Chapter 231: Flat Glass Production Line
To make cast flat glass, the transmigrator glassmakers first needed to find a suitable formula. The common ingredient list was: silica sand, washed and sieved; alkali salt—substituted with seaweed ash; quicklime, hydrated and sieved; saltpeter. Finally, crushed glass.
Ji Situi directed people to first put all raw materials into the sintering furnace for calcination to remove moisture. After extraction, the sintered blocks were cut into small pieces and individually fed into crucibles for melting—sintered material volume was much larger than glass liquid, so new material could only be added after the previous batch melted.
All this work was done by apprentices. Among the children brought in from Guangzhou, older ones unsuitable for educational training were enrolled in the Apprentice General Corps, using apprenticeship education. Apprenticeship was a skills-transmission method centered on hands-on demonstration during actual production. It could train large numbers of technically-skilled workers with basic abilities in relatively short time. This was important for the transmigrator collective's industrial development—according to estimates by Zhan Wuya and others, after 3-6 months, most simple industrial positions could be filled by local apprentices, freeing transmigrators with advanced skills to focus on more complex, precision work.
The Apprentice General Corps used centralized dormitory housing with military-style management. Every morning at 6 AM they rose for morning exercise—running and calisthenics. Then breakfast. In clothing and meals, they were even treated better than school children—after all, factory labor consumed far more than studying. The meal standard was 2,570 calories per day guaranteed. Food variety was similar to transmigrators: brown rice, sweet potatoes, vegetables, and fish products. No fats or meat.
At 7 AM they lined up and started work, continuing until 6 PM with lunch provided. After dinner, they had one hour of collective cultural study. Lights out at 9 PM. Apprentices had no holidays and no wages, but the children mostly adapted—after all, the food was good, housing was good, clothing was neat. The masters were also friendly, without the casual beatings of outside apprenticeships. And they quickly learned they were learning amazing new skills unavailable anywhere outside. For the minority of children with ingrained vagrant habits who wouldn't work, the transmigrators naturally had no interest or time to reform their worldview—their final destination was the labor reform camp. After a few months there, they'd all come crying and begging to return—not that everyone could come back.
Watching the teenagers walk docilely into the workshop like lambs, led by their squad leader, wearing oversized indigo homespun work clothes and rattan safety helmets, Bai Yu sighed: "Now I understand why Marx said capitalists are evil."
"You democracy-trash spouting garbage, get back to work!" Xiao Bailang was climbing on the truss frame, installing a huge pulley block. This hoist's chains were ones he'd personally made yesterday in the chain and bearing workshop.
"This is child abuse—" Bai Yu may have been a computer networking person in another timeline and had even been an engineer of human souls, but he'd come to the workshop to draft industrial school regulations for the Education Department. He hadn't expected to be drafted as a helper the moment he arrived.
"If we don't abuse children, you get abused instead." Though Xiao Bailang had a delicate pseudo-maiden face, he looked quite queenly when serious. Bai Yu had to shut up, muttering: "Socialist democracy and rule of law are also what the Party has always advocated."
"There's no socialism here," Xiao Bailang hammered fiercely at an uncooperative pulley. "What do we call ourselves? Right, Du Wen said last time we have oligarchic-elite tendencies."
Before Bai Yu could respond, the squad leader over there snapped to attention with a serious face, clicking his heels German-style toward Ji Situi, hand raised to report: "Report! Apprentice General Corps First Industrial Battalion Third Company First Glass Platoon reporting! Expected 11, present 11. Report complete! Awaiting your instructions!"
"Glass Platoon" nearly made Xiao Bailang on the truss and Bai Yu handing up tools below double over laughing.
Ji Situi waved seriously: "At ease!" He looked at these half-grown children the Army had drilled for months, each straining to puff out their chests displaying their "military bearing." He suddenly noticed the squad leader had an extra armband on his left sleeve. Looking closely, it even had some patterns—probably rank insignia? The Army types really knew how to do this stuff.
"Today's work is continued practical training on glass material melting. You'll divide into three groups for shadowing training. Does everyone have their dark glasses?"
"Yes!" All the children pulled dark glasses from their pockets.
"Good, begin training!"
Crucibles filled with glass material were heated in the roaring glass kiln. At intervals, Ji Situi would extract a crucible to check conditions inside and add more glass material.
"Everyone note—a layer of opaque white scum has now appeared in the crucible." Ji Situi, wearing an asbestos cloth hood and dark glasses, lectured to several apprentices.
"We call this glass saltpeter water—the product of using saltpeter to clarify glass liquid. It contains many impurities and must be completely skimmed to produce clear, transparent glass."
Several ten-year-old apprentices stared seriously at the red-hot glass liquid in the crucible, constantly pushing back the dark glasses sliding down their noses.
"During the entire melting process, although the crucible is closed and you can't see inside, as a glass worker you must frequently check the crucible's condition—"
At this point an apprentice raised his hand.
"Go ahead. What's your question?"
"Master Ji said we should frequently observe the glass liquid in the crucible, but this crucible has a lid. Each time we have to take the crucible out to look—last time Master Wang specifically emphasized maintaining proper temperature during melting. So why not remove the lid? That way we could see inside the crucible directly from the furnace opening?"
"Because glass cannot be contaminated, otherwise it won't turn out clear and flawless. Coal smoke spreads easily and would fall into an open crucible. Understand?"
All apprentices nodded together. Then another apprentice raised his hand: "Why not use wood for fuel? Wood burns cleaner than this black coal."
"Good, good question."
He then spent several minutes explaining fuel heat values, costs, and ease of acquisition. The apprentices listened with half-understanding.
Cultivating these Ming dynasty street children—who just months ago were wandering in cities and countryside, completely illiterate—into new industrial workers required extreme effort from the industrial people. Skills training was actually easier—Chinese people had always been known for being hardworking, diligent, and intelligent. But cultivating new thinking patterns wasn't something that could happen overnight. Anyway, they explained what they could, not expecting understanding, just getting the concepts instilled first.
Ji Situi asked: "What are your names?"
"I'm Sun Xing." "I'm Huang Zhongshan."
"It's very good that you can ask such questions." Ji Situi praised unstintingly. Such children were rare and needed strong encouragement.
After a full night of melting, pairs of workers carefully used carrying frames to extract crucibles from the fire kiln, carefully placing them in an iron frame under the hoist. This iron frame had long handles installed on both sides for pouring.
By now the glass liquid in the crucibles was in a red-hot state, with just the right viscosity. The crucible was hoisted up and transported by overhead crane to the cast-iron pouring table.
The pouring table was originally constructed by laying copper plates on a solid stone surface. People at the time believed copper contaminated molten glass less than iron. But later in actual production, they found copper plates cracked easily when glass liquid was poured on them. Once cracked, the copper plate was completely ruined.
The English improved this in the mid-19th century, using cast iron as the platform. The transmigrators completely copied the English design—though not as massive as that table, the structure was identical, also installed with casters. This way the pouring table could be pushed directly to each annealing kiln's entrance without needing special tools and vehicles for transport.
The Machinery Department also made some small improvements—simple iron rails were laid between the pouring table and annealing kilns. These were simple small rails directly embedded in the hard floor, without using sleepers, but greatly saving manpower—after all, pushing an 8-ton-plus table was no light work.
After glass liquid was poured from the crucible onto the table surface, workers used an iron roller to flatten the gel-like molten glass. The platform's perimeter had iron strips to ensure glass liquid wouldn't be pushed off onto the ground.
The entire pouring operation was completed smoothly. The glass liquid poured onto the pouring table was easily rolled flat into sheets of flat glass. Depending on how much glass liquid was poured each time, glass sheet thickness could be controlled. Then came 10 days of annealing.
"This is definitely easier than any blown-tube method." Ji Situi excitedly told Wang Luobin as he watched the first batch of flat glass enter the annealing kiln.
"We're not done yet. After annealing, grinding is still needed before it can be used." Wang Luobin said. He remembered reading in books that this was an extremely slow and laborious task.
During pouring, the glass sheet's top surface contacted the roller while the bottom contacted the iron plate, leaving surfaces rather rough. Grinding and polishing were required.
Grinding work was done on a stone platform. At Wang Luobin's request, the quarry specially obtained a large piece of blue-gray stone. This was a fine-textured, soft stone—most suitable as a grinding platform.
The grinding process worked like this: lime was applied under the glass sheet to be ground to prevent movement during grinding. Then on top of the flat glass to be ground, another glass sheet half the size was placed. The upper glass sheet had a wooden board glued to it, and on the board was fixed a horizontal wheel made of lightweight hardwood. This wheel could move the upper glass sheet back and forth, creating stable friction between the two glass sheets. To increase friction effect, water and fine sand were poured between the two glass sheets. Raised edge strips were installed around the grinding table to ensure water and sand wouldn't drain away.
(End of Chapter)