Apinsig
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Chapter 212 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2023-05-02 18:31:56 +0000 UTCTo finish this smithy and water wheel combination build I still needed to do quite a lot of work. While the main building was done giving me almost 30 square meters of free floor space with a high ceiling and walls made out of stone, I still haven’t started on the water wheel and its supporting structures. Beyond that, I will need to build a water delivery system, and everything needed for the blower.
To start off simply I decided to start on the blower. I will only have a maximum of three days to finish everything so I didn’t have too much time to think about this. One side of the smithy’s wall that faces the river was open. It was just a small corner but there was enough room to build out the blower design I had in mind.
I brought over all the wood necessary and started to cut it out and sand it smooth. While I used high-quality wood, I will also need to make the housing accessible so I can change the blades inside as they will not last forever.
When I was finished with the blades and the housing foundation it kind of looked like a computer fan the size of a tractor wheel. It was laid on the side and the blades were designed so they would pull air from the outside and push it into the smithy through a smaller hole giving me enough air pressure to make smelting metals possible. The outside air intake was made of a metal grill so nothing can get hurt by the spinning blades. After that, I finished building out the housing and connecting the drive shaft.
The drive shaft that will make it spin came out inside the smithy. Spinning the blades manually for a little while I was glad it worked. Next came assembling the gearbox. It was going to have three speeds so I could vary the air pressure.
The design was going to be a simple one that will use different sizes of gears. The drive shaft that's connected to the fan will have three different-sized gears so will the drive shaft connected to the power shaft. Between those gears will be another gear that I will be able to move up and down to adjust the speed or stop the movement entirely.
All the metal pieces were either made by me or by one of my apprentices. With everything made, it was a simple process to finish assembling everything and after mounting it to the wall it was time for the next step.
Currently, there was no point in continuing to build the power system as I didn’t know exactly where the power shaft would be located as that would be connected directly to the water wheel. That meant it was time to start working on the water wheel.
The water wheel needs to accomplish two things it needed to rotate, and it needed to deliver water to the top without spilling too much. The problem was that I needed the water to be quite high, so the water wheel needed to be two stories tall.
Making the wheel was a lot of work as I needed to add a lot of supportive structure to keep the wheel structurally sound. Making the wheel took almost the entire day and a bit of the night. Now while the wheel was done moving it was another thing entirely. For now, I just let my apprentice keep sanding it while I started to work on its supportive structure.
The closest supportive structure to the wheel were the huge logs that I drove deep into the river at specific angles so they would support each other and give a solid base for the water wheel. I needed to use a lot of steel connections as making joints was a bit too troublesome for this build.
The water wheel was only about 1 and a half meters away from the shore and only about 1/5 off the wheel would be underwater. On the shore, I started to build the stone structure for added support and to help hold up the counterweight to the water wheel.
The counterweight was a huge, rounded rock that looked like a milling stone. It weighed a bit more than the water wheel. If I had to guess, I would say both of them weighed two tons. To support that weight was a wooden shaft. I found a very specific tree that was skinny but incredibly strong and close to first-rank strength. After testing the shaft placement and finding that everything was aligned, I made a hole into the smithy wall the shaft will have to go through and started to build the temporary hoist that we need to lift everything up.
It was time for the assembly. The river was making constant noise while the sun was burning our skin. It was a good combination for hard work. I was currently preparing the pulley system with a rope that I borrowed from the village that will easily be able to support the kind of weight that we were working with today. Around me were my apprentices who were ready to help and who knew what they needed to do.
After double-checking everything it was time to start. The first thing I did was lift up the counterweight so the hole where the shaft would go through would be accessible. Then my apprentice picked up the shaft and pushed it through the centre of the counterweight until they reached the blue mark made on the shaft meaning that they made it to the correct placement. Next, they added stoppers to the shaft so the counterweight wouldn’t be able to move up and down the shaft.
While they were doing that, I was attaching the rope to the shaft in the correct position so we could lift it up while everything stayed balanced. I then went and lifted the water wheel. Four of my apprentices were on either side and helped hold it in place so it wouldn't start to roll. Before I started to pull on the pulley system and lift the shaft the rest of my apprentices grabbed a hold of the shaft near the water wheel to act as a counterbalance to the counterweight.
Like that, the shaft slowly started to lift as I quickly pulled the rope. Inch by inch it lifted and soon seven people were tangling on one end of the shaft to keep everything in balance. When I reached the correct height, everyone started to work on pushing and guiding the shaft through the water wheel. This took longer than expected as the water wheel was a bit out of position but in the end, we were able to get it through to the correct position and then secure it so it wouldn't be able to fall off.
Next, I lifted the entire assembly a bit more and my apprentice then started to rotate everything. Lowering the entire contraption into its housing was going to be a difficult job as we needed to do it precisely but fast. If we did it slowly the flowing water will start to rotate the water wheel which will quickly snap the rope that we use to hold everything up not to mention the possibility of the river just dragging everything away. I waited until my apprentices moved everything into the correct position then yelled, “Clear,” and quickly lowered it down.
When everyone heard my yell, they took a step back or put their hands behind their backs so none of their limbs would be crushed by the lowering. Everything almost went wrong when the water wheel started to be dragged by the river but the housing nearest to the water was just barely able to catch the shaft and while the entire structure groaned it fell correctly into the housing. “Quickly applied the brakes,” I instructed.
The two apprentices were ready near the braking system and quickly applied it to the shaft so the water wheel wouldn't be able to turn. We all waited while the structure groaned but it seemed to be holding. After a few moments of everyone holding their breath, we all yelled out in triumph.
I finished making the shaft holdings by connecting the upper pieces of steel so even when the water would be rising it wouldn’t be able to lift the water wheel out of its intended location. To the steel housing that held the shaft in place, we also had quite a lot of lubricant, that way the shaft would be spinning easier and there would be less wear.
After that, we did a test of the water wheel spinning and it worked beautifully. It was quite satisfying to watch it rotate. Currently, the water wheel was bringing up the water but depositing it back into the river as we still hadn’t built the system to catch the water.
While everyone else started to celebrate I had some choices to make as my architecture and engineering skills tiered up giving me new ability choices. Finally, they levelled up after so long.
For the basic architecture tier up the choice was easy. There was a sight ability named construction sight. This was offered to me before, but I skipped it that time. This time I was not going to skip so I was one sight ability richer.
For the engineering skill, the choice was more difficult. The two that deserved consideration were design mindscape and material composition. The mindscape ability sounded interesting and should let me work in my mind to test out if my crafting ideas will work. The material composition was incredibly useful to find out what you are working with.
My choice would have been material composition but my ability material modification already gave me that capability and more, so design mindscape was the choice I made.
