a "dog."
Chen Zhou tapped the surface of the little dog pottery with a dagger and, hearing a somewhat solid sound, felt that this pottery piece was relatively close to success, so he decided to keep it.
Once it was completely cool, while Lai Fu was eating, he took the oddly-shaped "little fat dog" to show Lai Fu, hoping to see a delighted expression.
But Lai Fu couldn't be bothered to glance at the clod-like hunk of junk in Chen Zhou's hand, fixated instead on the frying meat, eyes intensely focused, prompting Chen Zhou to repeatedly criticize it for not understanding art.