thomasdarkrose
patreon
Vol. 4 - Growth - Chapter 34
🕑 Added 2019-03-16 22:50:06 +0000 UTCThomas awoke the following morning and felt relaxed and happy. Last night was the best sleep he'd had in a while. Probably because of the familiar surroundings he found himself in. After a good stretch, he got dressed and took a deep breath. He was getting close, he could feel it, close to freedom to finally do what he wanted to do. Ever since he'd first logged into AoG he'd been running around fulfilling Hekrin's quests. Even now, making the Peace Keeper was something to progress a quest from Hekrin. Once he'd finished it he would be free to do whatever he wanted.
Once he felt comfortable he made his way downstairs to the dining room and enjoyed a nice hot breakfast delivered to him by Martha. The familiar food and surroundings were comfortable and enjoyable. Once he was done he made his way to Hekrin's place and went straight to the U.L.T.R.A. in the backyard. Hekrin spotted him but said nothing as he passed by. Once inside of the U.L.T.R.A., Thomas got back to work with a smile.
His first step was to finish the cylinder for the revolver. It had the majority of its shape but some of the lines needed to be sharpened up. Especially the flutes located at the back end of the cylinder, they were used to rotate the cylinder and align the bullet chambers with the barrel. They had to be perfect or the bullets could be aligned improperly and cause a 'catastrophic failure'. In other words, the gun could explode.
Thomas used his metal magic to summon tools made of hardened tool steel that he used to clean the edges of the cylinder and sharpen various sections properly. This 'Transmutation' worked well at getting a general shape for the cylinder but the edges, bullet chambers, and other sections came out dull and needed work. Thanks to his metal magic, the work wasn't very hard at all. Before long he had cleaned up the cylinder and when it was compared to his blueprint it was an excellent match.
With the cylinder seemingly complete, Thomas pulled the frame out of his inventory and checked the fit. The cylinder had just enough clearance to spin freely making it a near perfect fit. He also lined up the bullet chamber of the cylinder with the hole in the frame that the barrel would be attached too. He was excited to see how well they matched. He looked over every section and compared it to his blueprint, he could see how things were going to fit together and was getting excited by the prospects.
He stored the two pieces of the revolver in his inventory and retrieved what was left of his steel ingot. At this point, he'd only used about half of it thanks to his 'Transmutation' minimizing the waste. If he'd had to machine the frame he'd have wasted at least half of the ingot in the process. He looked it over for a bit before summoning up his mana and using 'Transmutation' to start reshaping a section of it. This time he focused on the last large piece of the weapon, the barrel.
It took him two sessions of 'Transmutation' and 'Serenity' to form the majority of the fifteen-centimeter barrel. It was close to being completed, but still needed a fair amount of work to sharpen it up, just as the frame and cylinder had. Using his metal magic he formed tools and used those tools to work on the barrel. He had to be very careful with this step since he didn't want to screw up the rifling inside the barrel.
The tool for rifling a barrel had a rather unique design to it, so he'd taken the time to replicate it within his blueprint system. He looked at it while using his metal magic to make a hardened tool steel version of it. Very carefully, and very slowly, he began to bore out the barrel to carve the rifling on the interior. He took his sweet time and was very careful to remove every scrap of steel he carved out so that it wouldn't get stuck in the barrel or potentially cause damage to it. It took some time but when he was done and looked down the barrel he saw perfect spiraling lines for the rifling.
Thomas sat down on the floor, there were no chairs inside of the U.L.T.R.A., and relaxed for a bit. The process hadn't been physically taxing, but it had taken a lot of patience and energy to carve out the rifling. With the barrel mostly finished he'd completed the three biggest and most important parts. The next steps would just be making all the small parts and assembling the weapon.
After he recovered with 'Serenity', he went back to work. For the next few steps, he intended to make the various smaller parts he needed with what remained of the steel ingot. He spent hours switching between 'Transmutation' and 'Serenity' to make the frame of the handle, trigger, trigger guard, hammer, cylinder door, ejector tube, and ejector rod. This left him with very little of the steel ingot for the remaining metal parts he needed, such as the springs. Fortunately, they were pretty small and thin so they wouldn't require much material.
With the various small pieces designed he began to clean up their edges and get them more into line with his blueprint. He was starting to think that it would take another day for him to finish the revolver. Compared to the weeks or months it would have taken without his 'Transmutation', he found that to be perfectly acceptable. Once he had all of the parts cleaned up, he continued to work. There were still a few hours left before night.
Thomas collected all of the small pieces that he carved off and put them all in a pile. Once collected he used his 'Transmutation' to fuse them all together into a small solid piece of steel. He grinned broadly at the sight, now there would be zero waste. Using his 'Transmutation', he started to reshape sections of the small piece of iron into screws without threads.
With everything he'd done he now had all of the pieces necessary to assemble the majority of the weapon. The only thing he wasn't making out of the steel would be the covering for the handle of the revolver. It was originally made of wood but he was hoping Hekrin might have something more interesting to make it out of.
He pulled all the parts out of his inventory and started laying them out on the bench, testing their fit with each other. As he placed more and more parts together to test their fit the revolver began to take on a familiar look and shape. It wasn't anywhere near complete but it was coming much closer. He couldn't finish it now, but tomorrow he would have it completed.
He collected all of his finished pieces, left the U.L.T.R.A., and made his way back to The Swans Nest for the night.
The following morning he returned to the U.L.T.R.A. to finish his work. He pulled out all of his pieces and set them together. After they were arranged he went over to the forge and used a bit of fire magic to reignite the coal within it. Since he hadn't used the forge the previous day the coals had gone completely cold. Once they were ignited he went ahead and started to pump the bellows. He really wanted to make an automated blower for it but for now, his desire to finish the gun made him continue to put it off.
Once the coals were hot enough he picked up a pair of tongs and gripped the piece of steel that would make up the spring for the hammer. Before his research, he hadn't realized that this spring was actually concealed in the handle of the revolver. Before heating the steel he looked into the inventory of his storage bracelet and retrieved the 75-liter cask of quenching oil. The best part of his inventory or the storage items was that he could grab something out of the middle of it without having to move other items out of the way first.
After he opened the cask, he began to heat up the larger of the two springs that would be in the gun. Once it was glowing orange he dunked it into the oil. Once he had it cooled down he pulled the bent piece of metal out and looked it over. He'd not heard any sounds indicating that the spring had fractured and it looked good still. However, if he was to use it as a spring right now, the steel would likely fracture under the pressure since it was too hard and brittle. To fix that, he stuck it over the coals and slowly began to reheat it. The trick was to look for when the metal took on a blue tint. Once it did it would have been tempered enough to act as a spring.
With it tempered he stored it in his inventory and pulled out the second spring. This one was split down the center to act as two springs. One section was nestled near the hammer while the other worked for the cylinder locking bolt. The bolt would nestle into the small divets cut into the cylinder and lock it into place until he cocked the hammer and turned the cylinder. Once the second spring was glowing orange he quenched and then tempered it as well.
He started taking out other pieces of the gun and began to harden them all. Each piece was heated until it glowed orange and then quenched in oil. It took some time but when it was done all of the pieces had been hardened and ready, they just needed a little cleaning to get all the oil off. Not that having a well-oiled gun was a bad thing. He used a random piece of cloth from his inventory to clean the excess oil off and polish the parts. After he did so he double checked to make sure none of them had warped.
When he was certain that everything looked good he carried all the pieces over to his work table and began to assemble the gun. He took his time as he assembled it. He still needed something to cover the handle but that wouldn't prevent the weapon from functioning. Carefully, he assembled the trigger and hammer, using his transmutation to fuse the sear and bolt spring in place. Once he had he had that done he assembled the trigger, cylinder locking bolt, and hammer in place.
With them all installed and their pins fused to the frame he lifted up the stub of a gun and looked it over. Right now it just looked like a hollow square with a trigger and hammer sticking out of it. He assembled the trigger guard, as that was where the hammer spring was located. He slid it into place and used three of the blank screws to fuse it there. He then pulled the hammer back and heard a satisfying click as it locked in place. He awkwardly pulled the trigger and with a loud clang of metal on metal the hammer slammed into the frame. He peered in the frame and was satisfied when he saw the firing pin sticking through the frame.
He picked up the cylinder and aligned it with the hole for the pin that would keep it in place while it spun. He also aligned one of the flutes on the back of the cylinder with the hammer so that when the hammer was cocked it would rotate the cylinder. After slipping the pin in he locked it into place by fusing it to the frame of the gun. Fusing all these parts together would make it a lot harder to replace anything if it broke. That wasn't a big concern though. If anything broke he could just fuse it back together with his 'Transmutation'.
With the cylinder in place, he cocked the hammer once more and felt excited when the cylinder rotated. He checked and was thrilled to find the cylinder hole lined up with the barrel hole. He pulled the trigger to drop the hammer then cocked it again. He did this over and over to check the alignment of the cylinder with the barrel. Dry firing it like this probably wasn't a good idea but he needed to do it to check the alignment of the barrel and the cylinder. Though the entrance to the barrel had a slight angle to it to help guide the bullet, that didn't guarantee nothing would happen but it did reduce the odds greatly.
He picked up the backstrap, the back half of the handle, and fused it in place. Now the handle was taking proper shape, though it was just a frame and still needed something on the sides to cover it up and give him a better grip. Right now the revolver looked like an extremely snub-nosed pistol. The last part he installed was the barrel. He carefully slid it into place and adjusted its distance from the cylinder so that there was just a tiny gap between them. Once it was in place he fused the barrel to the frame.
With that last step, the revolver was over ninety percent completed. Thomas grinned ear to ear as he looked over it carefully. He cocked the hammer and fired it several times, double and triple checking the alignment between the cylinder and the barrel. When he was satisfied he took a deep breath and slowly let it out. He stored the nearly finished revolver and looked into the inventory of his bracelet. Next, he would need to make ammo to test fire the weapon. He pulled out the copper, lead, and iron he'd purchased back in Reykhoten. He looked around and started to plan how to construct his bullets. This was going to be a lot of fun!
Comments
Cody S.
Maths fail.
CptJimmy
so... what happened to 33? I think it got skipped for us lower tiered readers
Sam4005
will he enchant the revolver? thanks for chapy
