498: Chapter 498 Zhao Fusu's Business Philosophy: You can't miss out on taking advantage of others!

The manufacturing formulas for Liuli in the East and West are completely different.

The East combined quartz sand, lead ore, and other raw materials to form a unique lead-barium Liuli system, distinguishing it from the Western soda-lime glass.

Because this Liuli contains lead, and lead is highly harmful, Liuli is toxic and cannot be worn close to the body or used to make drinking utensils.

Of course, the ancients did not have this knowledge.

Liuli was obtained from the byproducts generated during bronze casting, then refined and processed into finished products.

Ancient furnace temperatures were limited. To lower the melting point of copper, craftsmen added lead, which reduced the melting point and increased fluidity, making it more suitable for casting complex-shaped objects.

In the materials for forging bronze ware, besides lead, craftsmen would also add tin and other ores to melt at high temperatures, and these ores were often accompanied by silicon-containing substances like quartz.

During the smelting process, these substances would react with the metal elements in the bronze and the plant ash in the fuel, forming colorful crystals of silicon-containing compounds. These were discharged mixed in the copper slag, becoming a byproduct of bronze casting.

This type of byproduct is mostly blue-green and possesses translucent qualities, which is the core raw material for making primitive Liuli. The blue Liuli inlaid on the sword guard of the Sword of Goujian, King of Yue, confirms this source of raw material.

During the Western Zhou Dynasty, craftsmen accidentally discovered the value of this special slag. After continuous exploration of refining and processing techniques, they initially mastered the method of turning it into Liuli.

However, early techniques were relatively rudimentary. The Liuli's color was dark and dull, dense with bubbles, and mostly opaque. The products were mainly small accessories like Liuli tubes and beads.

Because early Liuli raw materials relied on bronze casting byproducts, they were difficult to obtain. Furthermore, the manufacturing process was long controlled by the royal family and nobility, making it rarely seen among the common people. Therefore, in ancient times, the status of Liuli even exceeded that of jade, ranking first among the five famous treasures of China, which shows how precious it was.

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, Liuli craftsmanship was not yet mature and could only be used to make small accessories, which was precisely why it was so expensive.

By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the craftsmanship for making Liuli matured, and it became a common, dime-a-dozen item.

Crystal, Liuli, and glass all have silicon dioxide as their main component.

Therefore, don't let the name "crystal" make it sound expensive; in reality, its composition is about the same as glass.

It's the same with diamonds.

Natural diamonds and synthetic diamonds are almost identical in composition.

Things that can be mass-produced by industrial means will never be that expensive.

Why are diamonds still so expensive?

First of all, industrial diamonds are definitely much cheaper than those used in wedding rings.

For example, the diamond glass cutters on a certain online shopping platform that cost 9.9 yuan with free shipping.

They can cut glass because they really do use diamonds. Since diamonds have extremely high hardness, they can be used to cut glass.

If these same diamonds were used in wedding rings, the price would be in the thousands.

Therefore, the difference lies in the concepts attributed to them.

These attributed concepts are basically all hyped up by merchants.

Instead of buying a diamond ring, it's better to buy gold.

No matter which country or dynasty you are in, gold is always a hard currency!

Although gold can also be synthesized artificially, artificial synthesis requires enormous energy to break the stability of the atomic nucleus, necessitating a high-temperature and high-pressure environment, and requiring a massive input of energy.

The yield of nuclear-synthesized gold is usually very low, requiring a large amount of raw material to synthesize a trace amount of gold. Therefore, the cost of artificial gold synthesis far exceeds its value, so no one specializes in synthesizing gold.

The cost of synthetic diamonds is constantly decreasing as technology develops. If merchants didn't hype up the concept, their industrial price would be far below that of diamond rings.

In the merchants' hype, it must be a naturally formed diamond to be considered a "real" diamond, one that can represent an unchanging love, and that is why diamonds are expensive.

But whether naturally formed or artificially synthesized, a diamond is a diamond. A factory can produce several tons of diamonds in a single run, so the price drops.

The glass that Zhao Fusu produced, after adding pigments, was also colorful and looked similar to Liuli.

He sold the expensive concept of Liuli at the production cost of glass. With the price constantly dropping, many people originally didn't want to buy it, but now that Liuli was so cheap, they thought, "Damn it, if I don't buy this, wouldn't that be a huge loss!"

As the saying goes, "You can skip a meal, but you can't pass up a chance to fleece the sheep!"