Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 423: Rain and Sun Protection

If you dissolve the rapeseed cake in warm water and use it as fertilizer for tea trees after it cools down, the quality of the tea will be better and the taste will be richer. Of course, the stingy buds are unwilling to waste such good rapeseed cake as fertilizer for tea trees.

Therefore, the rapeseed cake brought back from the oil press was made into rapeseed shampoo according to a certain formula and some other accessories were added, which was then sold in the Flower Fairy Shop.

Alas, it is a pity that I cannot press the oil by myself. If I could, I could come up with many new ways to make money. Looking at the vacant manual oil press at home, Hualei felt a little regretful.

That's not right. The oil press truck can't press rapeseed oil, but you can press tung oil yourself. When we were reclaiming land last year, we collected a lot of tung oil seeds from the mountains, and they are still piled up in the warehouse.

Hua Lei went straight to Huayingzhuang as soon as he said it. When the tung nuts were collected last year, they had all been dried in the sun.

Now, put the tung nuts under the sun again, peel off the outer layers of hard shells, and let the garlic-like tung seeds inside be fully exposed to the sun.

After drying, put the tung seeds into a stone mill and grind them into fine powder, which helps release the oil inside the tung nuts.

After grinding, put the tung nut powder into the pot, add appropriate amount of water, and then steam it slowly over low heat to allow the oil in the tung nuts to slowly seep out.

This step is slightly different from the method of extracting rapeseed oil. This is done to allow the oil in the tung seeds to seep out more fully.

The steamed tung nut paste is then made into a cake shape and put into an oil press. The oil and water in the tung nuts can be slowly squeezed out by squeezing.

Then use the oil-water mixing method to separate the tung oil, put the filtered tung oil into the pot for boiling, and remove the water again. When all the water in the tung oil has evaporated, the tung oil is ready.

Because there were so many tung nuts collected, Hualei used the tung oil to paint all the wooden houses on the mountain that had not been painted with persimmon paint. The saved persimmon paint was returned to its wool yarn dyeing.

Tung oil can penetrate into the interior of the wood, forming a protective film to prevent the wood from rotting due to moisture and pests, thereby improving the durability of the wood.

In addition, after drying, tung oil will form a protective film on the surface of the wood, which will keep the wood stable and avoid problems such as drying and deformation.

The waterproof property of tung oil can also effectively prevent water from penetrating, and can prevent wooden houses from rotting due to years of erosion and infiltration by rain and dew.

Tung oil is also resistant to high temperatures, corrosion, and pests, which makes it very effective in protecting wooden houses. Moreover, tung oil is a natural vegetable oil and does not release harmful gases during use. Hualei attaches great importance to this point. After all, the wooden houses are made for people to live in, and safety comes first.

After brushing the wooden house with tung oil, there was still a lot of tung oil left. In line with the principle of never wasting anything, Hua Lei decided to use the tung oil to make some oilcloth.

When she just bought the boat, Hualei wanted to buy similar oilcloth and oilcloth raincoats, but unfortunately she didn't buy any.

Therefore, when we go out on our own boats, if it rains, we usually use straw fans or raincoats to cover them. This is very inconvenient and the effect of keeping out the rain is also very poor.

If I can make oilcloth, I can not only use it to protect the boat from wind and rain, but also make oilcloth raincoats, which are better than straw raincoats. Yes, I will make a set of oilcloth raincoats for the crew and the farmers in the village.

You know, oilcloth has a wide range of uses. In addition to blocking wind and rain, it can also block the sun. If you use oilcloth to make a shed for a carriage, the carriage can be shielded from both the sun and the rain. Using oilcloth to make a sunshade shed is also good, although it is a bit extravagant.

With an idea, Hualei went directly to Liang Xiangyi and asked her to buy a very dense linen cloth. Heat the tung oil to a certain temperature, then add a certain proportion of beeswax, stir evenly, and make an ointment.

Since there are bees in Baihua Village, beeswax is also easy to obtain. Apply the prepared ointment evenly on one side of the fabric, making sure the entire surface of the fabric is coated with the ointment.

Bake the cloth coated with ointment over fire to allow the ointment to fully penetrate into the fabric fibers and accelerate the curing of the grease.

Repeat the steps of applying ointment and heating treatment until the fabric has absorbed enough oil and a solid waxy waterproof layer has formed on the surface, then no more ointment is needed.

Then squeeze the ointment to make it penetrate into the fabric fibers more evenly, which will make it more waterproof. After repeating this process several times, the oilcloth is ready.

After the oilcloth was made, Hualei distributed it to several boats for use. She also made a set of oilcloth raincoats for all the crew members. Even the farmers in the village were given a few sets of oilcloth raincoats.

In addition, Hualei made a batch of ordinary oilcloth umbrellas for her family to use. In order to be on the safe side, Hualei also kept a batch of oilcloth on the farm and did not use it.

It seems that I still need to collect more tung oil seeds next year, so that I can make more tung oil and continue making oilcloth and oilcloth raincoats. Oilcloth umbrellas can also be sold. Hualei quietly wrote down the plan for tung oil in her notebook.

Hua Lei was busy and having fun. In the imperial study, Emperor Sheng Wu continued to read the explanatory book written by Hua Lei. Now that the rapeseed problem had been solved, he was very satisfied.

Therefore, he always felt that he should read this explanatory book carefully several times, maybe he could find some good things in it.

The saying that there is a golden house in books sometimes makes sense. This is how you dig up a large amount of gold for your own treasury.

Emperor Shengwu was secretly proud of himself, but when he saw the reason why Hualei made terraces, he was surprised again. So he began to figure it out carefully. After all, many of the barren hills in Shangjing City had slopes.

Emperor Shengwu was still in the imperial study room carefully studying Hualei's book on land reclamation. The martial arts competition in Shangjing City began in full swing.

In addition to the many people from the capital and its surrounding areas who signed up, many prefectures also sent a group of people to compete after a certain amount of screening.

If these people perform well in the exam, they can stay in the government office in Shangjing City to work. If their results are average and no government office wants them, they will be given priority to return to their own cities to fill some vacancies in military positions.

There were many prefectures under the Dasheng Dynasty, so more people came to Shangjing City to participate in the competition.