Midwinter calling, day 24
Hunting
The days are so short nowadays with just seven hours of daylight, plus about an hour of dawn and dusk on each side. So even though we were to try to make full use of the daylight and start hunting at dawn, the morning isn't actually early. We can see that the sky is starting to lighten when we eat breakfast, and we put on extra layer of clothes for the morning cold. It froze last night, so they have brought in the ice and started using the ice box. Hopefully we'll shoot something that can be put in the box so it's not just fish and vegetables.
Alith guards me, and Bodil guides Olafr, but we stay fairly close to each other. Iselin would have liked to come along, but I'd rather have her and the others as safe as they can be for now, as we are two extremely newbie firearm hunters, and I don't have that much faith in Olafr, so we will hunt in different sections to have some nature and distance between us. At least Airsoft Mil-sim have taught me to make sure it is an in-game player wearing eye protection before I start shooting, and to check what's behind the target. It is not unusual to run into bird watchers, berry or mushroom pickers, people walking their dogs, hunters, tourists and or other outdoor people when playing in Sweden, and most of those sure don't expect Mil-sim players. Some don't realise that the big signs saying that they shouldn't go inside the game area actually applies to them, and that the right to roam doesn't apply when the land is rented for an event. Just because they usually go for a run, bike och walk their dog here, doesn't mean they can do it during a game. Running into wild animals can also be interesting. I've mostly scared birds, rabbits, deer, foxes and the occasional elk that have run away, but I know people who had other experiences and an Airsoft rifle won't do shit against a pissed of boar, elk or bear, and we are far more likely to run into dangerous animals here than in a forest in modern Southern Sweden. Honestly, in the future, hunting might be to sit quietly in a hide or hunting tower and wait since that is easy, comfortable and can be made quite safe. Kari, Ciara or Jane does not enjoy walking off track in a forest even during summer, so wet cold soggy ground and nature during November or December? Nope.
Alith and Bodil bring their bows, but leave their shields and spears. I hang my sword on my back along with Boomstick, since it is quite comfortable and doesn't make any noise or gets in the way. I hadn't intended to bring the sword, but my sambos insisted, and it should work fine. We only bring some water to drink, and each bring a larger piece of orange-red cloth to mark any animal shot if it is big and can be retrieved by Hrappr by horse or wagon. Alith and Bodil also have six meters of thinner rope each, just to be able to tie up any animal to make it easier to carry. A dedicated hunting bag would be handy, and I should also make sure to make a leather cover for the flintlocks, which both protects against rain and snow, and can hide the mechanism from prying eyes. Coveralls and their pockets are nice as outerwear, and several like the pants and the pockets. It's a pretty good contrast from us to Olafr who is dressed as a classic Northman.
Olafr have decided to target smaller animals like rabbits or birds and has loaded with smaller and more pellets, as yesterdays shooting shows it probably gives him a better chance of hitting something, and it is far more likely to see animals like that on these islands. I remind Olafr to always be sure what's on the other side of the target, always think about whether he can shoot or not, and have to be very careful if the animal is running and he's sweeps the gun. Personally, I will go for larger animals, as there are deer and elk here, although they are probably not that many and I'm unlikely to shoot anything. We have seen deer and elk several times before as we have walked or ridden, but it won't bother me if I don't shoot something either today or tomorrow, as I can hunt whenever I want and I rather go for something rewarding. Olafr can't.
We don't think there will be much left if I shot something small with the rifle, and the sound will certainly scare away everything else, so if we see something small, Alith are free to shoot it with her bow, and the same applies to Bodil, although Bodil will let Olafr have his moment.
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It is a pleasant experience to just carefully and silently stalk through the foggy forest as the sun rise. Smell the scent of nature and the trees. Hear the occasional sounds of birds echoing in the forest. This is what in moderns Sweden would be called old forest, and there are lichen and moss on the fallen trees and stone. It just feels wilder than planted forest. It's just nice to have a quiet hunt with Alith, and we are careful about sound and pay attention to the surroundings. Alith obviously love this, and I know she said she enjoy bow hunting. It's kind of sad that we havn't tried that yet, but we will have plenty of time to do it. I should practice more with my bow, and make a good crossbow.
With her bow, Alith shoots what she whisper is a grouse, and she quickly tie it up before we continue hunting. The smile on her face warms my heart. Yeah, we will do this more in the future. There is a loud bang echoing through the forest from Olafr's gun some distance away, and Alith pokes me and points out a deer that has poked its head up and moved some 80-100m away. Hard to see through the forest and my heart is pounding as I try to calmly and quietly push the safety away and take aim. Clear behind. Aim at chest, heart and lungs. Exhale, hold.
BANG!
The smoke makes it hard for me to see, and I think 'shit!' when I finally see the deer is running away, but the deer collapses just as I'm convinced that I missed. The deer tries to get up and falls down again. We hurries toward it and find the deer lying among the rocks and the bilberry shrubs, and it makes one final twitch of a leg before staying completely still. I feel sad, but I'm still proud. Both because the deer didn't suffer too much and because the flintlock rifle works well. I don't bother reloading, because this is more than I thought I would shoot over these two hunting days. Alith gives me her bow and then casually throw the deer over her shoulder and carries it out to a path.
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Our shot have attracted Olafr, Bodil and a local free man who is curious about the sound, and he quickly offers to carry the deer to the mansion. Olafr managed to shoot another grouse, and he is so incredibly proud over that, and that he shot it with a sejdish thunder weapon that he helped make. He has a hard time believing it. Alith proudly tells everyone how quickly the deer died, and at what distance I shot, and how hunting with rifles is so much better, or thunder weapons as they have come to be called. Everyone is satisfied and happy with the hunt and the experience, but we will still hunt tomorrow. We make our way out to the fields and since we're not silent any more, we scare away some animals, and Bodil takes a few quick steps to the side and shoots a hare with her bow. Bodil is definitely good with a bow.
As we walk towards home, the freeman brings up the matter of negotiating the farms leasing agreements. It has been postponed as they know that I intend to let them have the same agreements with me as they had with the King, but it still need to be done. So I ask him to spread the word and gather the other residents in the afternoon and come to the mansion.
Once back at the mansion, Jane takes photos of us, where Olafr doesn't understand why he should pose, and then we join Hrappr, Ida and Rikvi as they take care of the animals. The kitchen is pretty full since everyone wants to see and take part. Rikvi complains a bit about the damage the rifle did to some of the body parts compared to an arrow, and it is very impressive, but I make sure they remove a bit more so there are no lead residues in what we eat. Maybe I should use copper bullets and pellets for hunting? Unfortunately, it is more difficult to make due to coppers higher melting point.
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It is forenoon, and it will take a while until dinner, so we go for a walk around the island. I show Olafr my simple little forge and carpentry workshop in the mansions barn, and then we go to the village and the craftsman house for brass, bronze and copper which is completely finished with its attached forge and foundry, which Olafr like. Well, almost finished. I have realised this too needs a crane installed. We move on and I let Olafr inspect the first basically finished apartment in the residential building, and for him it is a very strange idea to build like this, but as we talk and I explain my ideas for the apartments and village as a whole, Olafr seems to really like it.
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We continue down to the water wheels below and the buildings there. The buildings framework and roof are basically finished, but we haven't focused on making the walls as the sawmill will make planks for that once it is finished. The feed to the water wheels is complete, and likewise the outflow and bypass flow. The metal workshop and sawmill's water wheels are in place in the canal, but not the carpentry's smaller one. We stand on the wide bridge over the outlet channel as I explain the function, and talk about the wide dam on the other side of the bridge which feed more but less prioritized water wheels in the facilities below. Because the dam is so wide, preparations have been made for pairs of water wheels in two places, so that there will be three long buildings below the dam separated with pairs of water wheels. The two end buildings will be longer and especially the northern one as I'll need the space, and the length match with the forge-machine shop so the overall look is better. I want the village and workshops to look nice. If the metal workshops, sawmill or carpentry are not used and there is no high water in the lake using the bypass, there will be very little water flow past the upper water wheels to the dam, but according to the locals there is almost always some flow unless it is a real drought, and no one will be working at night so the dam should fill up. The dam is simply a buffer and flow equalizer for the lower water wheels.
The southern part of the lower building is made to be the village mill for flour plus a stamping mill for cloth, but there is also a power take-off at the end because those two mills will not see much daily use, and it is easy to avoid using it at the same time. The power take-off is for temporarily attaching something that needs power and will be under a large outside roof. I have realised that there will be plenty of experimentation with different types of semi-automatic machines for different professions or experiments, so in addition to the power take-off in the south end, the whole northern building below the dam will be what I refer to as the mechanical laboratory, and the hall will be prepared for prototype activities and experiments. Hence the need for plenty of space. The building in the middle does not have any specific use right now, so that is two unused water wheels, although its is likely that the one towards the mechanical lab will be used to make electric power, so that might be a turbine or Pelton wheel instead of a water wheel like the rest. Hopefully there will be some electric light available next winter, and then electricity will be needed. If the metal or wood workshops are used a lot, the dam's overflow will probably be used to create electricity.
One thing that will be produced quite quickly and use the power take-off, is a simple machine for producing roof tiles. I want to manufacture good roof tiles on the island, and the simple machine is basically a clay extruder, that push clay through a template for the correct profile with a back edge for roof battens. The clay is cut to correct width by hand according to a template, and two holes for nails will also be made by hand just like the final shaping of the back edge. The tiles must be carefully dried before being fired in a purpose-built, reusable kiln which must be kept hot for two days so the tiles produce a ceramic ringing sound when the tiles are lightly tapped against each other. The kiln will use a lot of wood, so a better kiln saves wood and hence work. The kiln is sized to give something like 500 nice, good roof tiles from one firing. The problem is that a residential building requires something like 7,500 roof tiles, so probably 16 firings just for that. In the future I hope to change to roof tiles on barns and outbuildings as well, and just a small 6x4 house is roughly 750 tiles, and a craft house is 1500. There will be a lot of waste heat from each firing, so the plan is to try to direct the hot air in a simple structure that will be use to dry the next batch of roof tiles, but some of the waste heat will produce salt from seawater. So two very good reasons for the special reusable kiln. I intend to give Klakki and Eymörd the tile making job.
The carpenters and workers are doing good jobs on the sawmill, the forge, the water wheels, the line shaft system etc, and I take the opportunity to inspect and take a closer look at most of it. Details are very important. The automatic hammer now has an adjustable stop and adjustable speed. The speed of course depends on the water flow, so there is a simpler gear solution with three speed settings, where the slowest pace is a fourth of the fastest pace. They have also managed to implement my idea with a latch so a foot pedal can control the hammer strokes; the latch simply locks the hammer arm in the upper position unless the pedal is pushed down to an intermediate 'on' position. If the pedal is pressed harder and to the bottom, it functions as an emergency stop that must be reset manually.
The big power hammer have been harder to do right and have some interesting problems. I don't know the appropriate weight for the hammer, and neither do Olafr or others because they have no references for something this big, so it will be a hammer part in iron with probably variable weight. It will be interesting to see how useful it is, but 200-1000kg focused on a fairly small area should be useful for shaping or similar. The gearing will need to be changed to balance speed and weight of the hammer, but everything should be oversized to handle the load and impacts. Again, there will be a foot pedal with the same emergency stop function, but this pedal need to be stepped on to get a single stroke and then released. I'm not alone in thinking the big power hammer will be too dangerous without that feature. They all like the small automatic hammer, but the big one will be scary when finished.
The metal workshop crane has already proven how useful it is just for construction work. It's hardly perfect, and there is still a lot of manual labour to lift and move stuff. But the crane is wonderful to lift heavy things, and that lift can be done with minimal help. Once the wall between the forge and the machine shop is in place, there will be two cranes, but there will be hatches and a big gate to enable a heavy and big load to be moved between the work areas and cranes, and two iron rails have been added to the floor to roll very heavy stuff in a future rail cart. Most building here will have at least one crane installed to help lift things, and many will have purpose built loading or unloading cranes and winches, and a few will be driven by the line shaft systems.
We test the fan system for the forge's hearth and it has a much smoother air flow than the two bellows working alternately. I have overspecified something again, because Olafr think the air pushed into the forges fire from below is too powerful, but the flow can be changed by replacing the gears, and in the future there will be a proper gearbox. My idea with extra ducts in the forge works well, and by moving a flat slate stone I can direct where the air goes. Normally the air will feed the fire, but it can be redirected to a duct leading outside, or somewhere in between to change the air flow to the fire. It was mostly intended to feed air to a furnace on the small backyard where we will melt steel, so that won't have to be pumped by hand, hour after hour. As a backup and to be able to control the forges heat a little finer, there is also a simple manual bellows system that have both a foot pedal and a handle. Yeah, there are three air systems, but my point in designing all of this here is partly to test what is good and most suitable for different jobs, and learn. There is two extraction fans too, and one really suck the air up through the chimney while the other is just below the roof, so the air in here should be good, and keep the forge cooler in the summer.
For me it have already been a learning experience to make things like gears etc from hard oak, although the gears will probably be replaced with metal in the future, and get proper bearings. Most of the gears have cross-reinforced parts, which sit on a square part of the axle and can be replaced, and are locked in place with a pin that is also tied on. All gearboxes will get protective covers because it is dangerous to get fingers, clothes or hair between the gears. And most have long hair.
It wasn't planned from the start, but a drinking water system have been or will be installed in each building, because it will be useful and the water will be cleaner and healthier than the lake water. Not unexpectedly, water flows well to the well that is below the lake and the mountains, although the well is shallow. Since the forge will often be lit, there is waste heat to get rid of, so a warm water system will be added in here.
Olafr really really likes the forge and all the interesting possibilities, and looks forward to trying to use everything after the wedding feast, knowing that he will be among the first smiths to do so, since of course the builders will start using the forge and test that the hammers work and so on before that. I'm quite happy with the work so far, but the light in here will be poor with the walls in place even though they have windows. So the workers will have to change the roof to add skylights. It is a problem that the all the hydropower buildings are aligned with the front towards West-Northwest, so the skylights will be angled to the south, with a white-painted wooden roof inside to scatter as much light as possible down. There will be many, many skylights to make the workshops as bright as possible, and most buildings will have several skylights. Daylight is important and cheap.
We walk over to the sawmill, which is having its saw mechanisms and roller conveyors manufactured and installed. It shouldn't be more than a couple of weeks until the sawmill is in actual operation, but longer before everything is fully built. There is a lot of mechanics to get right, and it won't be just a simple single saw blade going up and down.
The workers are now quite used to it, but my willingness to work together with slaves just as well as craftsmen has earned me quite a bit of respect from everyone, because normally I don't care about formalities, and especially not when we are building something together. So it has just become the now common 'Sir' from most although 'Lord' is common from the slaves. What I didn't count on is that everything I build to automate and do better work like water powered hammers, the sawmill, grain mill or the fan systems, is perceived by many as me literally trying to reduce the amount of slaves and how hard they have to work in the future, and stuff like the cranes and wheelbarrows are taken as other example of that. So the slaves are especially happy that I do so much 'for them', and most of them seem really proud to work here on the islands no matter what they do.