The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 258 Non-staff experts are truly the primary productive force!

"So, you really don't know where this map corresponds to?"

Shen Le glanced at Alloy Boss. Alloy Boss stared at the gold foil with a serious expression, as if he was lost in meditation, and just like when he was repairing the scabbard before, he was listening to the voice of the gold foil:
After a long while, he slowly and carefully shook his head, his face disappointed and even a little sad:

"really do not know."

This might be a message from his friend, a message left for him alone, but he really didn't know...

"Okay then." Shen Le shrugged. His eyes unconsciously moved around the room, searching for things related to the scroll.

The cut-off top and bottom, the damaged scroll stored in the safe, the previous scans, the restoration of the alloy master...

"Do you think this map is related to the place in the painting?"

The two smiled bitterly at each other. You can't say that the landscape in the painting is not well drawn, but, let alone a landscape painting, even if it is a map, it is still too difficult to find the destination by it.

You know, it is definitely wrong to say that ancient maps have no indicative significance.

However, modern people who are used to modern maps are basically confused when they see these ancient maps:
"Oh my god, what on earth is this place... If you don't write the name, I have no idea where this is!"

Not to mention, the picture is of green mountains and waters, not a map.

If you want to know more information, maybe it would be more reliable to directly ask the spirit of the repaired instrument, or read the memory from the painting?

"Okay, let's continue repairing it."

In the end, Shen Le had no choice but to make this decision. He put the gold foil away separately, put away the axle and the paper that wrapped the axle one by one, and continued to practice.

When Teacher Zhang left, he only taught him how to wash ancient paper paintings by pouring, so Shen Le had to continue practicing on silk paintings. This meant that he had to be more careful:

Counterintuitively, silk that has been aged for a long time is even more fragile than rice paper that has been aged for a long time.

“Paper lasts a thousand years, silk lasts eight hundred years.” After being preserved for a long time, ancient silk paintings are more likely to turn yellow, dull, and become brittle, and are more likely to break into pieces at the slightest touch.

If ancient paintings on paper of the same year can be directly poured with boiling water, then ancient paintings on silk can only be washed with 60-degree hot water, which must be poured on the brush and then seep down along the brush.

The brush should not fall on the surface of the ancient painting, so as to avoid direct friction between the dry brush tip and the ancient painting, thus damaging the surface.

It can't be too far away from the picture, lest the water drops fall too high and the impact is too great, damaging the picture...

Just for this height, Shen Le tried again and again, consuming ten ancient paintings before he found a suitable solution. Even so, this was the result of cutting the ancient paintings into small pieces and trying them one by one.

Even he spent three pearls to buy so many ancient silk paintings, three pearls that the old turtle gave him, which were full of water spirit:
This price made Shen Le fully realize why a senior brother said in the video, "No one wants to buy this kind of ancient painting. Only a restorer like me is willing to pay for it."

Without restoration skills, who would be willing to spend money to buy these ancient paintings that have no artistic value or collection value at all - most of them are portraits of ancestors?

Buy it, fix it up, and then worship it as your own ancestor? !

In addition to practicing the "painting washing" method of watering ancient paintings, Shen Le has greater ambitions.

When Professor Zhang returned from school and brought back a team of master's students and stuffed them into the laboratory, he was shocked by Shen Le:
"What are you doing?"

There were colorful lights floating around Shen Le. The chaos of colors made Teacher Zhang subconsciously look up and look around the room:
There were no disco ball lights, no projectors, no strange culprits.

Those colorful lights, in a completely counterintuitive way, floated around Shen Le, condensing into unprecedented patterns that seemed to have their own rules.

Shen Le stood in the middle of these patterns, holding a magnifying glass in one hand, staring at the silk through the lens, motionless, motionless——

Beside him, a non-existent hand picked up a pipette and dropped a tiny drop onto the silk.

Isn't this necessary?
What kind of restoration method requires using something as expensive as a pipette to drip small drops onto a silk painting?

Teacher Zhang quickly walked to Shen Le and tried to look down through the magnifying glass.

After turning several angles and still not being able to see clearly, he simply waited for Shen Le to finish a job and stand up to rest, then he snatched the magnifying glass and rushed over to take a look himself:
"…How did you do that?"

On the workbench, there was a half-broken silk painting with a hole in it. In the middle of the hole, there was a small piece of old silk of the same color, cut into a shape that fits the hole perfectly, with the warp and weft facing each other.

This is nothing, this is what should be done in the restoration of ancient paintings. However, what shocked Teacher Zhang was that half of the edge of this piece of old silk was already connected to the silk painting!
The warp threads are connected to the warp threads, and the weft threads are connected to the weft threads, as if they had never been broken, or as if only a cut was made on the side, and the connected part was not cut.

But Teacher Zhang knew that this was impossible. The color and luster of the patched old silk were clearly different from the silk painting. It was obvious that it had just been trimmed and patched...

According to the orthodox repair method, after filling the hole, apply paste on the back of the silk, and then apply the patch.

However, no matter how careful you are when applying glue and sticking the patch, there will be a bulge at the repaired area, and the place where the glue is applied will be harder than the surrounding area.

Over time, the bulges and hardening of the picture will damage the quality of the picture itself...

If the patched piece of silk could be made to "grow" together with the original painting silk, that would be the dream of many restorers!
Seamless, seamless. Once they "grow", they will naturally become one and resist external forces together, and there will be no uneven stress!
Alas, flowers never bloom again, people never become young again, and silk threads that have been spit out by silkworms and have already taken shape cannot be suddenly connected again.

And silk cannot be welded one by one like metal wire...

"Um... Teacher, I'm just a non-staff expert..." Shen Le smiled embarrassedly. Seeing Teacher Zhang staring at him, he spread his hands helplessly:

"An 'extra' expert, this 'extra' must have some real skills, right?"

"...Your real skill is to make silk threads grow together?"

"Well, this is just one of those..."

"Show me again!" Teacher Zhang's eyes sparkled, and in Shen Le's eyes, it seemed that the teacher wanted to swallow him in one gulp - without even needing to drink a sip of water to moisten his eyes.

He took a half step back and followed the instructions:

"I didn't make them grow out of thin air. I also needed the materials. Teacher Zhang, please take a look..."

He inhaled, exhaled, and concentrated, and once again, strange lights and shadows appeared around him.

An invisible hand quietly took the pipette and dripped a drop of liquid into the gap between the mending silk and the painting silk. Shen Le explained while working:
"This is silk fibroin solution... I've looked up information on it and it's very useful for mending silk fabrics. I used it to mend a wedding dress last time..."

The solution dripped down, and under the impetus of an inexplicable force, it wrapped around both ends of the longitude and latitude lines, and then crawled forward.

Growing, connecting, and solidifying, before Professor Zhang could react, the tiny droplet had completely connected the two silk threads into one.

"So that's it..."

Professor Zhang stared at everything in front of him in ecstasy. After a moment, he turned around and grabbed Shen Le, with a frenzy burning on his face and in his eyes:
"How long can you keep this up? How much silk can you repair in a day? How big is the area, or how long is the seam? Can you help us fix it?
Our research group has a lot of ancient paintings, and the research group next door has a lot of silk fabrics—"

"Calm down, Teacher Zhang, calm down." Shen Le stood beside the workbench, not daring to move, fearing that a slight struggle would bring the teacher down:
"Of course I'm willing to help. I'm definitely willing to help. But, teacher, if you let me fix it, how are you going to write your paper?"

Relying on superpowers to make broken silk grow again and repair damaged ancient silk fabrics?

Once such a paper is submitted, their school will instantly become the biggest joke in the entire cultural relic restoration community, or even the entire academic community.

Not to mention, this kind of restoration method actually violates the principles of cultural relic restoration:

Where is the original damage mark? How to confirm where the original hole is when the silk protein "grows"?

What about the principle of reversibility? If there is a better way to repair the "grown" part in the future, how can we remove it and restore the cultural relics to their original state when they were discovered?
Professor Zhang was just excited for a moment and couldn't help himself. After being asked by Shen Le, he quickly thought of these questions, let go of Shen Le's hand, and stared at the silk in front of him.

In an instant, countless thoughts flashed through his mind:

How can the repair method of guiding the growth of silk fibroin be used in the repair of silk fabrics without relying on the personal abilities of “non-staff experts”?

How to make silk fibroin solution adhere to silk fabrics?

How can we make it stick to each silk thread evenly, stretch forward evenly, solidify quickly, and still have sufficient strength after solidification?
How to design the experiment? Can it be done in a vacuum? Does it need to be done in a weightless state?
Or, blowing air in a certain way, through a certain hole?

Can the meltblown polypropylene non-woven fabric technology used in the previous production of N95 masks be used here?
Maybe he should ask someone from the School of Materials Science and Engineering, or maybe he should talk to someone from the School of Life Sciences or the School of Medicine?

Ah, superpowers are really the primary productive force... At least, they point the way for technological development...

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(End of this chapter)