The Caveman Made Me Awesome

Making leather boots is not an easy task.

The first is to tan the raw hides into leather.

Obtaining animal skins is the easiest step. There are many kinds of animal skins in primitive society. Ye Xi gave up the conventional leather shoes such as cowhide and sheepskin, and chose an anteater tapir skin instead.

The skin of this animal is more wear-resistant and more resilient.

Soak the peeled skins in a bucket for about four days, take out the softened raw skins, and use a stone knife to clean up the fat and minced meat on the skins. The skin of the anteater tapir does not grow hair, so this step of hair removal can be omitted.

Then you need to use a chemical solution - Glauber's salt solution.

Glauber's salt is a sulfate mineral, which is generally formed naturally in places such as salt lakes. Later, Tu Shan forced Huang Zhu to find out the secret of Huang Zhu's salt production from the mouths of Huang Zhu's slaves, and knew that their tribe had discovered a salt spring.

Ye Xi spent a day going to this salt spring to get some natural thenardite and made a solution of thenardite.

Next is the tannery hide.

In the valley with green grass, Ye Xiqing came out and asked everyone to help build a stove.

Setting up a stove was a simple task. Originally, Ye Xi asked ordinary men in the tribe to help, but when the soldiers like Cangpan found out about it, they were very active in holding the stones and rushing to build the stove.

"Come on, let's do these things, you can do other things!" Cangpan smiled and squatted on the ground to build a stone stove.

Qi Ze was half-kneeling on the ground to grind the stones to make the stones fit better. He said to the men without raising his head, "Yes, you can do other things!"

Cone, Marten, and Dolphin also moved over with rocks, pushing these ordinary men aside.

These men were unwilling and unwilling to leave.

They finally had the opportunity to help Ye Xi with things, and they heard that they wanted to make a pair of "leather boots" that would not hurt their feet and were comfortable. How could they be willing to leave? At the beginning, Cangpan and the others personally participated in the production of salt, and I don't know how many times they showed off intentionally or unintentionally.

But Cangpan and the others were all warriors of the tribe, and they didn't dare to defy them, so they could only look at Ye Xi with pleading eyes.

Ye Xi cleared his throat and said, "I want your help later, so just wait."

They breathed a sigh of relief.

A simple and honest man said to Ye Xi: "Whatever you want to do, you can do anything, we can do anything!"

"Okay." Ye Xi nodded with a smile.

With so many people doing it together, the stove was quickly set up, and the fire underneath quickly started.

Ye Xi said to the simple and honest man, "I need a stone bucket now. Help me go to the cave and get a stone bucket."

"Okay!" The man's eyes lit up and he was about to go.

But at this time, a group of soldiers rushed towards the cave like arrows from the string, and disappeared for a while.

The men could only watch their sturdy backs cluttered in the wind.

Ye Xi shook his head, a little speechless.

Isn't it just making a pair of boots, they seem to be building a rocket.

The stone bucket was quickly taken out, and after Ye Xi put it on the fire, he poured the mirabilite solution into it. After the fire is heated to a temperature slightly higher than body temperature, wring out the hide and put it into the pot.

A group of people watching from afar,

All looked serious.

Looking at this scene, the cone covered his mouth with his hand, and whispered to the mink beside him, "Will it not boil the animal skin like this?"

Sable glanced at the cone, and the voice was inaudible: "When did Ye Xi make a mistake?"

Cone was a little disgusted with Mink's expression, and hummed his nose in response.

Ye Xi probed his hands and found that the water was a little overheated, so he said to the men who were waiting on the side, "Please help me control the fire and make it smaller."

As soon as the words fell, those men rushed to the stove as if they were hungry tigers rushing towards their food, making a fire.

Cangpan, who was one step behind, stopped waiting embarrassingly.

"Look at their appearance, Ye Xi told them to do it, and we won't rob them." Hulu muttered, quietly retracting his left foot.

Ye Xi touched the solution with his hands, felt its temperature, and kept asking the men to adjust the heat, while rubbing the skin with his hands, so that the solution could penetrate better.

After a while, Ye Xi felt that he was almost done, so he took out the hide, spread it out on a stone slab, and put it to dry in the sun.

It takes a while to dry, and Ye Xi took advantage of this time to go to the farmland to see the crops.

During the drying process, a group of people gathered around the animal skin and discussed curiously: "This animal skin seems to be different after soaking it so much."

"That's for sure, otherwise it's a white bubble?" Someone sneered.

The cone stretched out an index finger: "I want to poke it to see if the skin has softened or hardened."

Cangpan immediately slapped his hand and scolded, "Will you be responsible for the damage?"

Cone pouted unhappily, but did not dare to poke after all.

Ye Xi went around the farmland and came back, half an hour later.

And a group of people are still whispering around the hide.

Ye Xi squeezed away the crowd, seeing that the animal skin was almost dry, and announced, "Okay, let's continue."

The stove was re-ignited, and Ye Xi soaked the dried animal skins in the mirabilite solution, and kneaded it repeatedly with his hands. repeatedly.

This step is called "eating nitrate". After the nitrate is fully absorbed, the floating nitrate on the hide is removed, and it is completed.

Next comes the extravagant behavior.

Ye Xi put a stone basin on the stove, filled the stone basin with oil, heated it to keep the oil temperature slightly higher than body temperature, then put the animal skin into the oil, and kept pushing the animal skin with his hands, so that the oil could Penetrates evenly into the skin.

Ye Xi took the animal skin out of the oil basin, walked into the cave, and dried the animal skin on a wooden pole that had been set up in advance, and let it dry naturally in the shade.

Even if the hide is finished tanning.

Cone curiously looked at the completely different animal skin and asked Ye Xi, "Can it be made into boots after it dries?"

Ye Xi shook his head: "There's still one thing left to make the soles of."

The sole cannot be made of animal skin. It must be thick, wear-resistant, water-resistant, oil-resistant, heat-resistant, pressure-resistant, impact-resistant, and elastic. In the previous life, the soles were mostly made of synthetic rubber, synthetic plastic, or recycled leather, or even elastic cardboard.

But here, Ye Xi can use natural rubber as soles extravagantly - the advantages of soles made of natural rubber are simply endless.

He remembered that he saw a rubber tree in the back forest of the Ye tribe last time, so he planned to go to the Ye tribe, pay some price, and ask the Ye tribe to sell the rubber tree to Tushan, or if it doesn't work, just cut it some rubber.

I believe that this request Ye tribe will still sell his face. 8)