131 The fire is lit! (1/2)

24th April 1574

”Hang the core now. We need the counterweight to be quite a lot heavier than the cylinder itself.”

With the miners standing idle and watching the peculiar building with a visible confusion on their faces, I continued to order around my workers who turned out to be almost as enthusiastic about this project as I did.

Even though the official purpose of this machine wasn't properly explained to anyone but the craftsmen, it was inevitable that the rumours would appear even amongst the common folk. But while I was happy that everyone was eager to do their part of the work, seeing how some of them acted quite recklessly as if trying to finish their tasks as soon as possible, I couldn't help but start to get slightly worried.

As for the core of the counterweight, it was nothing else than a several iron disk-bound together by chains and nails, making it easy to attach anything to it whenever we decided the weight of the working arm had to be greater.

But the whole process of launching the steam engine started now with the counterweight, but by connecting the long iron pole to the chain nailed tightly to the side of the balancing beam in a way that made only the last two pieces of the iron chain hang freely and allow for some liberty in the movement.

After making sure that the metal rod was properly connected both to the chain and the cylinder, forcibly pushing the balancing beam to the 'in house' position meaning that it was lowered over the cylinder rather than at the counterweight side, a group of workers climbed the top of the cylinder, filling the space between the plate and the walls with thick ropes soaked in oil and finishing the task by pouring four buckets of water at the very top.

With the ropes isolating the space below the cylinder plate and the rest of the world above, and water added as the last insurance to make sure there would be no leaks of the gas from the cylinder to the atmosphere nor the air from the atmosphere to the cylinder, we could finally move to the last step.

As the chain was already hanging from the 'out house' side of the balancing beam, all that was left was to hook it with the second iron rod and mounting several pieces of the counterweight looking rather similar to the gym weights with a simplest possible lock in the middle, allowing to simply push them on top of the rod by aligning its small, metal arms with the opening in the weight and then simply turning it around with the metal pipe already protruding right through its centre.

At first, I thought that this would be the hardest step, as we didn't know what was the proper size of the counterweight, but contrary to my belief, as soon as the balancing beam finally started moving to the 'out house' position, we simply waited for it to stabilise before adding two more weights to start with in order to check how much weight could the steam engine lift.

But rather than worrying about the constant uncertainty, I was about to give the signal to load the wood under the belly of the boiler, when I noticed that the miners were already moving aside as if trying to sneak out!

”Hey, where do you think you are going? The best part is about to start!”

Rather than treating them with anger for the fact that they couldn't sit still for a while, I did my best to look like a child, disappointed at its parents for not willing to see the nice house I built in the Minecraft. While I knew that the process of heating the boiler up to the point where it would start producing steam could take a rather long while if they were to miss the moment when the history would be made, not only convincing them to agree to my terms would be easier, but they would never be able to forgive themselves for missing this insanely important moment!