Tosra & The Auction, day 28

Cool ideas

I should have considered the problem of releasing the paper globe half from the wooden template. Yes, it can be split, but it sticks together. So I improvised a small special tool of a thin curved piece of knife edged brass that I could scrape all the way around the edge, and the top 20cm came loose and then I could separate them. The surface was quite okay, so we start on the next and will gradually make two more halves, but it will probably take a couple of days. Slow drying glue. I will try to trim and fit the halves together, and the newer ones has an ledge to glue against. The plan was to make a globe at the time, but the halfs doesn't fit perfectly together, so we will have to try and use the same mold for both the northern and souther hemisphere. Hardly perfect but it will work as long as I glue it together, and then glue a wide last strip of paper outside as reinforcement and a wide equator. In the future I will make better molds.

I create a curved template to be able to draw arcing lines all the way to the equator and mark longitudes, followed by latitude lines. I make solid lines for every tenth degree but make marks and crosses for every fifth, just like with longitude lines. All coordinate lines are in red ink. I've learned that I can not work too fast with the ink here, it also has to dry, so the work will be made in stages now and then, and I am forced to skip areas to avoid leaning my hands or template on something that isn't dry. But the important thing is that it will be good, instead of done quickly. I don't exactly have any time pressure for this. I use far more time to create a long list of coordinates to be able to mark outline points on coasts and islands, and then merge them. A very long list. All contours will be in black ink so it is clearly visible and I can draw over red longitude and latitude lines.

I really hope that the world looks the same as Midgård so not only the small part here in the north where I've been is the same. It would be a bit embarrassing, but I guess I will be dead for at least a hundred years before most is checked. If most are correct, it will lead to much more efficient exploration, partly because it is affirmative more than wildly flailing about, and my instruments like the sextant will be able to help make it easier, more accurate and safer. Thought I will write in small text that this is Midgård and my travels so far make me think that Alfheimr looks the same.

I have Iselin enthusiastic help with this project, and it's fun to build something with her. She definitely doesn't want to be a lady who sits and embroiders while longing for her husband or who manages a farm. Kari also thinks it is interesting, but she doesn't know what Iselin knows, and don't seem to want to know. I have asked Kari if she wants to know and asked her to talk to Iselin about what she has learned, but Kari havn't made that decision yet. Ciara havn't really cared, but when Kari decide, she will then ask Kari if she think she did the right choice. It's probably a while before I tell Alith or Caecilia.

As we've done what we can on the globes, we finish the metal bending machine and bench mounted sheet metal shear by heating and tempering the working steel edges. Its a completely different mindset compared to what most blacksmith have. They heat and hit stuff with hammers, and shape against an anvil, a thick log or templates. They cut a shape and make holes with metal chisels. They don't cut larger metal plates by using blades and a lever. Sure this only works on thin metal, and preferably with copper or brass, but it works. I really want better metal shears with a compound lever, but I havn't bothered making some. Tricky. There are so many metal working tools I would like to have. Like a shop press.

Actually, I want a digital press brake, a milling machine, a band saw, an angle grinder, belt sander and a MIG or TIG welder, but that's not going to happen. Well. In the future, some of it might. It's nice to dream and have goals.

Then we balance and assemble the balancing machine. I need to finish the balancing machine before I can balance parts for more complex rotating machines. The carpenter has already delivered its wooden frame, and the parts Digraldi made are the very thin overlapping disc wheels on each side, and it is quite easy to check so they rotate easily and are completely round, and spin them like a spinning top to carefully balance them one by one, until they all work well. Quite a lot of work, but its not that hard and it is not a big problem. I can now balance a wheel or cog with a shaft by placing it directly on the discs, and for wheels or cogs without a shaft, there will be two cones that clamp together and center the wheel, where the shaft of the cones rest on the thin disc wheels so everything rotates. If I then see that the same part rotate down to the bottom all the time, I know that it is heavier there and can take away some material, or add on the opposite side, and then put a spin on it. It should stop in different places and not shake or be wobbly or crooked.

I'm not so worried about the wheels of a wagon or something that rotates slowly, but the faster something rotates, the bigger any imbalance issue becomes. Large diameter, heavy or fast rotating stuff needs to be balanced. So I'm worried about a steam engine, the wheels of the line shaft, belt wheels and cogs etc. In the future when I make a lathe I will build a finer balancing machine and improved the existing balancing machines as well.

I'm showing Iselin and Ciara how the balancing machine works men carpenter Engdrid deliver the cabinets I ordered for the manometer, the mains panel and the three junction boxes. I give Engdrid a new order for wooden boxes with lids for the battery cells. I have planned to pad the cells with a small layer of sawdust and wood shavings as shock absorption and should help absorb any accidental acid spills. It might start to burn, but that is another issue. Hardly optimal but I don't have much alternative here, and I do not like that the ceramic vessels are unprotected and stand on the hard stone floor. I want some protection against them being bumped and tipping over, damaged or something falling on them. As our power need increase, so will the amount of battery cells. We don't have much need for power now, but I expect that to increase when electric motors becomes a thing.

So while Ciara start to spin wheels and methodically tries to balance parts I mark the mains panel. Bodil have volunteered to carve the symbols I've sketched for Off, Battery, Current, Wind power and Generator, and make holes for the moving coil instrument.

Its nice to see the workers use a mix of handbarrows, hand barrows with lifting rod on the shoulders and wheelbarrows being used. When they eventually got used to the carrying technique, it has become more common with a padded lifting rod resting on the shoulders on the steeper and rougher stretches where there is no even ground, but they load more in each barrow. They were quick to realise the benefits of the improved wheelbarrows, because even though they needed to learn to handle them, it hardly takes a genius and they quickly learned which was the nicest to use for a certain load.

The Chinese wheelbarrows - which they just call 'big wheels' - have started to be used more and more, and after the first problematic adaptation and loading lessons, they are appreciated by the workers, especially those who transport stone over longer distances. Still two men to handle each big wheel due to uneven and sometimes steep terrain, but the 'big wheels' can carry so much more especially in weight and the big wheel are easy to move and maneuver unlike a wide two wheeled hand-drawn cart, and they can move them on flat logs or a narrow stone laid path. They can make many more round trips and still transport more each time than a handbarrow or old simple wheelbarrow. It saves enough labour that many who previously only moved stone, earth or logs instead help with other work.

On my recommendation, one of the big wheels has been modified so they hang several handbarrows on each side, and the handbarrows works as load carriers. Someone can fill handbarrows where they work and have a pile of handbarrows being loaded, and the big wheel just load up and move 6-8 hand barrows each time to where workers unload, and there is a pile of empties. The big wheel load up with empties and return. Much higher efficiency than loading a handbarrow, which then needs to be moved and emptied. Two men move what 12-16 men used to do, so even if there is 2-4 working with just filling and emptying, they still have workers left over. Pedr likes that a lot, and so do the slaves. Carrying a handbarrow was the lowest status work, but being part of a team using that system have improved morale, and they switch places so everyone load, unload and move. The slaves now doing more craftsmans work have risen even more in status. I don't like there being slaves working here, but they're treated pretty much just as the lower craftsmen, and far better than a lot of slaves in history. It also motivates me to improve their work conditions and life.

Pedr and the workers liked the wheelbarrows enough that he's ordered the several more. Six improved wheelbarrows and four big wheels, and some have been completed. The farms will also be given one each to try and see if they're useful.

The fact that taking stone from beneath the cliffs leaves pits, gives me an idea for one of those pits.

During the evening meal, food and storage discussions include my plans for icehouses, and an icebox to have inside. Jane didn't know that 'in the past' icehouses were used to store ice blocks from lakes and streams, and if it is large enough and well insulated, the ice can last over the summer until next winter. Households then had insulated iceboxes, and ice traders delivered ice blocks that kept the food cold. It was the predecessor to the refrigerator, and have been used since before Roman times, but not in all places. The principle has even been used in deserts to use the night cold from a clear starry sky to create ice, but they were bottle shaped and in thick clay. The ice trade was huge in the later part of 1800s, and they shipped ice from USA and Norway all the way to India and Australia. It took months, and I've always wondered why they didn't have a more local trade. Australia is quite close to Antarctica.

The first refrigerator systems were large, and used to make ice blocks, that were then delivered. Making ice ment you didn't have to store as much, and didn't have to pay people to harvest it and transport it. And it might be a mild winter or you lived in a climate that didn't see ice at all. People were used to the icebox system, and didn't have electric power even when the technology for a home refrigerator became available and good enough. And refrigerators could break. So I understand that it was just easier and way cheaper to keep buying iceblocks.

My company knows about storing food in large pots in the ground to keep it cool, but even walk in earth cellars only hold the temperature at +10C to +12C, and they don't understand the difference keeping something at just above freezing will be. Its largely due to the food the culture here have and store. Every house we've built have a small cold storage under the floor, and we have big cool basement vaults, but there is a big difference, and its very practical to have the icebox easily available. Next year there will be several large earth cellars made, basically one for each farm and household in the village.

Icehouse and iceboxes are definitely worth introducing for next summer, so I've already asked Pedr to build a comparatively small but well-insulated icehouse in the shade on the north side of the mountain west of the mansion, where the road already passes and there is a hole in a suitable location. They just need build two and a half walls and a roof, and they can re-use earth etc from the road work to lay against the outside as extra insulation. It might be overkill, but there will be a separate and well insulated wooden building inside the stone building. I should probably build another icehouse in the same size and shade, but free standing and away from the ground, just to see the difference and which is better. But that is for the future. There is a limited amount of work that can be completed before winter.

We can't expect that there will be thicker ice on the lakes around here, but it will be the closest and best place for an icehouse to reach from both lakes, and from both the mansion and the Academy. There should be cold nights to freeze ice in buckets, but that is hardly usable for the volume I need. But I now have merchant ships. The ship with the northern route doesn't sail in the middle of winter, but I can pay them to make a trip to get ice from a suitable lake in Norway, and moving ice from the port to the icehouse should be quite easy since its by the road. The ice will have to be loaded on a wagon and transported, so it doesn't matter much if its 200 meter or a 1000 meter.

I need to have tools made for sawing and handling ice. Standardizing the block size will be a very good idea. 4 x 3 x 2 dm will be about 22 kg blocks, and should be good for a cooler. I can always stack two on top of each other. But I can use double the size in harvesting and storing.