Asta works frantically with her globe, because even though she knows she will not finish it today, she won't be able to work on it for 3 weeks. Meanwhile the crew is making sure the ship is prepared and everything is in good condition. Hrappr will lay out and take in the fishing nets while they are away as we've gotten used to having fish, and that new free neck Hafle will help him. Ida will go along as Iselin's maid and Elvira and Jalida will take turns taking care of the animals and other things that Ida has done. Iselin have made sure to prepare the household and people for her absence, but it's mostly to show that as my future Wife she will be the boss for the household and she take that responsibility seriously.
While waiting for Hrappr and the guards to get ready for the cannon test, Iselin helps me prepare more steel crucibles because they will be needed sooner or later, and it will probably be 11-12kg of steel from these. I really should build a proper furnace of some kind with forced preheated air and other improvements. I need to buy more crucibles, and Iselin will try to buy more iron, even though we have a lot of iron on the B-mansion from the basement rooms and other things. It probably doesn't matter how much iron I have now, as I will most likely always have use for more. It's nice working beside Iselin and she learns how to make the special steel. Her last months have been filled with learning so many new things.
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The weather is nice and everything is ready for the first cannon test. Technically, it may be the second considering my small prototype black powder weapon tested on that beach outside Borgarsandr a few months ago, but the caliber was probably too small to actually be called a cannon. The guards are so excited, and Alith is occasionally giggling from anticipation. They have heard of ballistas and trebuchets, and this must be something similar but certainly so much more impressive. Iselin has been looking forward to this, which is why we are doing it now before she leaves.
This cannon lacks wheels, and is only laid on a mound of earth. A simple protractor and plumb line measure the angle. Hardly the most scientific test, but I want to know how well the cannon works and if it's worth doing anything better. The cannon is light enough that it can be lifted and moved by two people by using the handles, but you hardly want to carry it any longer distance. It is easier for four people with carrying straps or ropes around the body, and they also won't have to crab walk.
Hrappr, Ida and Caecilia have helped prepare by erecting special targets and also hanging up wide white 'curtain' pieces from the pavilion next to each other and in parallel with the expected ball trajectory. The cannonball will certainly not be supersonic and the cannonball is large enough that I hope to be able to film from the side and take pictures in good sunlight, to be able to reasonably determine the trajectory and speed, if sound recording until hitting a target or stepping forward frame by frame doesn't work. We use cameras and film it with 60fps in high resolution from two directions, one perpendicular and the other skewed behind the cannon. We zoom in with Tom's digital camera where the first film camera is perpendicular far off to the side and Janes takes care of it. The purpose of the curtains is to provide a fine bright smooth background, and slight gaps between the white fabric works as distance lines.
I have made lines on the rear sight with a ruler and the permanent marker pen so I can note which sight point I used and where the cannonball hit. I need data to be able to make a proper sight with distance scale in the future, now I just go with an angle and S.W.A.G it: Scientific Wild Ass Guess. This test will only be a few test shots with increased charge, but I still want it filmed and try to get as much data as possible.
I crouch behind the thick wooden cover, and signal with my flag to Jane to start recording, and she replies that it's done. Then I move the long stick towards the cannon while I look through the small peephole in my cover. I also wear my protective eyeglasses.
That was loud! And lots of billowing smoke. In any case, the cannon seem intact and didn't explode, which is a great relief. It's quite fun to see the wood splinters and wadding just flying through the air because the first test projectile was in wood. Alith, Gunhild and Ciara are enthusiastic to help me hit the locking wedge, remove the breech loading chamber, and swipe out and dry the barrel. I inspection the outside and even the inside with a mirror and a flashlight to see if there has been a problem, but I can't find anything. I could see some gas escaping between the breech and the cannon barrel itself, but it works.
This is the first time that someone other than Alith, Iselin and Ciara is involved in black powder tests, and I show how to reload the breech and plug it. This time we go up in charge. We have to test that the cannon can handle at least double, but preferably three times the charge I intend to use, as to feel reasonably sure that the cannon won't explode when fired with a normal load. It is beneficial that they see that I use a long stick with a burning rope to light the priming vent. They understand it more easily, and they will probably not see any true similarity with my Boomstick, even though it was a cloud of smoke then as well. And the same smell.
Ciara feels a small adrenaline rush and slightly shivers with an enthusiastic smile on her face, and I like that Ciara has found something she likes. Kari's feelings go more in the opposite direction and she doesn't want to go near the cannon, and stays where she sits with Iselin and Caecilia, and I can see that she tightly holds Iselin's hand who is trying to calm her. Kari probably don't like me being this close to the cannon.
I let Alith and Gunhild be the ones to fire as we shoot two more increasingly powerful shots just to check that nothing happens, but this time with the cement balls, and I make sure to write down where the shots hit the 100m target. Considering that I have used the same sight point and angle, and carefully weighed the charges in advance, the cannon is not very accurate, but I wouldn't want to stand over there. I assume the cement balls hardly help with the accuracy, but it is cheap ammo that is easy to manufacture. The guards love that we shoot 'stones', or as Gunhild calls it: "A really awesome way to throw stones at the enemy.". Throwing stones is after all what many siege machines do.
I adjust the rear sight a little sideways to center it between the hits before we go back down in the amount of gunpowder to shoot at 200m and 300m.
I don't think it will help to adjust the sight more. The cannon barrel is probably simply too imprecise for more precision, and we're lucky to even hit the target. Or well, the left log that held the wooden planks that were the real target. It was kind of an impressive hit away and a good measure of hitting something more solid, but that target is just a write off. The smoke from the cannon is impressive, but I would have liked to get rid of the smoke and the smell. I write down the point of impact in relation to the sight in side and height, and make a 200m mark on the sight and measure from the reference point. There doesn't appear to be any signs of weakening in the barrel or loading chamber after this shot either.
I guesstimate the angle for 300m and we reload and aim the cannon and changed the angle. The following shot at 300m is just as effective, even though the ball hits the ground before the target it have a nice effect when the ball makes sand and dirty fly, and bounces into the trees and hit a cliff wall a bit further away, and we can see it probably hit a tree as branches move and the birds fly away. The happy enthusiastic shouts from Alith and Gunhild as they run back to the cannon is quite telling, while Ciara stands smiling at the protective cover holding the wooden stick, and slightly shivers and rewards me with a beautiful smile. I signal to Jane to come back here and bring the cameras.
I measure and make a small mark for 300m on the sight at this angle. This is not that good of a cannon, but it is a working breech loaded cannon that is very mobile, and dangerous. The cannon will get a small detachable wheeled mount with height adjustment and a box for bullets and ammo, so the cannon is more useful if I actually need it. It is also a small possibility that it is the first cannon in the world, so might as well make it better. It should at least be the first here in the north. But there is no point in continuing to fire at longer distances before the cannon has a proper carriage. How much would a bored barrel help? And how far does the cannon reach by shooting at a higher angle? I should try a shotgun/cannister load as well.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Alith and Gunhild's glances and tenderly caressing of the cannon are a bit telling of their attitude to my creation, and Gunhild promises to oversee and make sure that the iron cannon comes back into the basement, and that everything is cleaned. Both eagerly suggest that we should bring the cannon with us on future travels with the Eagle, and Ciara agreeingly nods. And sure, it does not take up much space if disassembled, and shit happens when you least expect it. It's good to be prepared and have a backup plan.
While I go to take a closer look at the targets, I start thinking about trying to get a slightly larger cannon made of cast bronze with a bored barrel, and in the future to try to make that barrel rifled.
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Pedr and more have been lured here by the noise from the cannon test, and since he is here I take him with me and we're heading south. I havn't really cared about the cost of a lot of things so far, but it feels especially annoying that salt is so ridiculously expensive. We literally live surrounded by salt water. So I will try to make salt from seawater, but I don't want to do it by boiling with wood, because it is a bad idea and a lot of work to use wood for it, when the sun can do the work over a longer time. The salinity here is only 2-2.5%, but worse is that we hardly have perfect weather for sun evaporation either, so using huge shallow ponds for seawater evaporation will be difficult. Most storms can be overcome with a protected bay, distance from the waters edge and a reasonably high dam, although a 2 meter storm surge with strong winds will be harder, it doesn't happen that often, and this will just have to be built to endure. Wind will help to evaporate, until it starts to dry out so much that the salt starts to blow away. Rain, on the other hand, is a bigger problem. It probably falls similarly as it does in this region in Midgård, so around 800mm per year, and if I just have a very shallow 50mm sea water depth to shorten the evaporation time, then even quite low 10 or 20mm of rain in one day is really bad, and there can be several rainy days in a row that will ruin the batch, and it will be better to start over from just seawater.
So I have plans. The first is to make some elongated masonry dams that are about two meters higher than the sea level where there is flatter rocky ground inside the bay here in the south. The surface we look at is not perfect, but it should fits many reasonably large 5x30m ponds, which will be slightly terraced. We will start building one of the ponds, and then when there is time and available labour make two more. I want three ponds finished by the spring, and there will probably be much larger areas later. The ponds are pathetically small for salt evaporation, but I hope to build a movable roof over them once I get a sawmill. So the ponds can be neither too long nor too wide. Each pond has a surface area of 150m², and with just a depth of 50mm, there is 7.5m³ of seawater in each, which is 7500 liters. The ponds will be built to be 40cm deep, but I need something to start with to know how fast evaporation go, and there must always be a bit of height above the water. Roofs should make a huge difference when it comes to rain, but I have also planned to try huge storage tanks to avoid having a roof to pay for and take care of. If the weather looks bad, the concentrated brine will flow or be scrape down into a storage tank. A wind-powered pump will then pump the brine up to a higher storage tank, so the brine can flow out and fill the ponds when the weather looks good. A similar wind pump will also pump seawater to a third storage tank to fill the ponds. Doing the pumping by hand or with a counterweight barrel rig is simply unnecessarily laborious, and there is basically always some wind here. Might as well use it. However, the salt will mess up the pump, so I need a simple, reliable design that is easy to service. Then I want a fill tank for filtration and sedimentation before the seawater is used, to try and get rid of sand and other things. My plan is to let the ponds be different steps for concentration as the amount of brine will decrease as the water evaporates, although it is an advantage to use the maximum surface area.
My more productive plan for the future is to try to have larger concentration ponds in maybe two steps, and then crystallization ponds. I also have to learn if there will be any layering that needs to be removed or stuff like that, so testing will provide such experience as well. Seawater is not just salt.
To test, it must be built, and I want to use it next year to get a better idea of how it goes over a season, and to earn money on it. Salt has double the density of water but there will be losses, so from one pond with 7.5m³ of seawater I should be able to get maybe 200-250kg of salt, which means 600-750kg of salt from three ponds filled to 50mm. The question is how long it takes to concentrate, and how much salt I can get per year. Even if I 'only' get 600kg of salt in a year, salt is so ridiculously expensive that this project is incredibly worth it, and I will build more ponds and salt production facilities. I should have made a smaller pond from the start this summer, but hindsight and all of that. The last concentration and crystalization can however be problematic, and lead to a certain 'loss' due to the surface in the ponds, but that salt will remain and contribute to the next batch.
Pedr is a little worried about the re-prioritization and there being enough time for the stone foundation and chimneys for the Academy before the weather gets too cold and the mortar simply doesn't harden. The weather can turn bad tomorrow and stay that way until the end of the year. But this is a lower priority and doesn't require the world's best craftsmen. The hard part is to make the surface flat enough, and there is plenty of the normal cement.
I will also always be curious if I don't try it, so there will be two large moving solar reflectors that focus sunlight on separate boiling vessels. A square meter of sunlight has 1360 watts, minus the angle of incidence etc, but boiling water requires lots of energy, and it will hardly be a perfect mirror. Polished aluminium would be nice, but no can do. So I will get Digraldi to manufacture mirror segments that can be assembled together to become two separate large reflectors of about 10m², which function as their own systems and focus on a small insulated 5 liter vessel each. Every morning, the angle is set according to which day it is in the year, and thus which path the sun will make across the sky, and then a person will try cranking the mirrors by hand at intervals of about 10 minutes to keep the light focused on the cooking surface and keep track of production. In the future, I hope that a clock mechanism can make this rotation so it requires less constant monitoring.
I have no idea how long it will take to produce salt via the solar reflectors, and it will of course depend enormously on the weather, and there will be losses I can not calculate. But even if I have a person who takes care of just the solar reflectors, I will still go plus with a ridiculous margin because salt is so damn expensive. The solar reflectors will always have a pathetic output compared to the ponds, but that is okay. I'm thinking of using the solar reflectors to try to boil the already concentrated brine from the ponds, before the last evaporation and crystalization can take place naturally on a dry protected surface. The main reason for boiling is that I am worried about microorganisms and bacteria that can live in high salt concentrations. The pink hue in many high concentration salt lakes is not from the salt but some microorganism, and I'm also worried about seagulls pooping in the ponds. Or as Jane calls them: Flying noisy pooping rats. A couple of hours of boiling will do its part to sterilize the salt. To protect the large solar reflectors from wind and the like, they are built in a slump that runs in a decent east-west direction. We know the lowest sun angle in winter and the highest in summer, so it's easy to build to that. In the slump, the reflectors also become less visible. However, something will be built around the structures to keep the curious away, but it will probably be in the future. We can make a simpler fence and claim it is to keep animals away, and that will help keep people away. It's better to not call unnecessary attention to the project.
No matter how it goes, we will have salt instead of having to pay for it, and hopefully in the future I will be able to expand production by using all the set aside surface and part of the very shallow bay, make more facilities and be able to sell salt. However, I will need to have real fences around the salt production area, and make sure to protect it even if the price drops. But, even with well paid guards it will be worth it. No matter what, I will always be a small salt producer. According to what Ovdhon said about the estimated amount of barrels and other things, it seems that the salt town Brinberg south of Reiekrône produces between 50,000-100,000 tons of salt per year. Even if I sell a staggering 100 tons of salt, it will hardly make a dent in that business.
But if others also start manufacturing salt, especially where the sea have a higher salt concentration, then it could be a problem for those who have earned a lot from salt production.