GBP Chapter 126 Rosin and Candles
Chapter 126 Rosin and Candles
To extract rosin, the first step is of course to heat and boil it.
Slowly you can see the resin in the pottery jar begin to melt. Shen Youyou keeps stirring it with a bamboo stick, and some impurities float on the surface of the resin as it is stirred, which is very obvious.
For example, there are some remnants of pine bark and the corpses of some small flying insects.
However, the small flying insects are not caused by the rosin, but the resin secreted by the rosin is sticky, and some small insects are accidentally wrapped in it.
This is like some of the insect ambers in later generations that are wrapped with insects. This is because when the pine trees secrete resin in the hot summer, some small insects are stuck to the unsolidified resin.
Because there is no or very little air inside the resin, the trapped insects are preserved intact.
Over time and geological movements, these encased resins underwent a long fossilization process and eventually formed amber that encased the insects.
Of course, this process requires a lot of timing. The resin needs to fall onto the insect's body, and coupled with thousands of years of wind and sand erosion and crustal movement, the resin continues to evaporate and polymerize, before real insect amber can be formed.
The formation of insect amber is a very coincidental process, which requires a hot climate to promote the continuous natural secretion of resin, and small insects are stuck in these sticky resins and cannot escape.
Finally, the resin continued to flow and solidified, tightly wrapping the animals and plants to form a transparent "coffin".
The insect's posture at the moment it is stuck is preserved intact, becoming an eternal moment.
Therefore, in the past, such insect amber not only had extremely high ornamental and collection value, but was also an important basis for studying biological evolution and geological changes.
Without further ado, Shen Youyou used gauze to filter out the impurities.
Since Shen Youyou can only use the most primitive method to remove impurities,
She boiled the filtered pine branches again and stirred them constantly for a second filtering. This time, much less impurities were filtered out.
Seeing the results, she poured the pine branches into the earthenware jar for distillation with confidence. The heavy snow outside was also helpful.
For example, she no longer needs to make ice, but can directly go to the cave entrance and dig some snow back to use for condensing the distilled gas.
Because Shen Youyou's pine branches are not collected by cutting the bark, but are secreted by the tree itself, they are light yellow in color, while the pine branches collected by cutting the bark are dark white.
Through distillation, we can obtain two substances, rosin and pine oil.
Turpentine is distilled away, and rosin remains.
Rosin and pine oil are two different natural products, each with unique characteristics and uses.
Rosin is a light yellow to reddish brown transparent solid with thermoplastic properties.
It also has a strong pine scent, and this is what Shen Youyou uses to make scented soap.
As for pine oil, it is a light yellow to reddish brown oily liquid.
It is slightly soluble in water, has a special smell, has strong bactericidal ability, and good wetting, cleaning and penetrating properties.
Pine oil is easily saponified or emulsified by other surfactants and has good solubility for oils, fats and greases.
It can also be used for massage and scraping, or a few drops can be added to fragrant soap to have a bactericidal effect.
Shen Youyou didn't just wait for distillation and do nothing, it was a waste of time.
Since there was a lot of rosin, I made some candles.
She carefully took a bamboo as thick as a child's arm and sawed it into pieces about 20 centimeters high, leaving only the bottom, and then made a small hole in the middle of the bottom.
She didn't have any cotton thread, but she had a lot of straw ropes. She made the ropes into two small thin ropes, passed them through the small hole, and pulled them out from the open end.
Leave a small piece of rope at the bottom of the small hole and pour the pine branches that have been filtered of impurities directly into the bamboo tube.
After it cooled down, they split the bamboo and found the candle inside. Their cave was dark because of the bamboo partitions, so there was no light during the day.
I couldn't see clearly what I was doing in the cave, so I had to light the charcoal brazier.
Although this can provide illumination and keep warm, the charcoal pot produces smoke. In order to prevent gas poisoning, the bamboo doors of the cave are left ajar.
In fact, there is no need for a fire basin if there is a kang. The main reason for lighting a fire basin is for lighting. Now that we can make candles, we can save that part. At most, we can light a few more quilts. Anyway, they have collected a lot of pine branches.
After making dozens of thick and large candles, the distillation is almost done. After all, we are here to make fragrance and sterilize.
It is not the main raw material for making fragrant soaps. The collected ones are enough to make a lot of fragrant soaps.
If you don't need fragrance and are just making a simple pancake, you can skip this step.
Shen Youyou just happened to have these things on hand and used them.
However, the main raw material for making soap is oil, which can be animal fat or vegetable fat, and coincidentally they have both of these types of fats.
For example, the wild boar shot a few days ago and the palm oil boiled.
Shen Youyou walked up to Li Jingshu and asked for palm oil.
Li Jingshu was puzzled: "What are you doing?"
Shen Youyou said: "We are almost out of soap, so I have to make some, right?"
Li Jingshu is quite confident about her daughter. Although she may not be able to do other things, she can do handicrafts and chemical experiments.
In modern times, I like to tinker with these things. I even set up a small laboratory at home. The room is locked all day long, and not even a fly can get in.
Li Jingshu went to get palm oil for her daughter, but was caught by Old Lady Hua.
The old lady walked over quietly with small steps, grabbed Li Jingshu's hand, and asked in a low voice:
"What are you doing? This is food, and we don't dare to burn oil now. I think even if the snow stops, it's so cold.
The snow won’t melt anytime soon, and we can’t bang on the palm fruit, so don’t let Yoyo pick it up and eat it.”
Shen Youyou looked at her grandmother's rough hand holding her mother's, which was as dry as old tree bark, and felt a pain in her heart.
Her grandmother is only in her forties, not even fifty, but her hands are already like this. It seems that she should add more pine oil, at least pine oil has a moisturizing effect.
Shen Youyou looked at Old Lady Hua mysteriously:
"Grandma, I need palm oil to make fragrant soap. The fragrant soap is gone. In the winter, we live in a cave, so we have to pay more attention to hygiene.
If one person accidentally falls ill due to lack of hygiene, with so many people living in this cave, everyone will be finished in no time.
But don't worry, even if we don't knock the palm fruits, I still have a way to make palm oil. If the snow doesn't stop in a few days, I will teach you another way to make palm oil. And we have so much palm oil that we can eat it for a long time, so don't worry."
As for making palm oil, we will talk about it later. There is definitely a way, it’s just that it’s slow to make. Let’s coax grandma over first and get the palm oil.