Tyranomaster
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[Vol.4] Ch.22 Wire
🕑 Added 2023-12-25 17:55:01 +0000 UTCThe first part of making wire should have been relatively simple. We just need a steel box with one end completely open, and the other end with an inch wide hole or so. Then, I'll need a mechanical press on the large opening that can be cranked with enough force to force a glowing hot ingot to deform through the inch hole. In practice, Karsh and I keep running into issues, and its been twenty-five days. The first attempt we didn't have nearly enough force to deform the ingot through the hole, the second attempt one of the gears gave way that we were using to give us extra leverage for forcing the ingot through. The third time we got about half the ingot through the hole, and the other half deformed around the plate and jammed the whole machine as it cooled.
The third attempt at least produced some result, so we're confident that we can make it work, it's just a matter of how many more modifications will be necessary. I'm hoping it'll only be a matter of shaping the plate more precisely and operating the crank faster to actually drive the ingot through. If we can get this working, we'll still need to move on to the next step of drawing the wire out to make it smaller.
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After two more attempts over six days, we got the machine to work repeatably. After we made the plate oversized and then manually filed it down until it was an extremely close fit, we broke another gear due to the increased friction in the machine. After making the gears even thicker to compensate, we finally achieved making a wire extruder. Although the wire is incredibly thick still. The next plan is to make a series of funnel shaped steel apparatuses that you literally pull the wire through to make it smaller. Karsh had actually done this before he moved here, so I was free for a little while while he worked.
In the mean time, the snow has started to melt, and although it isn't technically my job I do want to take a few days here to go check the rock dams as the water flow starts to increase. So far, it does seem like the water in the stream is a bit clearer than normal, so I'm interested in seeing how other parts of the stream look and if any of the existing rock dams need more work.
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I took five days examining the over three-hundred rock dams that the goblins have built over the past year. About a third needed some kind of minor updating, and about thirty needed major work done. Considering everything though, they're doing a really good job of levelling out the flow rate and keeping the water clean. There are still plenty more that can be built, especially since I told the goblins to hold off on building in the main stream until we saw how things went with the tributaries. I'll give the goblins insight into why the dams that need repaired need it, and what they can do to make them last longer. Other than that though, they should be good to start building them across the main stream as well. If they keep up their current pace, in a little more than a year they should have all these waterways modified.
This is all in addition to the amount of rock that has been removed from the reservoir, expanding the capacity of the dam even further. It's easily triple the capacity of when I built it due to the amount of stone we've removed over time. I probably won't start filling the dam this year, but if we get a mine going this year so we have a new source of construction stone, then we could start using the dam as more than just a flow equalizer.
While I was doing all these examinations, Karsh was making the various wire drawing cones I'd asked for. He should be done by now, so hopefully we'll get to attempt to draw wire.
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We ended up needing to build a few simple machines to give us enough leverage to actually pull the wire through the draw plate over the course of eight days. A one inch thick wire is just too strong to shrink by 10% manually with pulling. Thankfully, with those machines, we were able to pull the wire through a handful of successively smaller draw plates until we had the wire down to about a quarter of it's diameter before it snapped.
I was disappointed, but Karsh said it wasn't an issue. He said that the reason it snapped is that we'd worked it too many times without reheating the metal, and that if we just heat the metal until it was glowing, then tried it again, it should work. So we did, and sure enough, we were able to get it down to about a third of that diameter, or a twelfth of the original size, before it snapped again. I was actually quite impressed by how effective this ended up being.
After we reduced it twice again, it snapped, and even after heating it, it snapped. Karsh said not to worry, he had a few ideas, and that he'd be busy for a few weeks working on them. We're already approaching the size that I'd like the wire to be, so we're already at a pretty good point. Honestly, I thought I'd be working on this for much longer. At this rate, I probably won't need a mill to handle this unless I wanted to replace the ropes on the mountain winches with cable. That said, it shouldn't be hard to adapt the process to a more automated one if we end up needing it in the future.
If I'm going to be free for a few more weeks, then I'll have to find something to occupy my time.
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I spent the first three days of the next nineteen just thinking about what I'd like to do next. It's kind of interesting. I spent so long taking on one project after the other, but with so many projects going on around me, but none needing my help, I was at a loss as to what to do. So I made my way up the mountain to my old home and resumed excavating the stairway that is supposed to descend out of the mountain from the inside.
Sure, I could go dig a fresh mine part of the way up the mountain, assist on some other project, or even just sit an relax, but I felt like getting back to my roots. Pretty soon the goblin village will start whirring along on it's own for some time, and when that time comes, I think I'd like to spent more of my own time up in my mountain home, away from the constant hustle and bustle of the village. If that time arrives, having a way to and from my home in winter would be ideal, so I figured I should get to work while I can.
After sixteen days of working on the stairs however, I recalled why I had disdain for them. The biggest part of the work is actually hauling stone, not cutting it, and for that, I'm only adding at most five new stairs a day. Which means I added about forty feet to the depth of the stairwell. A decent chunk, but honestly, if I got three goblins to help me I'd go three times as fast, so I might end up doing something like that. It was nice to at least experience returning to my roots and working alone for a few weeks again.
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Once I returned to the village, Karsh had finished what he was working on, and showed it to me. He experimented with the sizes of the wire drawing cones, and managed to not only save a few steps that we'd had before, but get the wire down to the size I wanted. During the early steps, we were actually not aggressive enough with how much smaller we wanted the wire to become, and in the later stages we were too aggressive.
By making those adjustments, and experimenting with how often heat needed to be applied, he'd made the final product. These wires are quite thin, so they're somewhat weak on their own, but they aren't brittle. One ingot ends up making hundreds if not thousands of feet of wire, but ends up taking most of a day to do, although again, most of the work a goblin could do without any skill, so it wouldn't eat all of Karsh's time to make wire if I needed it.
That one ingot also should be enough wire to make multiple fine meshes the size of the paper I want. I could make it myself, but I think I'd rather pay the weaver to make them after I work with Karsh to get a template board made for them. After that, I can test if I can even make paper from wood here, which was the whole reason I started this long endeavor.
