After all the metal work yesterday, I want to take it a little easier, and not do as much physical labor, and I'm sure Zeb feels similarly. Today, instead, I'm going to collect small crystals with Zeb. Sure, it's still work, but it's pretty relaxed. I already have quite a few of the smallest size in the warehouse, but I've decided to gather more of the smallest ones. The reason being, I want to do more experiments with them. I discovered some basic principles before, like how they seemingly combust when exposed to too much passive mana. Or, more usefully, they seemingly don't combust as easily when they're large. So what I want to try to figure out is how to grow the crystals themselves. The concern that I have with growing them is obviously whether or not I can actually replicate the conditions they grow under or not.
So for at least today and tomorrow I want to gather as many of the small crystals as I can. I'll also have Zeb get the old buckets of the smallest sized crystals from the old storage room, and we'll move them to my old house deep in the cave to work.
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It's weird being back in the old house after all this time. The first thing I want to try is seeing if the crystals are water soluble. I try dissolving them in both cool and hot water, to no avail. Given where I found them and how they deteriorated before, I suspected that they may not be able to be dissolved by water, which is a bit of a disappointment, but it is what it is. The next test is actually fairly simple. I want to see what happens if I break a crystal.
The first attempt with a large hammer does the trick, and the crystal breaks. There is a small flash and a hiss when it breaks, and the pieces that that are left are oddly shaped, and have black soot along the edges where they broke. Actually, as I watch it for a little bit, the edges of the pieces slowly deteriorate until what is left are even smaller octahedrons instead of the oddly shaped initial pieces. This is a slightly odd behavior for a crystal, but I suppose I know that mana allows for behaviors I'm not familiar with, like my stone shaping. Since I know the crystals store mana, I'm going to assume for now that some unknown mechanism deteriorates the crystal until it's shaped in their familiar octahedron.
The next test I'd like to see is if I can melt them. However, I can't exactly just take them back up to the surface, since they'll deteriorate if I do that. I'll try to do it initially over the small fireplace in the room for now.
I sit with them in a small crucible over the fireplace for at least ten minutes with no changes. I mean, considering I'm finding them in volcanic rock, I shouldn't be surprised that they aren't breaking down at this temperature. That said, most crystals precipitate out of liquids because their solid phase is a higher point than the liquid. Which would mean that these only melt at temperatures higher than magma, and since my crucibles are made of the very rock I found the crystals in, I can't exactly just melt them.
I sit for a while, trying to think about what I can do to solve this issue. To Zeb, it probably looks like I'm just staring at the crystals recently pulled out of the fire. I decide to voice my concerns to Zeb.
"Not only can I not melt these crystals down, but I'm not even sure if I can reform a crystal afterwards. I mean, you saw the fact that the crystal bubbles were under a vacuum. I just, I lack the technology and machines to do a lot of that stuff." I say.
Zeb responds, "I'm not sure about melting them, but you can break them down right? Can you melt the broken stuff down, kind of like the other rock you were breaking down for the dull gray metal? As for the vacuum, is there another way to do it without machines? I mean, you were talking before about making a machine to crush the rock, but if you can crush the rock with magic, can you do make the vacuum with magic?"
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I pause for a minute and think. He's right. I'm approaching all of this with ideas from Earth. I've got an entire third axis of freedom to work with. Namely, magic. Sure, I can't make an airtight operating part to pull a vacuum, I'm lacking precision machining, rubber, and all sorts of materials to accomplish that. What I can do though, is literally move solid stone like it's a liquid. Surely I can just expand a sealed container and reduce the pressure in it. That solves the vacuum issue.
I do wonder actually now that he says that as well. The crystals break down when there is too much mana in them. If I put the crystals in a near vacuum container, then take that to the surface and heat it up hot enough, will the insides liquify? Can I use that to make an artificial crystal? I think it's probably worth a shot.
I thank Zeb for his insight, and begin work on the idea. The basic idea is to make a sealed lightstone container with a bunch of the small crystals in it. Then, I basically am going to have to work with tectonic sense plus stone shaping to expand the container's volume. Once the container gets to a certain internal volume, I'll move internal stone to make two compartments, one with the crystals, and one without. I'll open the one without crystals, releasing what gas was in it, then recycle the stone back around the outside of the container. By doing so, I should be able to continually reduce the pressure inside the container. The biggest concern will be actually preventing the container from breaking, especially if I make it hot, which will probably reduce its structural integrity. I'll also need plenty of lightstone, which means I'm back on processing duty for a little while.
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Three days and I think I'm ready for the first tests. Before I load the container with crystals, I want to try just reducing the pressure without the crystals inside.
Initial results are promising, but I'm glad that I tried without the crystals first. While I was able to reduce the pressure to very low values, as I worked, I learned that I do need quite a lot of stone in the walls to keep the vessel in one piece. It had a habit, when I got the pressure very low, to crack while I was in the process of reducing the pressure.
Considering the wall thickness of the vessel, it's going to take a long time to heat the whole vessel thoroughly enough. I also realized I'll need to have the vessel attached to a thick stone rod so that I can prevent thermal shock while still being able to transport it back down the cave while hot. After all, I can be almost certain that no crystal would form on the surface, since they already break down when up here.
So, today, I'm just going to make two test vessels, and then store them down in the cave overnight, and then tomorrow start heating a vessel early in the morning for testing, since it will take a while to get up to temperature. Thankfully we have plenty of charcoal stored up.
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Well, it's bright and early, and Zeb and I are ready to get to work. Zeb is getting the furnace started, and I'm going to go down into the cave and grab the test vessel. The vessel itself is a little larger than a crucible, but its insides are slightly smaller. As I carry it up, I don't immediately notice any difference from the vessel, but one I make it high enough up, tectonic sense reveals that there aren't any crystals inside anymore, so I can only assume it's deteriorated.
For the initial test here, our plan is to get it as hot as we can, and then carry the whole thing back down into the cave to cool down. The vessel is on the end of a rod that is more than a yard long, so the hope will be that I can just stone shape the rod onto a wall, so that the vessel can cool naturally overnight.
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The heating process went fine yesterday, and so did the process of setting it to cool in the cave. Unfortunately, upon cracking it open, there were no crystals inside. It wasn't a complete loss though, the blackish powder that forms when the crystals fall apart had coalesced into a single solid piece of material. Which tells me it did melt inside. That actually is a good sign for the process as a whole. I've got a few ideas of things to try before we give up.