FLTL Ch 368. The Sawmill - I

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A/N: I have added a sketch of the sawmill at the bottom of the chapter, which should make things easier to visualize. Make sure to take a look at it once you reach the relevant section of the chapter.

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Apart from the primary purpose of improving the village defenses, Kivamus also had something else in mind in the near future for which he had ordered Hudan to start looking for another 10 guards to recruit soon. Hiring this many guards wouldn't have been possible in the past, but a few days ago Duvas had given an estimate that the village population had reached above 500 now—compared to just above 300 when Kivamus had arrived last autumn. So they could hire more guards now without severely affecting coal mining and other projects. However, paying all of them was a different matter altogether, and he would have to deal with it soon. Eventually he planned to do a census of the village for a proper inventory of what skills the residents had and their basic details including where they had immigrated from, but that would take too much manpower and right now they had far more important priorities.

Soon, he reached near the manor gates, and climbed onto the wagon bed, settling in beside Duvas and Hudan. Four more guards sat on the wagon bed, while two more were on the driver’s bench. They all were armed with shields and swords, while their spears had been tied to the side of the wagon, in a way that would make it easy to take them out in an emergency. They had also borrowed two crossbows from the watch towers. More would have been better, but they were still short on them, and he didn't want to weaken the village defense even more during the time he was out with that many guards. 

“Let’s go,” he said finally.

Hudan repeated the order, and the driver flicked the reins, jolting the wagon forward. They turned right just beyond the manor gates and before long, they were passing in front of the longhouse blocks. The buildings were nearly deserted at the time, with all the adult men and most of the women out working, while the kids had also gone out to gather sawdust. That only left the younger children, as well as the elderly who stayed here to take care of them, along with a few other men and women who cooked for the whole block. On the left side of the road, he saw a group of men using shovels to dig a new well, while another laborer was loading the excavated mud into a wheelbarrow to be used outside the walls.

They reached the northern wall soon after and approached the northeast gate. The guards on duty straightened when they saw them and immediately pushed the gates open. The wagon slowly moved ahead, and Kivamus saw with satisfaction that the new defensive trench had already been completed here. It ran cleanly along both sides of the gate and across the whole northern wall—deep, wide and lined with sharp stakes, leaving only a narrow stretch of road in front of the gate. The mud coating of walls was also coming along nicely. The nearest watchtower was already thickly plastered on the outer side, and nearly half of the northern wall wore the same layer of clay. It was far from an ideal solution, but once it was done on all sides of the village, at least it would reduce the chances of the logs catching fire in case a bandit group or the mercenaries tried that tactic. On the eastern end of the walls, foreman Yeden’s bald head was easy to spot as he barked at workers, waving his arms to make them work harder in coating the walls.

The wagon kept rolling, its wheels crunching through the narrow stretch of road beyond the gate as they continued toward the dam. “What's the status of the trenches on the other sides?” Kivamus asked the majordomo. 

Duvas shifted, trying to get more comfortable on the wagon bed, which was only covered by a layer of rough cloth. “The progress is good, even though we have allotted a third of them to dig new wells now. The diggers have completed the trench in front of the northern and western walls, and the eastern side is more than half done. I think it will take another 10 days to complete the whole thing. However, the mud coating of walls is going slower. The soil dries up faster in the morning with the weather getting hotter now, so the mud which the diggers dig out has to be wetted with a few buckets of water from the central well before the mud can be used, which slows down the whole process. We could allot more workers here, but coal mining is too important now that merchants are coming more regularly."

Kivamus nodded slowly. Another merchant had come yesterday and bought three wagon loads of coal from them. If Trevalo managed to arrange regular sales in Ulriga in the coming weeks, they would need to produce an even larger amount of coal. The steady trickle of refugees and ex-slaves helped in that, but only to a point. They were allowed a day or two to rest and eat before being sent to the mines, yet the numbers still weren’t enough. They needed either a lot more people to arrive and work as miners or he needed to improve their ways to mine coal. He already had a few ideas in mind, but other projects needed to be finished first for that.

As the wagon creaked ahead, he watched a pair of laborers hauling buckets toward a heap of freshly dug mud, their boots sinking slightly into the wet dirt there. The first well had already been dug near the farms, while priority had been given to dig the second one in the southwest, since that was the furthest place from the central village well, which made it a hazard in case of a fire. That well had also been completed yesterday, so now the third well was being dug in front of the longhouses, which he had seen before passing through the gates. Once that was ready, they'd dig another well near the southeastern gate, and the last one in the east, where a guards' barracks and training ground would be built in the future.

“Did Taniok take new logs to the dam?” he asked.

Duvas nodded. “I've told one log-mover crew to stay near the farms where the forest is still being cleared. They’ll bring the fresh logs inside the village walls from there. The other crew will haul the dried logs to the sawmill starting today. They already left earlier this morning with a pair of long trunks.”

“Good."

The road continued north for a while, before they took the eastern bend towards the hills. The wagon rocked and bumped as the ground began to rise, making Kivamus wince. He'd be sore for hours after this wagon journey. The new potholes had already been filled, but it was still hardly a road. Without any proper padding on the wagon bed for sitting, it was not a comfortable journey. Once all the trenches were dug he'd have to put the diggers on cutting the hills and making a better road here. 

It took just above half an hour to reach the coal mines, with the coal dust making the mineshaft entrances and even the hills look darker than they were. Another two quarters of an hour passed before they saw the final turn toward the dam.

Once they rounded the bend, the dam stood ahead of them at a distance, solid across the narrowed stream. Small groups of workers were gathered on both banks of the stream. On the near side, Taniok and his apprentices were pushing a log into the slot of the sawmill frame. On the far bank, both men and women were smoothing the walls of a tall clay structure—the cementation furnace Cedoron needed for steel. The structure looked almost finished. Once it dried fully by the next day, they would bake it hard and start building a second furnace for making coke some distance away.

As their wagon rolled closer to the sawmill, the driver slowed it to a stop. The guards jumped down, loosening their shoulders and looking around. Kivamus stepped onto the packed earth, and noticed the log-mover with its huge wheels being turned around by its crew so it could trundle back toward the village for another load of logs. He walked toward the sawmill. 

Taniok straightened and gave him a respectful bow. “It’s ready, milord. We’ve tested it already, but we waited for you to inaugurate it officially."

Kivamus let his gaze travel over the sawmill assembly. The design was simple enough when seen as a whole. Two large wooden gears, banded with iron, linked the waterwheel to a long wooden axle made from a particularly lengthy and debarked fedarus trunk. They could not afford full iron gears of that size—yet—so the structure was still wood, but the iron rims would keep them from wearing out too quickly.

The long axle ran from the wheel up onto the bank, resting in primitive bearings—a series of wooden Y-shaped supports, each lined with iron plates. They held the axle’s weight and left the top open so it could be greased easily. One supporting pillar sat close to the waterwheel, another at the start of the stream's bank, and a third further up on the left, where the ground leveled out. The axle was also lined with a thin sheet of iron where it met the supports to prevent the wood from degrading too fast. This setup would need plenty of grease, but it was something the workers could manage easily, and it also saved them a lot of iron needed for making proper bearings. 

If needed, the axle could also be replaced in the future without too much trouble when it started to get weaker. The best thing was that Fedarus wood didn't rot—even in seawater. Of course, this wasn't fully seasoned wood, but it had still been drying for many months. Taniok had also chosen the best logs amongst the stockpiles in the villages to make the sawmill assembly. It should easily last for a few years at least, and that was good enough for now.

Near the stream's bank, a stout gear fixed to the axle meshed with another gear anchored to the sawmill frame. That second gear turned the circular saw blade. Making that blade had taken a large amount of iron, but it was the only way to make it strong enough to cut through the thick logs. The gear attached to the sawblade was larger than the one attached to the axle, which meant the blade would spin more slowly but with greater force—and more than enough torque to bite through the biggest logs they could haul here.

While the circular sawblade had been made from a strong sheet of iron, it would still have to be replaced and repaired regularly. In the future, they would make the blades with steel, which would make them last much longer, but for now, a pair of spare sawblades were kept nearby, ready to be swapped in when the first one dulled or cracked. One of Cedoron’s apprentices would work here full-time from now on as the sawfiler, keeping the teeth sharp and changing blades when needed, so the carpenters wouldn't waste precious cutting time.

Finally, a sturdy lever sat by the pair of gears of the sawblade. When pulled down, it would ease the middle gear away and let the circular blade stop even when the axle kept turning. A similar, but bigger lever had been built for the pair of gears on the waterwheel so the workers could uncouple the axle from the waterwheel when they were done for the day before they returned to the village every evening. Later on, he wanted to provide good lighting here and have this sawmill working round the clock, but that was also for the future.

That only left the problem of moving the heavy logs, so he had also taken that in account in this design. Beneath the blade, a row of thick wooden cylindrical-shaped rollers formed the bed for the logs being brought for splitting. Another pair of gears on the axle drove those rollers. When a log was rolled off the log-mover and onto the roller-bed on the other side of the big axle, the turning rollers would draw the log forward into the sawblade. The rollers were also carried in smaller Y-shaped blocks, just like the main axle supports. It was certainly not as smooth as proper metal bearings would have been, but it was something they could build now, with the tools and skills they had. There was another lever here to engage or disengage the rollers from the long axle with their dedicated pair of gears for moving the logs.

Kivamus looked at Taniok with satisfaction. “Let’s give it a try."

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A/N: Below is the sketch I drew for the sawmill. The log-mover is visible on the left side, and there is a stack of logs kept near the hills. The dam, the reservoir, the sluice gate(not shown), the water wheel, and the fish ladder are on the top right side. The long axle and its Y-shaped supports are also shown.

If you squint, you can see a faint circular outline which shows the sawblade just above the log which is kept there to be split. (the sketch only shows two gears there, even though there is a small middle gear to connect them). There is also a wagon and a horse?? visible there, as well as some people to give a sense of the scale, but they probably didn't come out as well as I wanted, haha.

Still, I hope this gives you a better idea of the sawmill assembly. The parts of the image which aren't mentioned in this chapter will be explained in the next chapter.

>> FLTL Ch 369. The Sawmill - II