Midwinter calling, day 43

Nailing it.

It's early and the sun hasn't risen, but it's time to test the eccentric press and officially inaugurate it. Everyone is curious about the big machine made with so much expensive metal, so I have plenty of company and witnesses. The simple cutting tool is checked and the surfaces are sharp and hopefully properly hardened. This is the first real demonstration and lesson in using and setting up an eccentric press, so I am making sure to be methodical as I demonstrate and explain. Especially for the two men who will use the machine.

The stroke length is already set, but I show how to do it anyway, and why it's important to mark down each future tools setting on a plate. Then I loosen the height adjustment and screw it up. The upper and lower tool are aligned and the lower loosely adjusted in place with blocks on stepped wedge mounts and locked in place with big T bolts in the inverted T grooves. The eccentric press is cranked down to its bottom position and the slide is screwed down until it reaches the upper tool. The bolts holding the upper tool is clamped. I make sure there is a small gap between the upper and lower tool, which is important to avoid bottoming out and forcing the tools together as that might damage the tool or machine. Hardened tool steel might shatter and explode if enough force is applied. This particular tool is not critical to even a millimeter in height, but future tools might have to be set for 0.1mm or less. I crank the eccentric press back and forth across the bottom position to verify everything looks good and the tools are properly lined up, before clamping the bottom tool. This will be so much better and easier when I can get standardized good screws, bolts and tools for that. I take one of the prepared flat iron bars and insert into the guide and push against the adjustable stop while explaining that a wider bar makes a longer nail, but that the stop has to be screwed in or out so the angle is correct. Likewise, the front and rear stop pins must be moved as the iron bar alternately slides against the front and rear stop pins during use to get cut down correctly. The cut off chute is set in place and a collection box positioned underneath.

I take out the iron bar and check that all screws and settings are tight and right before moving the protective net shield into place in front of the tool. This is not only to keep hands out of the tools, but also because of the issue with hardened tools if they shatter. The iron net shield is hardly optimal, but better than nothing. The hydropower is started, and we engage the belt drive. The flywheel of the eccentric press starts to rotate and when it reaches full speed, I push in the safety grip and stand on the foot pedal. The eccentric press makes a cycle. I do a few more cycles, and have both workers try it several times, and as expected, Iselin wants to try as well and I let her and the other try. Unfortunately, I've been honest with my sambos and guards about potential dangers, so they don't like me doing the actual work for many reasons but know I have to show how it is suppose to work and be handled. I instruct the workers and show them how to insert the iron bar through the hole in the side of the net shield, pull it towards the front stop and I hold the safety grip and step on the pedal. The eccentric press cycles with a 'chunk' and the metallic sound of metal being forcibly cut, followed by and a piece of metal sliding down the chute and landing in the collection box. The first piece is of course wrong because the end was flat, but the cut looks good. The iron bar is pushed in and against the rear stop. Chunk. A significantly more square cut nail looking piece slides out. Still not right, so I show how to open the protective net shield and adjust the stops a little. This is actually a pretty good demonstration that it is possible to cut a wider iron bar into a shorter nail. Then we close the net shields and try to cut two more nails. Better and usable.

Nail after nail is made, and as the end of the iron bar approaches, the operator must use the tool to push in and realign the end. I point out that there will be a waste piece at the end, which just like the first waste piece will be reused and put in the scrap iron wooden box. We run another iron bar. There are some incorrectly cut pieces when in their eagerness they forget to press the bar in or alternately press it against the front and rear stops. But that just means a little more scrap iron in the wooden box. The builder blacksmith takes a fistful of square cut nails and head into the forge to prepare for the next step.

The power hammer with its nail tool have already been tested so when the iron bars have been cut up, we turn off the eccentric press, and take the whole box of nails with us. The first nails are already heated and red, so the blacksmith demonstrates how he, with pliers, inserts a heated nail into the special clamp, gives it a blow on the side with a hammer to close the clamp around the nail, places it in the tool in the power hammer, and pressing the foot pedal. Bang! He takes out the clamp and strikes the shaft against a wedge that splits the clamp apart, and the slightly red-glowing nail with its shaped head falls out into an earthenware vessel. The blacksmith continues to shape nail head after nail head. The blacksmith has done this many times already as he tried to shape some square cut nails by hand. Hardly the first nail he made in his lifetime, and it may not be a huge difference in time compared to making a nail head by hand, but should he make 200 nails? Then it saves time and hammer blows against an anvil. Sure, it's work to make the flat iron bar, but even that is helped by the automatic and the power hammer, so it's not just total time per nail saved, but maybe 30 to 50 hammer blows for the blacksmith's arm. Per nail. How many tens of thousands of hammer blows does that save in a day? In a week? In a lifetime? So it's not strange that the blacksmith is smiling widely over how quickly and with so few hammer blows he just made 20 nails that we pass around and inspect.

This job is also simple enough in skill and muscle that anyone can learn it in half an hour, so the blacksmith can spend his time on things that require his skill. With replaceable tools, the big heavy and expensive machine will be able to do so many different jobs so much more efficiently. I absolutely have plans for a strong heavy rolling mill that can take heated iron and shape it into thick plate of even thickness, and then the hot soft thick plate can be run through a slitting mill that cuts the plate into wide bars, so even that work doesn't have to be done by hand. It will also be much cheaper if I actually build a smelter and buy pig iron or tack iron.

It's still annoying that I misunderstood something like the price of iron, simply because I don't think about it the same way as people and craftsmen here. Pig iron, tack iron or iron ore is actually not that expensive, but making something useful out of it is a lot of work, and buying forged iron bars or wrought iron is 'expensive'. If I build a smelter and cast my own iron and use machines, it will be much cheaper, like 10-20 times cheaper. My merchant house in Borgarsandr usually have a couple of tons of wrought iron for sale, but I haven't thought about the difference in price compared to lumps of raw iron that is also there, as there isn't any large price tags on the goods. I've basically thought of iron as well, iron, because that is how I buy it. So this spring I will probably make a smaller blast furnace that uses water power to blast in air and make pig iron, which I can then forge into bar iron with water driven hammers etc. Argh, it's going to be a lot of work to get something good, and I'm not particularly keen on having a blast furnace here on the island. It will be a continuous run for week, using a lot of fuel and needing plenty of water to the wheels.

Since nails are so useful and so many nails will eventually need to be manufactured, I really want a special machine just for that, and with the right design, the flat bar can be advanced and turned 180 degrees automatically, between each cutting blade cycle. It will be a fairly complex machine, but better than the eccentric press and a worker spend most of the time on nail production. But the parts for that nail machine must be manufactured, so do more tools for the eccentric press. I really need plenty of bolts, nuts and washers.

Before we leave to inaugurate the ferry, the craftsmen remember that my hand-cranked machine has been completed. It is a hand-cranked mangle for the mansions laundry room to wring out water, and hardly the most advanced machine as it is two large wooden rollers connected by two gears, which are driven by a crank. But it can make a big difference in drying time by wringing out water, and also flattening certain laundry such as sheets, tablecloth and towels. They just have to be careful with buttons when they are mangling, but the top roller is spring loaded with adjustable pressure via a large screw on either side that pushes the roller down.

They have also finished another small project, which was hardly much work as most of the parts came back from Digraldi last time we were in Borgarsandr, and the rest they have done here. It's two different variants of very simple clothes irons; one with the heating via replaceable blocks where one block lies on a holder in the fire and is heated while the other block is used; the second is a charcoal iron that use hot coals in an compartment to keep it hot. Jane is not impressed by either of them.

"Non electric heating with lumps of brass or coal? There isn't even a steamer function. I expected more from you. These look shoddy and something you been tricked into buying sight unseen in a box, probably with big stickers saying 'wireless' and 'no plastic' or something."

"Oh, shut up. These might be the first clothes irons in the world, and they can use a bottle with holes in the top to wet the cloth. It is your fault for telling and planting the terrible idea of ironing in their heads, and I still think it is basically evil to introduce ironing."

"Oi! I come up with excellent ideas, and it's your job to make that vision happen!"

"Excellent ideas. Right. Sure, ironing might help against lice, but it's mostly extra unnecessary work."

"Why do you care? It's not us that will do the ironing."

"But someone have to. Like I said; evil."

"So it will create future jobs too!"

"Jane, please take all the credit. I want to have it on record, that just like high heels, this is another bad idea that I did not introduce. Future women will blame you."