143 Its done! (1/2)
27th April 1574
Just like I explained to the Governor, the base unit of the steam engine was the only part that was complicated to make, yet that didn't mean that it would operate without all the other required parts!
First, came the boiler. I had to pick one that could produce enough steam to power up the engine and allow it to reach its full efficiency, yet keep it small enough to not make its walls rupture under the pressure. While for now, I had no other way to connect the two halves of the casing together than covering them with a thick layer of cast iron, it left a rather fragile scar on the inner structure of this machine, forcing me to be really careful while using it.
Then came the pipes that would connect everything together. Just like the steam engine itself, they had to be capable of sustaining the huge pressure of the condensed water vapour, while remaining big enough on the inside to allow for its free flow inside the engine itself.
Lastly, I still have yet to find the proper way to connect the work pipe and the control pipe to make it fully and properly automated!
Yet no matter how many problems would arise from now on, it wouldn't change the fact that the hardest step to overcome was already behind me!
Considering how important this engine was to the development of my lands, rather than putting enough of my focus into other projects to make sure they would grow properly, I moved all my attention to this steam horse mark two. In the end, if any problem arisen with the carpentry plant, I could take care of them after dealing with the pressure steam engine!
At first, I decided to tackle the problem of connecting the two rods and automating their movements. If I were to start with anything else, the only access to the insides of the engines through its three upper holes would be gone, forcing me to take this approach.
Yet this task, while seemingly hard with how the entire inner workings of the steam engine would rely on how close to perfection it would be, wasn't that hard at all! With the distance that both the control piston and the cylinder plate both measured, all I had to do was to find the ratio between the two, and apply it while mounting the two cranks on top of the flywheel!
As the blast furnace was working ceaselessly since quite a long time already, I didn't need to bother with lack of any of the tools or parts, with even a relatively small flywheel already waiting for me to make the best use out of it.
After applying the rations and calculating the exact placement of the two cranks depending on the required distance from the centre of the wheel, I finally placed the nails and smashed their protruding ends to make sure they wouldn't fall off under the stress that constant movement would subject them to.
Come back to this damned furnace and wait for a new batch of iron to connect the two of them together!
While I could use nails or even rope to mount it, that would only decrease the maximum durability of the entire machine, throwing all my efforts to make it as perfect as I could out of the window for the sake of saving me just a bit of effort.