Chapter 9: The Plate Glass Production Line

To make cast plate glass, the transmigrator glassmakers first had to find a suitable formula. The common ingredient list was: silica sand, washed and sifted; alkali salt—replaced with seaweed and wood ash; quicklime, slaked with water and sifted; and saltpeter. Finally, there was cullet.

Ji Situi directed people to first put all the raw materials into the sintering furnace for calcination to remove moisture. After coming out of the furnace, the sintered blocks were then cut into small pieces and put into the crucible one by one for melting—the volume of the sintered material was much larger than that of the molten glass, so new raw materials could only be put in after the previous ones had melted.

All this work was done by apprentices. Among the children taken in from Guangzhou, the older ones who were not suitable for study and cultivation were organized into an apprentice corps and educated under an apprenticeship system. The apprenticeship system was a skill transfer method mainly in the form of verbal instruction and personal demonstration in the actual production process. It could cultivate a large number of skilled technical workers with basic skills in a short period of time. It played an important role in the industrial development of the transmigrator group—according to the estimation of Zhan Wuya and others, after 3-6 months, most of the simple jobs in the industrial sector could be filled by local apprentices, and the transmigrators with advanced skills could focus on more complex and precise work.

The apprentice corps adopted a centralized accommodation and militarized management model. They got up at 6 am every morning for morning exercises, running and doing gymnastics. Then they had breakfast. Their clothing and food were even better than those of the school children—after all, the consumption of labor in the factory was much greater than that of studying. The food standard was to guarantee 2570 calories per day. The variety of food supplied was similar to that of the transmigrators: brown rice, sweet potatoes, vegetables, and fish products. There was no oil or meat.

They started work in formation at 7 am and worked until 6 pm. Lunch was provided in between. After dinner, they had another hour of centralized cultural study. They went to bed at 9 pm. The apprentices had no holidays and no wages, but the children were quite adaptable—after all, the food and accommodation here were good, and the clothes were neat. The masters were also kind and did not beat and scold them casually like apprentices outside. And they soon learned that they were learning new skills that they could not learn outside at all. For a few children who had deep-rooted wandering habits and were unwilling to work, the transmigrators naturally had no interest or time to reform their outlook on life—their final destination was the labor reform team. After staying there for a few months, they would all cry and shout to come back—not everyone could come back.

Looking at the youths in their oversized indigo homespun work clothes and rattan safety helmets, walking into the workshop as meek as lambs under the leadership of their squad leader, Bai Yu sighed, “Now I know why Marx said capitalists are evil.”

“You democratic pig, what the hell are you talking about? Get to work!” Xiao Bailang was climbing on the truss, wrestling with a huge pulley block. The chain of this overhead crane was processed by himself in the chain and bearing workshop yesterday.

“Damn it, this is child abuse—” Although Bai Yu had a background in computer networks and had also been an “engineer of the human soul” in another time and space, he came to the workshop to formulate the regulations for the industrial school for the Ministry of Education. He didn’t expect to be drafted as a handyman as soon as he arrived.

“If you don’t abuse the children, you’ll be the one being abused,” although Xiao Bailang had a delicate and pretty androgynous face, he was very queen-like when he was serious. Bai Yu had to shut up. He muttered, “Socialist democracy and the legal system are also consistently advocated by the Party.”

“There’s no socialism here,” Xiao Bailang hammered at the disobedient pulley with a hammer. “What are we called? Oh right, last time Du Wen said that we have a tendency towards oligarchy and cronyism.”

Before Bai Yu could speak, he saw the squad leader over there give Ji Situi a German-style heel-clicking salute and report with a raised hand, “Report: The first glass squad of the third company of the first industrial brigade of the apprentice corps reports to you! 11 people should be present, 11 people are present. Report complete! Please give your instructions!”

The glass squad almost made Xiao Bailang, who was climbing on the truss, and Bai Yu, who was handing him tools below, laugh until they were out of breath.

Ji Situi waved his hand seriously. “At ease!” He looked at this group of half-grown children who had been trained by the army for several months, each one trying hard to puff out their chests and show off their “military bearing.” He suddenly found that the squad leader had an extra armband on his left sleeve. Looking closely, there were some patterns on it—probably a rank insignia? The army guys were really good at this kind of thing.

“Today’s work is to continue the internship of melting glass material. You will be divided into three groups for follow-up internship. Have you all brought your sunglasses?”

“Yes!” All the children took out a pair of sunglasses from their pockets.

“Good, let the internship begin!”

The crucible filled with glass material was heated in the blazing glass furnace. Every once in a while, Ji Situi would take out a crucible to check the situation inside and add more glass material.

“Everyone, pay attention. A layer of opaque white scum has now appeared in the crucible,” Ji Situi said to a few apprentices, wearing an asbestos cloth hood and sunglasses.

“We call this glass gall. It’s a product of using saltpeter to clarify the molten glass. It contains a lot of impurities. We have to skim it off to make clear and transparent glass.”

Several teenage apprentices stared seriously at the red-hot molten glass in the crucible, constantly pushing up their sunglasses that were 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 always pay attention to the situation inside the crucible—”

At this time, an apprentice raised his hand.

“Go ahead, what’s the problem?”

“Master Ji said that we should always pay attention to the molten glass in the crucible, but this crucible has a lid. Every time we want to look, we have to move the crucible out—last time, Master Wang specifically mentioned that we should maintain a good temperature during melting. Since that’s the case, why don’t we just remove the lid? Wouldn’t that allow us to see directly into the crucible from the furnace mouth?”

“Because the glass cannot be contaminated, otherwise it will not be clear and flawless. Soot is easy to scatter, and it will fall into an open crucible. Understand?”

All the apprentices nodded. At this time, another apprentice raised his hand. “Why don’t we use firewood for the fire? Wood burns cleaner than this black coal.”

“Good, good question.”

He then explained for a few minutes about the calorific value, cost, and difficulty of obtaining fuel. The apprentices listened with a half-understanding.

To cultivate this group of Ming Dynasty street children, who were wandering in the cities and countryside a few months ago and could not even read, into new industrial workers, the industrial experts were sparing no effort. Skill training was relatively easy. The Chinese have always been known for their hard work, intelligence, and diligence, but cultivating a new way of thinking was not something that could be achieved overnight. Anyway, they would teach what they could, not expecting them to understand, but just to instill the concepts first.

Ji Situi asked, “What are your names?”

“My name is Sun Xing.” “My name is Huang Zhongshan.”

“It’s very good that you can ask such questions,” Ji Situi praised them without reservation. Such children were rare and should be greatly encouraged.

After the molten glass had been melted for a whole night, two people carefully took the crucible out of the furnace with a lifting frame and carefully placed it on an iron frame under the overhead crane. This iron frame had long handles on both sides for easy pouring.

At this time, the molten glass in the crucible was in a red-hot state, and the viscosity was just right. The crucible was lifted and transported to the pig iron casting table by the overhead crane.

The casting table was originally made of a copper plate laid on a solid stone platform. At that time, people believed that copper was less likely to stain the molten glass than iron. But later in actual production, it was found that the copper plate was prone to cracking when the molten glass was poured on it. Once it cracked, the copper plate was completely scrapped.

The British improved it in the mid-19th century, using pig iron as the platform. The transmigrators completely imitated the British design, although it was not as huge as that platform. But the structure was completely similar, and casters were also installed. In this way, the casting table could be directly pushed to the door of each annealing furnace, and there was no need to use special tools and carriers for moving.

The mechanical department also made some small improvements—they laid simple iron rails between the casting table and the annealing furnace. This was a kind of small iron rail directly embedded in the hard ground, without using sleepers. But it could greatly save manpower—after all, pushing a platform of more than 8 tons was not an easy job.

After the molten glass was poured onto the platform from the crucible, the workers used an iron roller to flatten the gelatinous molten glass. The four sides of the platform were made of iron bars to ensure that the molten glass would not be pushed to the ground.

The entire casting work was completed smoothly. The molten glass poured on the casting table was easily flattened into pieces of plate glass. The thickness of the glass plate could also be controlled according to the amount of molten glass poured each time. Then there was a ten-day annealing process.

“This is indeed much better than any blowpipe method,” Ji Situi said excitedly to Wang Luobin after witnessing the first batch of plate glass being sent into the annealing furnace.

“The work is not over yet. After annealing, it still needs to be ground before it can be used,” Wang Luobin said. He remembered reading in a book that this was a very slow and laborious task.

During the casting process, the top surface of the glass plate was in contact with the roller, and the bottom was in contact with the iron plate, so the surface was relatively rough. It had to be ground and polished.

The grinding work was done on a stone platform. According to Wang Luobin’s request, the quarry specially quarried a large piece of bluestone. This was a kind of stone with a fine texture and low hardness, which was most suitable as a grinding platform.

The grinding process was as follows: a layer of lime was applied to the bottom of the glass plate to be ground to prevent it from moving during grinding. Then another smaller glass plate was placed on the plate glass to be ground. A wooden board was glued to the top glass plate, and a horizontal wheel made of lightweight hardwood was fixed on the wooden board. Then this wheel could move the top glass plate back and forth, thus creating stable friction between the two glass plates. To increase the friction effect, water and fine sand were injected between the two glass plates. Raised edge strips were also installed around the grinding table to ensure that the water and sand would not be lost.