Chương 204: 201. A Cleaner Replacement

"I couldn't have done it without your designs," Darora replied with a shrug, "but I'll take your praise." He grinned before adding, "I have worked hard for this, after all." Hudan glared at the young carpenter, but Kivamus just snorted at that reply and raised a hand to prevent the guard captain from scolding Darora for his cheeky response.

Just a month ago the carpenter was someone who was scared for his life after continuously living between the bandits for so long, and yet he was confident enough in his skills by now to easily make such a joke to him. That just went to show that he had settled well into his new life in the village. Everyone kept watching the water falling down with a splash over the hill sides for a while, before the two labourers who had been tasked with climbing on the cleats called upon the other labourers.

"Switch with us, someone!" One of them shouted.

"We want to see the flowing water too!" Tesyb immediately left with another two workers to replace them, while discussing a new work schedule for them from tomorrow, since there was barely an hour left before it would get dark, so there was no point in making them work for too long today. Darora followed them as well for some reason. Hudan looked at him.

"I still had my doubts earlier if such a clunky contraption was going to be anything more than decoration, but it really does work, milord." He shook his head with a smile.

"By now I really should learn not to question your extraordinary ideas." Kivamus laughed at that.

"It's nothing special. Everyone has worked hard for this, so it's one more victory for the whole of Tiranat." He gazed towards the entrance of the mineshaft for a moment.

"Well, we should think of returning soon, I don't want to make the same mistake as the last time when we left too late." Hudan nodded and jogged inside to call up everyone. Soon he saw Darora walking towards him with all his tools already back in his satchel. The carpenter began, "I'd gone back inside to make an estimate of how much water the wheel is transferring into the trough. I think it will take around a day and a half for all the water inside this shaft to be emptied.

There will still be some small potholes and craters inside which will have some water remaining, but it will barely take an hour for workers to remove them with a few buckets."

"That timeline matches with what I had estimated, more or less," Kivamus remarked.

"That means you will have enough time from tomorrow to start working on the second crossbow once again. Although I think you should visit this shaft the day after tomorrow in the afternoon to guide the workers about how to disassemble the whole water wheel system without damaging it."

"Of course," Darora nodded.

"I was already thinking of the same. I'd hate to see all my hard work go to waste just because a worker didn't know how to do it. I think it will take a few hours to disassemble it, and another few hours to move it to the next mineshaft which needs to be cleared of water. The labourers have already seen it get assembled once, so it will only take them a couple of hours to assemble it the next time, but I'll still go with them for the first shifting of the waterwheel.

I'm sure they can do it without supervision after that."

"Good, good." Kivamus grinned.

"That means in 15 to 20 days all the mineshafts should be free of any standing water." Thinking about something else, he began, "While we can start sending a few dozen workers to this particular mineshaft after a few days, we really need everyone to keep working in the South to clear more land for farming. So I was thinking of getting you to build a simple wood press machine to deal with the coal shortage."

"What do you mean, milord?" Darora asked with confusion.

"In your workshop, as well as in that of Taniok, there must be a lot of sawdust and wood shavings spread around, aren't there?" The carpenter nodded.

"Of course, it can't be helped when working with wood."

"What do you do with it?" Kivamus asked. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Darora shrugged.

"We just sweep it aside and dump it somewhere else near the forest." Kivamus nodded.

"That's what I expected. However, that is still made of good quality wood, which can also become a good source of heat if burned in place of coal - basically, as its cleaner replacement. While we are using coal for heating in most places, it's not really good for humans to breathe in its fumes, while these waste materials - which only consist of wood and aren't of any other use anyway - could become a much cleaner source of heat.

An added benefit is that the coal which we won't be burning in its place can be sold to the merchants to add to the village's income."

"I guess that makes sense," Darora muttered.

"But it's still a real hassle to move all that sawdust around. It takes a lot of space too, so even if you wanted to burn it in a fireplace, someone would need to keep replenishing the fire again and again."

"That's why I was thinking of making a wood press machine." Kivamus added, "With the amount of construction going on in the village, the amount of sawdust and wood shavings that we waste is only going to increase in the future. Even outside of the workshop of you two, anywhere there is some construction going on, whether it is for building a longhouse, a barn, the walls or even the gates we are going to build, there will always be a lot of wood shavings and sawdust which is just wasted for now.

So here's what I was thinking..." He started to walk outside the mineshaft with the carpenter, knowing that if they were successful in making this wooden press - and they really should be, since it wasn't anything too difficult to make - he could think of a much better and more profitable use of such a machine in the future. Of course that would need a lot of paper too, although he was already thinking of a better solution than the costly parchment he had been using until now.

Leaving that thought for the future, he began explaining, "This isn't anything too complicated. You will need to find an empty place, perhaps in the South, since these days that's where most of the wood cutting is going on and you will need to take a sturdy piece of a big and wide stump from an already felled tree. Then you should make the top of the stump smooth and flat, which will form the base of the machine."

He continued, "After that, you will need a frame, kind of similar to the one you have made for the water wheel. While it won't be nearly that high, it will need to be just as sturdy. Then there will be another sturdy plank which will become the top part of the machine, and that is what's going to compress the wood shavings into a... briquette - which is just a small block of that compressed material."

"I think I get what you are saying..." Darora muttered while they walked down on the small hill.

"But how will the top plank put pressure on the wood shavings under it? Do you mean to make a man stand on top of it?" Kivamus chuckled.

"That isn't a bad idea, but it won't be that efficient. This is why I mentioned the frame. A screw crafted from a wooden branch will be attached to that frame at its top end, while the bottom end of the screw will be fixed to that plank. Finally, there will be a strong handle - which will be pulled by a labourer to the side to move it horizontally - which will turn the screw slowly. As it moves downwards, it will press the plank with a lot of force.

That force will be what compresses the wood shavings and sawdust - which would already have been placed between the stump and the plank. You will also make small indents in the stump in a cuboidal shape, and that's the shape the wood shavings will take after they are compressed." Darora seemed to be frowning while thinking about it.

"Don't worry, I'll sketch it up tomorrow morning, and you can use that as a guide to build it by evening, since you aren't needed at the mineshaft for tomorrow." Kivamus knew that while the sketch of this simple machine should only take a few hours at most, he could easily think of a more complicated method to do the same thing where they could control exactly how much pressure the screw would put on the plank.

However, they did not need that accuracy - which was required for printing books and such - because all they needed to do was to compress some wood shavings and sawdust. So the design only needed to be good enough to do the simple task without taking too much time of the carpenter. Darora nodded.

"That will help me a lot, but that would postpone me working on the second crossbow by another day..." Kivamus sighed.

"Don't I know it... The moment I think that one problem is solved, there is another problem starting to rear its head immediately. Even so, we can spare one more day for this, since it will help us a lot in the coming months to save on some coal."

"That is certainly true," the carpenter agreed. Before long, Hudan and the other guards and labourers began walking downwards towards them. Kivamus looked at the sun which was already close to setting in the west for a moment. Hopefully there wasn't another pack of adzees lurking around near the hills.

"It won't take long for the workers to load up anything they didn't use today on the wagons," the guard captain reported, "and then we can leave."

"Alright," Kivamus nodded.

"Let's not waste any more time then."