Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 105 - 39: Pica_3

The answer to the last thing worth pondering finally came, although not satisfied with the result, life still goes on.

After a late breakfast, Chen Zhou, with his tools and his "little tail" Lai Fu, went down the mountain to look for clay.

In his hometown, earthen houses are usually built with rammed earth bricks.

The materials for these earthen bricks are loess, broken straw, water, and a little wood ash, mixed and stirred together.

When making earthen bricks, the prepared earth is piled into the middle of rectangular rammed earth panels, then several adult men use wooden pestles to tamp it down. Once a layer of earth bricks is pressed solidly enough, another layer is gradually added.

The walls of these rammed earth houses are very thick, about seventy to eighty centimeters, though they look clumsy and dirty, they are very practical.

In the cold north, the thermal insulation ability of rammed earth houses is even stronger than brick houses. Once dry, their strength and earthquake resistance are not weak either.

But the building process is too troublesome, requiring half the village's men, young and old, to get involved.

Moreover, only one level can be built, the higher the wall, the easier it is to collapse. It is also prone to flooding, weathering, and crumbling; hence, they were replaced by brick houses.

Chen Zhou had never seen the process of building earthen houses firsthand, he only heard from his grandfather about the hardships and wisdom of the older generations. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Besides the loess used for rammed earth houses, after working in a cement factory, he also learned about another type of clay—kaolin.

This clay is white and can be used for making cement when mixed with limestone. It can also be used to make porcelain or clay crafts.

Compared to loess, kaolin is more aesthetically pleasing, more adhesive, and more suitable for masonry.

The large box of earth given as a mysterious reward contains white soil, which might be kaolin.

However, the quantity of that soil is too little, even to build a wall base, let alone enough for large-scale use, so he still needs to search on the island.

Having planned to build walls for some time, Chen Zhou never forgot to observe the soil quality near the coastal mountains.

The riverbank soil is loose and fertile, with gravel mixed in the subsoil, suitable for growing herbaceous plants with undeveloped root systems;

The low slopes in woodland are washed by rain year-round, making the surface soil solid and hard to dig. The high slope soil is black, rich in humus, and has a thick soil layer, suitable for planting trees and flowers;

The sunny slope of the mountain has grey and yellow soil, mixed with a lot of gravel, the soil is dry with low moisture, perhaps it has soil suitable for building walls;

There's also the silt on both sides of the river, sediment in the riverbed, and soil in the dry riverbed, worth trying out.

Chen Zhou had never learned about soil and masonry.

On this island, without resources to consult, all he could do is keep trying, learning, and improving.

Carrying a shoulder pole, he circled halfway around the mountainside, filled two buckets with different soils, returned to the cave entrance, and dumped them on the ground, then set off again.

Repeating this until nightfall, more than a dozen piles of differently colored soil had accumulated at the cave entrance.

With cool water and broken grass leaves prepared in advance, Chen Zhou poured water and added grass leaves to the soil piles in approximately similar proportions.

Then he took a wooden shovel to stir and mix until the loose soil turned into mud.

When cleaning out the gravel, he specially selected rocks suitable for building walls, just waiting for this moment.

Using a rolled-edged Iron Blade as a trowel, Chen Zhou recalled the techniques of the bricklayers back home, picked up stones, and smeared the mixed mud bit by bit onto the rising wall.

He planned to put in more effort, testing the sturdiness of these mud-built walls one by one.

Today these dozen soil piles are just the beginning, tomorrow he would continue to select soil until the erected wall reaches his desired strength.

Meanwhile, to avoid any mishap due to wrong proportions or masonry techniques, he needed to carry out multiple rounds of tests on the same type of soil to avoid missing truly good-quality materials.

For him, this was not only a process of selecting wall-laying mud but also finding clay for pottery, and selecting materials for building a forge, kiln, or brick kiln, an important step in cultivating construction skills.

Like planting a tree.

The time and effort invested now will eventually yield sweet fruit in the future.