British hegemon

Chapter 80 Establishing Two Factories

On October 1, 1305, the sky was overcast and a cold wind was blowing, but the island of Holly in Ram Rush Bay was bustling with activity.

Two days ago, the recruitment team led by the bald man and the ponytail returned to the makeshift dock in Ramlash.

With his silver tongue and persuasive rhetoric, Bald Man successfully recruited one dyer, one weaver, three blacksmiths and their apprentices, eight bricklayers and carpenters, and seven other workers including tanners, tailors, potters, and miners for Milk House Manor.

Roger was pleased, although after a detailed investigation he discovered that most of these craftsmen were mediocre or even barely passable.

He understood perfectly, since those craftsmen with slightly better skills had long been confined by their respective lords or industries.

Just like the blacksmith in Milk House Manor, everyone knows that the old man's ironware is of poor quality and expensive, but no one can do without him, even Bitter Gourd Face treats him like a treasure.

After a short rest, Roger won over a group of people with a sumptuous dinner and a promise of generous rewards, and then began to assign talented people to various places to start creating value.

The dyers, weavers, tanners, and sewing workers were sent to the reopened textile workshops.

Four days ago, Jenny, the half-penny girl, personally went to Milk House Estate to report to Roger on the preparations for the textile workshop.

Jenny did not disappoint Roger. She completed the task Roger had assigned her in just two and a half days, cleaning up the long-abandoned courtyard. The ground was free of moss, the holes in the walls were patched, the roof was covered with new tiles, and the path leading to the courtyard was swept clean.

She also recruited her first assistant—a hardworking woman who owned the one-eyed eatery at the entrance of the town. The woman had originally worked as a weaver in that courtyard, but after the workshop closed, she started working at the roadside eatery with the man.

Jenny told Roger that during this time, some of the laborers who hired people to repair the courtyard looked down on her status as a brothel maid, often disobeying her orders and making sarcastic remarks. As a result, the girl devised a plan to have one of the troublemakers steal a bag of nails.

As expected, she and her assistant apprehended the troublemaker on the spot and threatened to sue Roger, forcing him to back down. She also made him help suppress the other workers.

Roger praised her repeatedly after hearing this. He had originally only intended to let this somewhat knowledgeable girl manage the textile workshop, and then send a suitable person to run the workshop later.

Since this girl has some management skills, she might actually be able to run the textile workshop successfully.

Roger hesitated for a moment, then immediately wrote an appointment document, officially appointing Jenny as the first manager of the textile workshop. At the same time, he allocated five pounds on the spot for the resumption of production at the textile workshop.

Of course, Roger also gave Jenny a second task: to rent a batch of suitable weaving tools from the islanders' homes and recruit a group of free islanders who had worked as weavers or had weaving skills to join the new workshop.

Then they purchased a batch of raw materials from that rudimentary wool processing workshop and began trial production.

This is a temporary measure. At present, the textile workshop has only been cleared out, and the courtyard is still empty. There are no workers or equipment. Roger can only rent some textile tools and temporarily hire a group of textile workers to allow the workshop to start trial operation. It will officially open for business after the staff and equipment are in place.

Although it was only a trial operation, Roger still made quite a splash.

Yesterday, Roger, along with Bitterface, Marne, Olaf, Baldhead, Ponytail, and other key members of the Milk House Manor, made a lively visit to the newly opened textile workshop, and invited a group of lords and gentry from the island to attend.

Although only Father Matthew, the Baron, Lady Kate, and a few gentry were invited, the townspeople flocked to join in the fun.

At the groundbreaking ceremony, Father Matthew, who had received a generous gift, presided over a prayer and blessing ceremony for the newly named Campbell Textile Factory.

Then Roger clumsily twisted out the first thread, and he announced on the spot that the first fifty yards of cloth produced by Campbell's Textile Mill would be given free of charge to the families of soldiers who died in the last war, as a sign of the highest respect for the fallen.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that Roger was using the first batch of substandard fabric, which was barely up to standard, to build a reputation for his factory, and incidentally, to win people over and enhance his prestige.

But no one said it out loud, after all, fifty yards of finished fabric was no small sum of money.

Returning to the main topic, the blacksmith and his two apprentices, five bricklayers and carpenters, and six potters and miners have been assigned to the expansion and new construction project of the Holly Island saltworks.

Holly Island is bustling with people and filled with construction scaffolds, a scene of busy activity.

According to Roger's design, the Holly Island saltworks were divided into two areas and a peat mine.

The coal mining site was naturally located in Nimei Bay, near the source of the Tonghai River. There were two wooden houses, one large and one small. The large wooden house was a storage and processing room, while the small wooden house was for the coal miners to live in.

A donkey track was built along the stream for coal-carrying donkey carts to go up and down. Later, two workers were assigned to this place to mine peat coal to supply the salt factory.

The crude salt processing plant will be expanded on the basis of the original crude salt processing workshop on the sea salt beach. The plan is to build two new large sheds, add two salt stoves, and two brine pools.

The original salt workers and the "pirates" captured from the south were temporarily in charge of crude salt production.

The salt processing plant was ultimately chosen on the site of the simple processing shed that Roger had previously had built.

The terrain here is slightly higher and more open. It is only a hundred yards away from the coarse salt workshop and is located next to the coal hauling road in the muddy bay. Raw materials, fuel and water sources are very close.

The plan is to build a fully enclosed workshop here. Although it will certainly be rudimentary, it will be complete with wooden fences, production areas, living areas, and warehouses.

After its completion, two peasant soldiers who had joined the temporary refined salt processing workshop some time ago served as the technical backbone, while the young horse herder Igor served as the bookkeeper and supervisor.

Five more reliable serfs with families were selected from the milkhouse estates to enter the refined salt workshop, where they were given half a penny a day and enough food.

During this time, Roger devoted himself to "scientific research," exhausting his knowledge from his previous life to make the most creative attempts in salt-making equipment and processes.

There are roughly four types of practical innovations, or rather, four types of "plagiaristic" innovations.

The first innovation was to change the round, deep pot used for boiling salt into a flat-bottomed rectangular frying pan.

Roger's frying pan measures one and a half yards in length and width and approximately eight inches in height, with a larger heat dissipation surface and a larger heat conduction surface, making it practical and easy to use.

Black Dog has been busy with this matter for the past few days. The blacksmith on the island has already forged three, two of which have passed inspection with a processing fee of two shillings each. The remaining dozen or so are still under construction.

The second innovation was an improvement to the salt-boiling stove, with a new "one stove, two holes" design.

Roger added a square heat transfer section to the original salt-boiling stove.

It is roughly a specially made "chimney" with a 30-degree slope and a length of three yards. Then, a "fire outlet" is built in the middle of the "chimney" directly above the furnace. The heat in the furnace below is conducted upwards by using the principle of hot air rising.

The heat will definitely decrease, but because the distance between the two furnace holes is not far, the decrease in heat is slight.

The third innovation was the "roasting room". Roger extended his idea of ​​"one hole with multiple stoves" to another measure to maximize the use of heat. Drawing on the "earthen roasting room" used to roast tobacco in the rural areas of southern China in his previous life, Roger created a simple version of the "roasting room".

The baking room will have thick walls, about one and a half meters high, built with straw and clay, and a thatched roof. Inside, there will be rows of wooden racks.

The floor of the "baking room" is made of mud bricks forming a U-shaped "heat transfer ridge". The entrance to the ridge is a large furnace, and the exit is a vertical chimney. The heat from the large furnace will pass through the ridge and be discharged into the chimney, thus heating the "baking room".

The drying room serves many purposes. Firstly, during seasons with insufficient sunlight, seawater that has undergone initial sedimentation can be brought into the room to evaporate moisture and become brine with a slightly higher salt content.

Secondly, the newly mined wet coal in Nimeiwan can be dried here to remove moisture.

Finally, this place can be used as a dry warehouse to store finished salt, preventing the salt from becoming damp and hardening.

Roger originally wanted to connect the entrance of the ridge directly to the "exhaust vent" of the salt-boiling stove, but the experienced but grumpy man pointed out on the spot that that might make it difficult for the salt-boiling stove fire to burn, so Roger had to make a change.

The fourth innovation concerns the process flow. The original salt-boiling process in Haiyantan involved boiling one batch of salt and then pouring in brine to boil the next batch.

Roger proposed that instead of boiling the brine dry, one should boil half of it, then pour in the remaining half and boil it again, repeating this process until many pots of brine turned into a pot of coarse salt crystals.

In addition, Roger tried to improve the additives for removing impurities, and even tried grinding black soybeans into soy milk to remove impurities. The effect was indeed good, but that stuff was a life-saving food in famine years, and it had to be processed with a stone mill. Who would be willing to do that?

It's just wood ash, almost zero cost, and very effective.

These details were secretly recorded by the young horse herders involved in the "scientific research project." These details will be verified and improved in the salt-making practice soon, but we will not go into the details later.

The main structures of both salt-making workshops are made of wood and stone. With the help of fishermen aboard the Seawolf, Marne has already transported a whole ship of timber back. Currently, logging is still continuing in the Gote Mountains. To speed up the process, Roger has hired six more islanders to join the logging work.

Holly Island has plenty of stone, and Olaf only needs to keep an eye on the "captives" to mine it. Moreover, the salt workshop is mainly a wooden structure, and the stone is mainly used for foundation and tamping the walls, so not much is needed.

As the construction site grew busier day by day, the treasury of the Milk House Manor dwindled at an alarming rate, and the grain in the barn was being consumed at a visible speed.

The bald, blind grandmother and her ponytail-wearing sister cook large pots of barley porridge every day, and baskets of rye bread from the Milk House Manor bakery are transported to Holly Island to be consumed.

Aran Island hadn't seen such a lively scene for many years. Many free farmers, having finished harvesting their autumn crops and sowing their winter wheat, came by boat to watch the spectacle.

Roger then kept him on the condition that he would have two full meals a day to do odd jobs such as shipping building materials, moving stones, and carrying timber.