How does the traditional tenon-mortise technology make the cow leg bone and bamboo into high-value bamboo-bone mahjong?

This is an old mahjong with bone carving and fragrant bamboo, which is made by hand with cow bones and bamboo. It has a history of hundreds of years. This is Taixing City, located in the middle of Jiangsu Province. As usual, Master Chen bought the most suitable calf bone from a nearby slaughterhouse.

First of all, the cow bone should be cut into sections with a cutting machine. Then, the small pieces of beef bones are cut into bone pieces with a sharp file, and then boiled in a large pot for two hours until the fat and minced meat attached to the surface of the beef bones are completely decomposed, and then they can be eaten in the yard for two days. Next, the completely dried bovine bones need to be polished by a grindstone and a toothed blade to become rectangular bone pieces with the same thickness, and then all of them are soaked in a plastic bucket filled with gasoline for one day and one night. The purpose of this is to use the chemical components in gasoline to dissolve the residual oil in the bone layer, and finally heat it once to take it out and dry it for later use.

Secondly, the next thing to do is to use the top-grade bamboo chips on the back of the bamboo bone paste. In order to make the bamboo chips and beef bones firmly spliced together, no chemical watering is needed. Master Chen must first make a groove about one centimeter in the center of the bamboo piece, and then grind an equal convex groove on the other side of the cow bone. This ancient splicing technology is a tenon-mortise technology that has been circulating for thousands of years and was widely used in various large buildings in ancient times. When the two materials are perfectly connected, the master will cut them into the standard size of 26: 12mm. Finally, after repeated bleaching and polishing, a semi-finished bamboo-bone mahjong is completed.

Thirdly, what we need to do now is to send these 144 whiteboard mahjong tiles to Master Liu's home, ten kilometers away from here, and let him carve familiar words on the mahjong tiles with exquisite carving skills. Without wasting a mahjong, except for various traditional carving tools, it will take Master Liu at least three to five days to carve all kinds of complicated flower patterns accurately. Finally, special acrylic pigments in red, green and blue are painted on the card until the pigments are completely solidified, and a pair of handmade main bone sesame paste with potential for collection and appreciation is completed.