Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 921 Vulnerability
The reason for confirming the identity of the Buddha statue is very simple, because there were enough photos when the Buddha statue was destroyed, and the Buddha statue inside is the most important thing, so it can be figured out with a simple correspondence.

At the same time, this Buddha statue is part of the bronze temple that disappeared that year, so if there is no accident, you should be able to find clues about the missing bronze temple through this bronze statue.

However, clues belong to clues, whether they can be found or not requires further research. Just such a bronze statue alone cannot be found even with cards. After all, it is difficult to determine the time.

Fortunately, Liang En also made corresponding preparations before this, so as the vehicle drove, they quickly came to an abandoned farm on the outskirts of the city, and then moved the Buddha statue into the barn.

This farm was previously leased by Elizabeth in advance. It was rented for one year at a time for the next operation. At the same time, for Liang En's convenience, a series of equipment for cleaning and maintaining cultural relics was prepared in the farm.

Because I was in a hurry before, this pile of things is a standard second-hand product. I bought it directly from a closed antique shop. Fortunately, the second-hand is second-hand, and the quality is still good.

What's more, Liang En often chooses card repairs in this situation. This pile of things is just a product for cover, and generally they are not used.

After the helping workers left, Liang En began to study the Buddha statue he had obtained. Soon, he found some welding traces at the bottom of the lotus seat of the Buddha statue.

"Did you find the problem?" Seeing Liang En lowering his head to check the lotus seat of the Buddha statue, Joan asked curiously, "Did you see any abnormal marks?"

"Yes, there are indeed abnormal traces." Liang En nodded and said, then pointed to the welding traces he was looking at just now. "There is something wrong with this weld mark."

"Is there a problem?" Joan stepped forward to look curiously, then frowned: "Isn't this kind of mark left by the classical welding method you told me before? It's not electric welding, so it should be fine."

"No, no, it's not just electric welding that has problems." Liang En pointed to the base and said, "Buddha statues of such a large size in Huaxia are basically hollow, and there is often a hole at the bottom, but there is absolutely no way to block the hole with a copper plate at the bottom practice."

Although many people today say that welding is electric welding, it is a very modern thing.But it is not.Taking China as an example, the local welding technology was invented around the late Western Zhou Dynasty and was widely used during the Warring States Period.

Before the Spring and Autumn Period, lead-tin soldering was mainly used, and copper soldering was invented in the early Warring States period, and records about silver soldering first appeared in Ming Dynasty.The record about amalgam welding is relatively late, but judging from the unearthed cultural relics, the invention of this technique is not too late.

The slag-forming flux used for welding in ancient China was mainly borax, and nao sand was also used.There are about three specific welding operations: high-temperature casting welding, high-temperature spot welding, and amalgam sticking welding.

Ming Dynasty Song Yingxing's "Tiangong Kaiwu" Volume [-] "Hammer Forging·Treatment of Copper" says: "The one who uses the tin powder is the small gun, and the one who uses the ring copper powder is the big gun (original note: the broken copper is the powder, and the rice sticks and beats it. , put it in water to wash off the rice, keep the copper powder, otherwise it will be scattered). If you are defending silverware, use red copper powder."

This "sound copper" means the copper used to make rattles (percussion instruments), that is, high-tin bronze.The small soldering with "tin powder" is about the same as the current soft soldering, and its strength is lower; the "big soldering" with ring copper powder is about the same as the brazing of today's hard brazing, and its strength is slightly higher.

The technique used by this Buddha statue now is to use the "big welding" of ring copper powder. Even because copper is used as the solder, it is not even visible that it is blocked by copper plates after processing.

The reason why Liang En discovered it was because he felt that the weight would never be solid after he got started, and then he discovered the problem with the bottom of the Buddha statue during the search and used his extraordinary power to discover the structure inside.

Sure enough, the other party used a copper plate to seal the statue not because he was idle, but because he used the statue to hide some information, because he found some traces that had been carved on the inner wall.

As for the cavity being filled with a large amount of organic matter, since he hadn't seen these things much before, he couldn't tell what was stuffed in.

Fortunately, for Liang En, there are some things he is good at in the next job. For example, he can now take out the contents without damaging anything inside.

This is why he drove away everyone except Joan before. After all, it is better not to let outsiders see such things as using extraordinary power.

With the output of the power of legend, the solder used to connect the bottom cover and the upper copper Buddha body gradually melted and flowed to one side, and then the entire bottom fell off.

"This thing doesn't look like a product after World War II," said Zhenzhen, looking at the brown copperware when he took the bottom out from under the Buddha statue. "It's like an old thing."

After finishing speaking, Joan bent the index finger of her left hand and knocked hard on the copper base, and a crisp sound came from the base.

"You're right, this thing is indeed a very old thing." After hearing the crisp crashing sound, Liang En, who was attracted, raised the copper plate and observed it carefully.

Sure enough, this is not an ordinary piece of copper.It is a piece of high-tin bronze.Under normal circumstances, this proportion of bronze is often used on percussion instruments made of metal, which does not belong to the common bronze proportion.

After careful observation, Liang En realized that these things should most likely be an ancient copper gong, which was deliberately cut into this shape and welded to the bottom of the Buddha statue.

It must be said that doing so is indeed a very high-level approach, at least even the previous antique shop did not see the problem inside, but subconsciously felt that the bottom cover and the Buddha statue itself were one.

This is why no one has discovered the secret here. Of course, for antique shops, the reason why they admit their mistakes is purely because they don't know much about Eastern cultural relics.

After all, for Americans, what they value is European cultural relics, and they even flaunt their status and wealth by collecting those European cultural relics.

And if you can't find European cultural relics, there is nothing wrong with American cultural relics. Even some Coke cans and bottles that are worthless to foreigners can be sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

As for Chinese cultural relics, although they are said to be very expensive in many places, in fact they only regard that thing as a financial investment product or even a financial speculation.There are not many people who really like Chinese culture from the bottom of their hearts.

Therefore, in many local antique shops, it is true that non-local and non-European cultural relics are not very clear, even some Eastern European cultural relics are not clear.

From a certain point of view, this also shows a special arrogance of the Anglo-Saxons: they took ancient Greek and Roman culture as their own, and at the same time belittled the content of those related to themselves. other civilizations.

(End of this chapter)