Tosra & The Auction, day 11
Electricity is Sejd
I might as well 'Carpe Diem' and Caecilia is eager to welcome Freyas day with sex on the fur rug on my bedroom attic, and we have a short but lovely time while illuminated by the soft colored morning light through the stained glass windows of Freya, Oden och Thor. Kari was the first to try an intimate moment up here, followed by Iselin, and it is a hell of a good way to start a day. The bad part is that I just want to take a nap after, and so far none of my company have complained against cuddling and napping under a thick blanket.
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I fill in my journal/diary/log in the morning, but I feel a little dirty that I have started to write down what each woman likes, and any intimate moment I have. But it would feel worse to forget or make mistakes. I'm not worried about my sambos, but more about other women. It still feels good when I can put it aside and forget about it as I work on making a moving coil instrument.
I need a meter so I can see the voltage and current on the mansions battery system, so I had to figure out how to build a moving coil instrument. The principle is quite simple; a small coil that is suspended so it can easily turn in a magnetic field, and when there is a weak current through the coil it wants to turn to align its magnetic field with the magnet, and it usually do 60-80 degrees between hardstops and has a pointer attached to the coil which pokes out over a board with a scale. If it is a bog standard moving coil instrument, the current scale is usually 0-50 or 0-100µA. Properly manufactured so that the spring force does not change non-linearly, the scale becomes linear. A weak flat torsion spring coil with many turns causes the current coil with the pointer to spring back to 0, and the current coil is usually suspended between two weak flat torsion spring coils that also act as the current coils electrical connection to the housing. The hard part isn't building a moving coil that works, the difficultly lies in building something that just need a weak current and a small mass also have a faster reaction, which is the reason the coil is generally suspended instead of the magnet which is heavier. Especially here as I don't want to use one of my neodym magnets for it. Stronger magnet means more sensitivity.
In addition to the problem with the magnet strength and size which I can compensate, and the bigger problem with making a thin brass spiral spring, the biggest problem is that the instruments coil needs really fine thin electrical wire to work well, and in many loops to make it sensitive. That would be very difficult to manufacture here, but I have a couple of shielded USB cables, and there are many individual wires braided together to form that shielding. Its among the nicest thinnest wires I have. I can not measure how thin they are, but I have tried to count how many go in a millimeter, so around 0.1mm. They are uninsulated, but I've already tried to insulated with thin lacquer and they work enough well, and the lacquer also acts as a decent glue. Delicate but functional, and it is far from the most delicate thing I've ever built. RC microfliers where a gram is a huge weight, and bridging damaged circuit board tracks are trickier. I will need all these shielding wires for moving coils, microphones and relay coils as well as finer smaller speakers. Its is very ironic that among the most valuable things I brought are quite bog standard USB cables, which many will not really see any value in.
There is also a certain amount of thin copper conductors in credit cards, access cards etc with RFID as it is the antenna wire, and should be maybe 60-100cm each. Yeah, its short, but better than not having it at all, which is the reason I asked for Janes cards. I have some cards with RFID in my wallet and the thin flat plastic in cards are useful, but the thinnest plastic is from my laminated certificates etc from work. 0.1mm transparent plastic. Nice.
I get a vision of red hair and feel a kiss on the back of my head. Iselin whispers that she is back, so I pull her down on my lap and there are more kisses and hugs. Wonderful. She stay there as she talk about her trip. It was easy and quick to show and train Digraldi and his handyman, so she let them do the rest and hurried back. Iselin likes that Caecilia officially has become my maid, but as soon as I explain what I'm doing, she becomes interested, and it relegates everything else to unimportant and can wait until later.
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I give Iselin a private tour of most of the mansions secrets, starting with what I hav't told anyone about how I made a secret compartment in a pair of furniture. Like in the frame of my bed there is a compartment with 10 ounces of gold that can be opened if you push something long and thin into a hole that I show. Iselin dislike that I kept these secrets. Not because she believe I do not trust her or that I thought she did not need to know, but because she havn't been able to enjoy knowing about them. She likes the secret cellar rooms, and sneaking around in the gloom and comming out where no one expects it. I should have guessed my redhead ninja would like it.
Had she had a secret path from her room, she would often have used it just because she could. It would actually be possible to make a door from her room out to my workshop attic, but it would sabotage the security plan I have. I prefer if Iselin sleeps behind a thick log wall, in the room beside the guards, so she is well protected.
However, Iselin thinks we should isolate the secret rooms from each other, so the secret library is locked and hidden from the secret room under the mezzanine, and can only be opened from the library side. This allows more people to find out about the room under the mezzanine while the rest stay secrets, and allows that secret room to be used in more ways and become semi-secret. It's a good idea, so I promise it will be done. We can put up a shelf or similar.
Iselin immediately answers when I let my hands wander, and we 'inaugurate' the secret library with sex in the semi-darkness against the wall and on the landing where the stairs changes direction to the library exit. We continue in one of the library's comfy chairs, before Iselin pulls me in to be quickly ridden in the alcove under the stairs. With only its curtain separating us from the others, it feels a little too public for me when someone walks by. We are clothed, but no one would miss what we are doing. We continue in my study, and finish properly on the skin rug of my bedroom attic so we have gone from the cellar and up.
When we come back down and start picking up the clothes we threw away, we find Caecilia in my bed, who seems to have used the sound from us to ger herself ready, and she is disappointed that we don't want to continue with her in bed. I catch Iselins glance, and she too seem unsure if Caecilia was lying there when we came in, because the drapes covers that angle and at least I never checked when I chased Iselin up the stairs. It wouldn't surprise me if Caecilia just lay there waiting if she couldn't find me. Or if she noticed us having sex in one of the other rooms and hope to surprise us by being ready in my bed. Now I feel bad and ashamed as I have no desire for Caecilia as Iselin is back. Fuck. Fuck again, as the pun was not intended. I should tell Caecilia to not be in my bedroom without permission, but she needs to be here to be able to do her chores, and as long as she doesn't overstep, she might as well continue to have free access.
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The wagon was filled with things picked up in Borgarsandr on her way home. She is excited about the Swedish clog prototypes and the shoemaker and his family have themselves tested the first ones to get the right shape, and realized it is something that can sell. Iselin has brought an agreement or sharing profits with her, and has already ordered more and nicer clogs. If clogs spread, people will very quickly start making their own, and probably also the classic Dutch model entirely made in wood. The same goes for sandals, so I suspect the agreement will not lead to much silver and is quite unnecessary. But well, any extra silver is nice.
Above all, Digraldi has been making stuff. Oil lamp parts, taps, valves, manometer parts and housings for safety valves and control valves. The wagon also has some glass for oil lamps, well packed in boxes filled with planer shavings and sawdust.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
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It was easier than I thought to build a moving coil meter and I am very happy with the result, although its measuring current is more than a magnitude higher than the usual 50-100µA that was common until the digital system took over most of the display duties in Midgård. In many usages low current isn't necessary, and I need more loops with thinner wires to increase the sensitivity, thinner than I can manufacture, and the only thing I know is from my earplug cables, but I don't want to dismantle them for this when the current isn't critical or needs to be that sensitive. The moving coil is a bit crude but works well, and with a suitable resistor in series, I can now measure voltages and currents, like the lead-acid batteries voltage, and voltage over the power resistor to give me a current reading. Absolutely good enough.
I really should build a relay and disassemble my Wouxun radio so I get some power mosfet or transistors and can build that automatic emergency disconnection. Although it should be possible to build a relay that trips at a certain force through it, so a strong enough current break the circuit, and it must then be reset manually. Basically an electronic resetable circuit breaker. Or maybe future bimetallic strips that get hot and disconnect at too high a current through it, as that will be a more 'sluggish' and slow break.
Iselin likes to look at the meter as the gusting wind makes the pointer rise and fall. She thinks electricity is so damn magical even though it demonstrably works, and she herself has made parts of it. The wind causes a funny wooden thing to spin on the roof, which rotates 'thick north arrows' over coiled thin copper wires, and somehow it becomes something she does not see traveling through copper wires that do not move, and makes a another contraption with fine metal wire and magnet moves inside the house. This something she does not see, also magically goes on to clay jars with lead plates and stinging dangerous liquid that can dissolve things. Somehow the power of the wind is saved there and sometimes it bubbles a little or fizzes. Then via other copper wires I can make my mobile or tablet work, or make small funny transparent things shine without heat and with different pure colors. Light shouldn't be that pure a color. I have proven that the magical power is transmitted in the copper wire because if both ends don't contact, it doesn't light up.
If I replace the lead in the containers with any other metal, this magical power isn't saved, but the magical power can be 'moved' by metals other than copper, and other metals also work in the rolled bundles. There must also be iron in north arrows ie magnets as neither lead, copper, brass or even silver or gold work there. And the stinging dangerous liquid has to be the right type and concentration so it doesn't have too much or too little water.
Electricity is hard to understand for someone who never even guessed it would exist, and throw in magnetism and chemistry and it gets worse. It is more sejdish and magical than a lot of other sejd here, because it does not require plant matter, faith, gods, magic or sacrifice. It just works if you do it right. Always. Whether you believe in it or not. Iselin loves the Arthur C Clark's inspired expression that 'A sufficiently advanced technology is sejd.', and she places electricity and magnetism above much else in how sejdish it is.
Fucking magnets: How do they work?
Giving Iselin a couple of magnets to play with might have been a mistake. Everything of iron will be more or less magnetic until I can degauss it.
Iselin also loves: 'Sejd is just technology we do not yet understand.' Especially as she begins to understand the rules more and more.
But Iselin really wants to understand how it can work and be used, so I give her small electrical lessons when we build, and we perform simple experiments and tests. Like current through a conductor where a north arrow hanging above swings, and a simple generator that causes an LED to glow dimly when she spins the magnet in front of a coil. Or when we drop a magnet through a larger vertical coil, but the circuit behaves different depending on which direction the magnet is released, or which end of the coil points up. A prototype moving coil instrument is made to swing, by a magnet swinging infront of a coil at the other end of the table.
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I take a walk with Iselin to enjoy that right now the autumn weather is nice, and we enjoy the beautiful shifting colors of the trees. As we walk there and look at the leaves, I realise that some of the trees are maple instead of the usual oaks, and I start thinking about the sap and maple syrup, although it is certainly not quite the same type of maple tree as in Canada. I wonder how close the trees are? When I ask Iselin, I am a little surprised that they don't tap the trees and boil it into syrup or use it in food. It may be done elsewhere here in Alfheimr but neither she nor Alith knows about it, and they still come from two different regions of Norway. Sure, there probably arn't much maple trees in their home regions as the climate might be bad for it, but not knowing about it? Its weird considering they use pine resin for dental hygiene, but not the sap from some deciduous trees.
Iselin of course wants to try immediately, and that I say it should be done in the spring when the ground starts to thaw and before budding doesn't matter. She want us to try, and since I never intend to stop her or the others enthusiasm for something new, we cut our walk short, pick up some vessels intended for preservation, string, a couple of pipe pieces and a wood drill and takes the new maid Ida with us and return. We make a couple of holes in some of the largest maple trees, and also in some birches, hang up crucibles and insert the pieces of metal I shape into a pipes to push in to bridge over the edge of the vessel. The sap starts to drip even though I do not believe it will be that much. We also try a simpler method on the birches where we make a wide V cut with a knife, and an additional smaller V in the bark below and fold out the birch bark over the edge of the crucible. To prove that this does not apply to all deciduous trees, we also drill holes in an oak. The maid Ida is given the task of collecting and gathering the sap from the same type of trees into a larger vessel every night, and restoring the tapping. We'll see how much it will be in a week or so. Since maple syrup is the goal, if the flow seems good tonight, she will tap a few more maples.
However, they must start trying to boil it down gradually, as at least birch sap will go bad. There will be a lot to boil to make syrup, but when they have enough amount, I ask them to try to boil down 5 liters of maple juice and 5 liters of birch sap to begin with and see how it turns out, and approximately how much it takes in firewood and so on. I also ask them to be careful with the heat so they don't burn the sap and caramelize the sugar. Slow is better, and when they have reduced the volume to half, it may be better with vessel in vessel boiling so the water between act as a temperature stabilizer.
The cook Rikvi is also tasked to try out less concentrated sap as a substitute for water and sugar in certain dishes. Hopefully it will lower her usage of honey if she gets another option for sweetness, if the option tastes good. We have sugar but it is also expensive, and Rikvi seems far more used to using honey, and my sambos and guards like honey. Ciara is the biggest fan, and she always have a pretty little smile when she spreads honey on crispbread or bread. If she grows fat, honey will be a large reason.
They are still working on the silage containers and filling them, so they will try to use a little concentrated birch sap as a silage agent in some so we can see if it makes a difference.
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I bring Hillevi with me as I show Bodil the secret rooms and paths. Bodil has heard of such things in some stone fortresses, and many Longhouses have a hidden space under the floors to hide in while acting as a storage, but a few have a crawl space leading away. Sometimes just using bushes or a ditch as cover, but sometimes buried in the ground as an escape route in the event of an attack. She had not expected any in a house like this up on a cliff, and she likes it. Not as much as Hillevi who really really likes it which is the reason I brought her along, and Hillevi gives Bodil my explanation about a secret door, down to a secret cellar, which has a secret door to another secret cellar, which has a secret passage with a secret passage in it and so on. I confirm that that was a large part of the reason that I got them to build everything. Bodil smiles but Hillevi understands me.
I have decided that it is simply easiest to completely move out of the main building for a couple of days while the floors are oiled and fixed. We have spare rooms in the wing, and at least I don't care that I sleep in the wings attic a few nights. It is a bit cumbersome to move out all the furniture as some have to be taken apart, but it just have to be done, and we can use guest and extra rooms as temporary storage, as they will be treated afterwards. It feels so wrong to move everything out of Jane's room. As if we're intruding or snooping on her privacy. Just like in Kari's room, we never open her chest or the drawers in the drawer. Still feels dirty doing it.
Bodil helped plan the work and will oversees the work, and it is more like painting because it hardens. One thing it teaches me is that Bodil is a tough and specific boss when she directs work. It is her way. Period. I have not made the farmhands job easier by casually pointing out that with a little ingenuity and planning, it will be possible to take advantage of the fact that each layer makes the floor slightly darker. So there will be a pattern on the floor, and as we have a diamond shape on the windows and the copper tiles on the roof, we repeat it over some floors and stairs, with a bit of florishes here and there.