15th May 1574"We will need to stack them on top of each other!"
While others might a.s.sume that helping at the construction site for the Wood plant was stupid with how not only the Royal magistrate was already on his way to inspect the production of cement powder and the concrete itself, but it was something that I simply had to do.
This project was simply too important for all the other ideas of mine to develop!
Starting from the most obvious thing, all the housing and building in the mining areas had to be made partially from wood. From the planks for the roofs of the many houses that were under construction right now, through turning the sc.r.a.pped branch into fertilizer or using the shavings as insulation for the building walls all the way to all the parts that would be required to make the s.h.i.+ps that I was so keen on producing.
With how I wanted to transport quite a lot of weight all the way from the mining area to the Tarnow in order to even start the road project, I had no other choice than to focus on building those steams.h.i.+ps that I came up with in my mind. But rather than designing the river s.h.i.+pyard that would allow me to produce them, I had to make sure that the carpentry plant would be operating properly first!
"Sir, once again, what is the purpose of this? Don"t we need just a single conveyor line to move the logs and planks around?"
If not for my hasty return as soon as all the doc.u.ments were signed and the deal confirmed, this place would be already preparing to start its producing, even if only at a limited scale, proving that the lack of my presence would be far more important than I hoped when I was leaving.
"If we only focused on getting the hard, wood products, that would be more than enough. But since we have quite a lot of use for this dust and sc.r.a.p wood, going for an extra mile to collect it is only reasonable, isn"t it?"
To be frank, the dust collection was one of the most expensive parts in the entire factory. Wherever the wood would be cut, outside of placing another conveyor belt below it to catch the parts that would be cut away, both conveyors would use sieve type of line, capable of supporting the big pieces but allowing the sc.r.a.p parts to fall through it on the special, angled tube, that would push it to a special line where it would be sorted through a set of special, vibrating sieves and stored in special warehouses.
"But wouldn"t it be enough to just have some men go around this place with brooms? Why waste a c.r.a.pton of metal just to make those parts? Ah, I mean no disrespect sir, but seeing how this place gobbles up more money than all the other projects combined, I"m worried that no matter how much we produce, getting back the cost invested will be simply impossible!"
Contrary to what the manager of this place, the same one that would spend half of his day managing the small, operating carpentry to make sure that the minimal amount of wooden product would be delivered daily to all the resource-hungry projects while spending the rest of his not-sleeping time to oversee this mega construction.
That was one of the positives for letting all those people work by themselves, without my management. While I was still here, they all knew when they should start working, when they should take a break or when the workload required them to work even harder. But as soon as I had to take a trip to the capital, some of them allowed their ambition to take the place of their reason, spending all of the time they could working in order to make sure everything in this wondrous place would go as planned, while some others used this chance to start slacking to a point, where some of the other managers had to develop yet another level of coordinating everyone to make sure their workers would work properly!
"You don"t need to worry about it. Since we have more than enough power and iron to do those things, it"s better to think about them in advance. Right now, nothing is working in this place yet, so adding any improvements does not require stalling the production and might save us quite a lot of manpower later. Anyway, that will be all from me for today, as I need to check on a few other places. Good luck, and remember to have a proper sleep later on."
While the fact that some of my underlings were working too hard was an obvious problem, the same could be said about me.
After getting more than enough time to enjoy my private time with Elia as during the return trip, outside for the times when we had a meal on the board of the s.h.i.+p, we would spend all the boring hours locked inside our chamber, I felt as if the energy wanted to escape through every single piece of my body.
With the carpentry manager sending me off to the doors by himself, I instantly moved to the plant next-doors, where a new batch of workers sent directly from Sandomir along with some more craftsmen were working on the s.h.i.+pyard.
Yet rather than spending a long time here, I only made sure that the construction was going as planned, before moving to the core of this new project of mine.
Steam turbine.
Only when I started working on it did I realise how simple its design was when compared to a steam horse. Just by creating a long tube with the steam intake directed horizontally at the set of angled fans mounted on top of a power rod, with the steam outflow beneath them, I could make the fans force the power rod to spin, turning the heat into a usable form of energy!
The only problem was the size of this equipment, as with only the casting method available for me in terms of creating any form of metal shape I was simply unable to provide a casing big enough to contain enough turbines to propel a heavy s.h.i.+p!
That"s why, rather than trying to forcefully connect an insane number of parts that would be later connected by the molten metal which would not only make this process really long but would result with a quite fragile casing, I decided that going for a set of smaller steam turbines would do the job!