Quantum Leap Vol 8 Harris Treaty July 29, 1858

C007 How To Mass Produce Bricks From Mud And All Those s**t?

The next cluster was the commoners and they made up of 18 layers and about 60 plots per layer. That itself made up of 1080 households. Majority of them had been properly employed and their houses ain't too shabby as well.

Their houses were part masonry and the top half would be of wood panelling and painted over to give every house a burst of vibrant colours. It was like one of the towns I had visited in my time where they hung umbrellas of multitude colours all over the streets.

Next, after the commoners' houses were the so-called plebs housing. There was a total of 30 layers and each layer consisted of 135 houses that comprise of an average of 3 households per dwelling. These alone had 4050 houses for the outermost dwellings.

The new lots that had been marked out for the future development of the outermost districts had come up to about additional 8 layers of 135 more houses per layer. This means 1080 more houses and approximately 3240 more new residents.

By the end of the construction, there should be a surge of a total of 5300 more residents and that would bring in the population of almost 16,000 residents in Kitakata Town.

Not bad... Not bad at all... I looked at the ground and found that once visitors enter from the southern gates, they would have difficulty travelling to our corporation due to the wet, muddy grounds before they reached the commoner's District that was gravelled.

I noticed that the path that was leading from the southern gate right to our corporation was a single line path that would fit 2 carriages side by side. It was about 5-6 meters wide and the distance would be like 600-700 meters from the corporation to the southern gates.

I reached down and took a handful of mud in my hands. "Sensei, can this be made into bricks with some added ingredients to make it stronger?"

"You got to be kidding me, kid. This is worthless mud or dirt, how could you turn this into bricks? Bricks are made from cut stones or masonry... What do you have in mind, kid?"

I searched my memories on the way they made the walkway path in some of the tourist attractions and found that it was made of concrete and then a shaping mould was placed on it to give it a distinctive look.

No, that's not what I wanted. I searched again my memories and I fondled the mud in my hands together with some straws when I suddenly find the solution.

=*=

Bricks were made of several materials where it was mixed and sun-dried. These are the oldest method that is still currently being used in some parts of Indonesia where sun-dried hollow bricks were being manufactured by hand. I remembered watching a documentary where a young boy would mix in those ingredients and press them into a mortar and arrange them in the ground to be sun-dried.

Hmm, very laborious work. That sun-dried bricks would be sun-dried for at least 2 days in good weather and up to 4 days if it is being placed in a shed. Nah... That won't do. The process would be too long.

Next, I searched for oven-baked bricks and these adobe bricks had long existed and we're being used to make high rise buildings in some parts of the world. It was a 60s method and was as sturdy as it can get. These oven-baked bricks had used the same ingredients and were fired in the oven just like pottery pieces, or much like the process of the Refined Steel pieces.

If we wanted something simple, we would use chipped stones to make these paths, but chipped stones, are just chipped stones and it would make travel as hard as the ones made in these wet grounds. Not much difference though for the performance of the wagons that were either 2 to 4 inches wide.

"Let's go back, Sensei. Let me draw up a plan. Furthermore, the contractors would just need to dig about 5 inches deep for this single line path from the southern gate right into Fasuto Japan KabushikiGaisha. With the improved path, the business would improve, just like our business district."

"I could share with you my knowledge of how these useless mud could be used as bricks. It's much weaker than masonry, right? And masonry would be most expensive since it's cut stones."

"Yes, Sensei. We could make use of this mud, and transport it to our Ops Room and we could bring it to the Realm of Mind where we could produce oven-baked or fired bricks. I just néed to draw some diagrams to manufacture these in bulk."

"The mixture would be manual and the process would be automated of course. We don't even have to spend so much time in the Realm of Mind and just pour in the mix and return."

I had the perfect picture that I wanted in my mind and it would be sort of cold-pressed mortar and fed into a large furnace that would be at 1000 degrees Celcius. There would be a conveyor belt underneath and moves about an hour slowly by a 5-meter conveyor belt.

Yeah, that should be it. A new scene, new machinery based on my current visualisation. Let me draw up the sketchy diagram first and present it to our very own potter, Hiko Seiko or his other alias, Niitsu Kakunoshin as a Potter. Hehe.

After we discussed the sketchy diagram that I had drawn on the sketch pad and also getting to know the basics of making bricks as opposed to pottery, I had the rough knowledge of mixing these things up.

First things are the ingredients, we would need sand, soil, mud, straw, pine needles and water. According to Hiko-sama, these would be made into a kind of mud that can be moulded in the hand, and not the watery kind so the water content is just 15% of the base materials.

Hiko-sama added that once the mixture is mixed, it would be cold-pressed into moulds and he drew a moulding press on top of a moulding tray that measured 8 inches long x 4 inches wide and 4 inches thick. Each moulding tray would be able to be pressed into 5x2 pieces.

I drew a moulding tray that could fit 10 pieces of brick inside it. The mechanics would be similar to the dispenser for the Molten steel. And a mixer to help mix the ingredients inside properly. And a conveyor belt to aid to bring the materials up into the mixer then into the dispenser. I drew some sketches and it looked quite alright and seemed quite workable.

I then drew a 10-meter conveyor belt that would feed the moulded bricks and baked inside the chamber of at least 1500-3000 degrees Celcius to hasten the bricks to be dry and ready to use. It would take at least one hour from the time the brick is 'printed' and to reach the end of the10 meter chamber.

Looks good on paper, alright.

Now to get some initial brick building materials first to make a few samples. I called a few guards and told them that I need some sand, soil, mud, straw, pine needles, a few buckets of water and some shovels to make a kind of semi-hard mixture.

They soon get to work and since they were initially from the workers of the building and construction, they knew instantly what I would be using these for and once the materials were collected, they made a mound on the ground and mix them all up.

After they had made some kind of mud that can be shaped, they loaded them up into the handcarts and at my instructions, they pushed inside the warehouse and parked it near the door of our Ops Room.

How I wish I could conjure up a kind of furnace that could instantly make bricks, rather than the actual process of making one with the chamber oven, conveyor belt and so on. Haisshh... Which I could be just dumping these ingredients and then *Ding* a system would announce that a brick is ready.

HAH...! I wished our lives would be simpler in that case but it is not, my dear readers. There's no system but there is a Realm of Mind that I could use to visualise and construct things from my memories or thoughts but I can't make things easier than it looks. How I wished it would be easier than these...!!

Once the guards had made about three extremely full loads of mud in the handcarts and parked near the door of the Ops Room in the warehouse. I placed a few partitions to block the views from the resting ACM. Haruto was there and he asked what we would be doing and I simply said, "This is our secret base of operations, no one is supposed to near and past these partitions."

Haruto noted and informed the rest and went back to rest with the rest of them. Well, in a few days the ACM would have their permanent place to stay rather than being in this warehouse. It is filled with 50 crates of Refined Steel Plates on every single pallet and there are more than 125 pallets in the warehouse right now.

It is worth about 6 million gold coins just for these plates alone. Hehehehe. The thought of it made me rub my hands in glee as there are another 60,000 pieces inside the Realm of Mind that needs to be pushed out today.

We pushed the handcarts inside the Ops Room and closed the door. Even though it's already past 9 pm, we would just slip into the Realm of Mind and visualise the diagram that I had sketched first.

We went into our meditative state and then appeared at the Realm of Mind. It's the Blacksmithing area that greeted us first and I swiped it to the right and it showed a blank room.

I visualised the 10-meter conveyor with the fire chamber from the start right till the end, leaving a 1-meter gap on each end for the entry and the drop-off. The conveyor had become a 12-meter length in the end.

Next, I visualised a dispenser unit and a retractable, hydraulic, moulding press after looking at my diagram. After it had integrated into a solid form after about ten minutes, I adjusted the outlet mouth to be wider so that it would easily expel the mix of the brick base into the mould.

On the 10 meters conveyor belt itself, there was a fixed moulding tray and each length had about 20 trays on the top and 20 trays underneath. Once the mixture had been poured into a tray, a set of rectangular cookie cutter were imprinted on top of it and it made a one-inch groove to separate the 10 pieces of semi-solid bricks.

After each tray had gone through the furnace chamber by one hour, once it nears the edge, the tray would tip over and dispense its contents on another 5-meter conveyor belt. That 5-meter conveyor belt would bring these hot bricks through a cooling chamber of a -10 degrees Celcius and empties it on the ground of at least 1 meter deep, 3 meters across and 5 meters in length with a slight ramp at the end of it.

"Hey kid, can we make this in the smelting Blacksmithing area? This looks much easier than before, and there is no need for us to look after this after it was being made."

"Look... These moulded bricks would be going through these furnaces, right? It would be bone dry once it reaches the end and then it would be automatically dispensed into this belt here and through a cooling unit, right?"

"Never mind, let me wait till the end of the process, kid. Maybe this idea of yours would be of use in the making of the Refined Steel Plates as well."