235 New Weaponry (1/2)
Inside the foundry, the air was always heavy from heat. Corco felt as if everything inside these halls was being compressed, melted down into its proper shape by the atmosphere. As expected of Saniya's greatest workshop, even the air was on the side of progress. For once, he didn't linger to bask in the glory of the foundry's efficiency. Instead, he led his guards towards the back of the building, past the largest furnace.
Although everyone around them was hard at work, and although the king's visits had become a regular occurrence by now, the workers still took time away from their duties to salute their king every time they saw him. Corco replied each one in kind before he stepped through the door into the back rooms.
In here, only the most talented and most trusted steel workers would be allowed, because it was the experimental area of Saniya's foundry, where the true progress was made. When the king entered, he was engulfed by the same heat as before, yet he still felt much lighter in here, even though sweat streamed from every pore on his body.
With a spring in his step, he marched past the core of the research facility, a number of smaller furnaces. Within them, the workers would create new ratios and mixtures of various steels and metal alloys every day. Since good materials were vital for the development of new technologies, these furnaces were permanent installations rather than temporary measures.
After all, without a sufficient quality steel, something as advanced as a steam engine or other complex and large machinery with great strain on their parts would never be possible. Thus, his best workers would ceaselessly search for new useful mixtures of metals and fine-tune the ones thy had already discovered. At the end of every day, the workers would document their progress, to be archived in Rapra Castle's library.
Yet even though these experiments were vital for Saniya's development and had already begun to yield results, he hadn't come for them today. Instead, he stepped towards the end of the line of furnaces, where his workers were busy around another furnace and a large number of clay molds. When their king approached them, the men noticed the new arrival and the head worker stepped forward for a greeting.
”King Corco! Welcome!” Asiro the blacksmith said with swagger in his voice and his step.
”Master Asiro. How are you doing?” Their conversations had gotten a lot more casual in the year they had worked together on various projects.
”Much better today. This work has been tricky, held us up for months, so we could not focus much on our other projects.”
”But you're finished now?” Corco got excited. The foundry's top security project represented a big step froward, even in Saniya, where big steps forward were a daily occurrence.
”Please look for yourself, King Corco.” With pride in his voice, Asiro stepped to the side and pointed to the clay mould on the ground. Finally, Corco saw its contents, half unearthed from the clay. He realized that his hopes had come true. Inside the mould's lower half lay the barrel of a cannon. Yet unlike the usual barrels of Saniya's or Borna's current armies, these weren't made from copper. They also weren't built from multiple individual part. Instead, the barrel had the dark-gray sheen of iron and had been moulded from a single piece of metal.
”You've solved it. You've actually made a moulded iron cannon,” an excited Corco said as he crouched down to run his hands over the smooth surface. He doubted the cannon had come out of the mould this clean and smooth. The workers must have put in some extra effort to prepare for his visit and present their achievements in the best way possible. It was a commitment to detail and showmanship the king could respect.
”That's right, no more cracks in this one either,” Asiro explained. ”Was a right bitch to get it done well, that I tell you.”
”How'd you do it?” the king asked. Cracks had been a persistent problem throughout their previous attempts at cannon moulds. When they had first tried, the steel had looked fine when poured, but it had begun to crack and deform every time the metal cooled down and hardened. Yet this barrel was cool enough to touch and still looked impeccable.
”First we had to get the right type of iron, pliable and springy enough so it wouldn't just break apart with a small temperature change. We've played around with the types of iron we made in here and found one that's soft enough so it wouldn't just crack form the cold or from shock once we fire it.”
Corco looked up to Asiro with a critical glance.
”But the question is: Is it still able to fire without bending out of shape completely when it's this soft? This fires what, a six kilo cannon ball?”
”It is six kilos, King Corco, or thereabouts,” the blacksmith explained. ”For now, we were busied enough in our attempts to keep the moulded barrel from bursting. So we didn't bother with exact, measurements yet.”
”That's fine, you can adjust the details now that you have the production method down. Out of curiosity, how did you keep the barrels from cracking?” Corco asked as he stood back up to face the blacksmith.
”After we managed to find a proper metal to work with, we had already reduced the issues somewhat. Still, only a small crack can cause a catastrophic failure once the cannon is fired, so we came up with some other solutions to build on our first success.”
Asiro walked next to the king and took his previous place. Crouched next to the cannon's mould, he continued his explanation.
”First off, I thought that the reason for the failures may be air trapped in the hot steel as it is being poured. So we came up with a better pouring method out of a wider, shallower spout. That way, we get less splash and less chance of trapped air in the closed mould.”
As he talked, he signaled over to the furnace the cannon's metal had been poured from.
”Then, we used a constant, slow heat treatment to slow down the mould's cooling process.” He pointed over to a large, open bed of coals, large enough to house the clay mould in its entirety.
”Once the steel was poured, we set the entire mould on top of coals. I thought the higher temperatures would be a good way to slow down the cooling process. Slower cooling means less sudden movement from the contracting metal, which in theory should have reduced the chance for cracks, or so I thought. For now we are unsure if it had any positive effects, so we might need to try a few more iterations.”