Dead Star Dockyards

346 Crushing the Wheel

"Finished!" Titanyana allowed the tablet to slip from her grasp, preventing it from slamming screen first onto the table with a finger. The poor thing already had a  crack in it from an unfortunate drop, and she didn't want it to propagate further. The prospect of telling Donovan she damaged something so important terrified her, so she was hoping to play it off with confusion when inevitably her transgression came to light. It wasn't like it affected the tablet's operability.It never occurred to her that such a thing might be considered an annoyingly common outcome of frequent use, or that there were ample materials in the Pegasus to fix the screen as a result. Tablets of better quality had been in use everywhere in Terran society for hundreds of years - they never figured out how to solve the 'breaks when dropped' problem without making them prohibitively expensive. 

"I will forward the design to Donovan for review."

"Thank you, Arc." Titanyana sighed in relief, the worry that accumulated over the past week and a half shedding away as she did. 

Though she had been worried about this whole process to begin with, she honestly believed this project would have been over much sooner. Arc would have had quick solutions to all of the problems she faced, or so she foolishly believed. A lesson had been learned the hard way that no solution in the Terran arsenal was 'quick', at least not if she wanted to understand the 'why' behind it. Donovan might have wanted her to avoid delving too deep into the weeds so she wouldn't wear herself out, but she needed to know about the weeds in question so she could be certain her selection was the best available. 

Usually it would take ten minutes for her to figure out which would be the best solution to a given problem, but if she had a hundred problems . . . needless to say the time investment ballooned quite quickly.

"Titanyana?" Donovan poked his head around the corner of the dining room doorway, startling her. She didn't know why, but he seemed to be practicing moving in silence - and he was getting really good at it. "Would you like to review the design? Or do you need a break?"

"N-no, I can do it now!" Free of her stress, anxiety now washed over her. Donovan's response had been quite rapid for how busy he usually was, the time she felt necessary to steel herself stripped away unceremoniously. 

"Great. Let's get it done."

- - - - -

Donovan reviewed the plans with as neutral a face he could muster. For her first project the plans were really well done - not award winning by any metric - but there was clearly a ton of thought put into them. Still, he didn't want to bring her spirits up too high if there ended up being a problem.

"The ends of the wheel, are you certain you don't want them rounded?" He asked the question in such a way that permitted her to keep the design, but he didn't feel like this was what she wanted.

The crushing system itself was simultaneously quite simple and complex. On Nekh, this would have been a stone basin approximately a meter wide and seven meters long with a heigh of half a meter at most. The insides of this basin would angle down towards a channel approximately twenty centimeters wide, though the specific angle seemed to depend where in the basin it was - steeper towards the ends and shallower in the middle. This was almost certainly meant to siphon the Litterberries poured into the basin towards the central channel to be crushed by the wheel.

The wheel itself was supposedly around a meter and a half in diameter but otherwise fit rather tightly into the center channel, which itself was something like fifteen centimeters deep. Titanyana's compilation of testimonies from the few brewers indicating only a blade of grass would be able to get into the gap without struggle, which Arc interpreted to mean about half a millimeter of total clearance at maximum, but probably less than that. This would likely be enough to let the juices through without squeezing any of the must up the side of the wheel. This was necessary because the juices would exit the basin through a smaller drainage channel cut through the basin perpendicular to the crushing channel.

"What do you mean?"

"A flat bottomed channel might be simpler to manufacture, but it probably isn't the optimal shape for something like this." Donovan drew a cross section of the wheel and channel. "I would recommend having an incredibly minor upward bend and rounded wheel edges."

"W-why?"

"For one, it is incredibly difficult to clean a perfect corner like this. Even a soft material will struggle to get everything, but a slight rounding of the channel will help a lot. Furthermore, the downward slope will naturally draw everything including the wheel towards the center, which will should make things slightly easier. Granted, the removal of a sharp corner will make it easier for the must to be squeezed  up the side of the wheel, but there is so little clearance this shouldn't be too big of an issue."

"Will it do anything different to the berries?"

"Aside from crushing them a bit better? Nothing I can think of. In fact I have to imagine the crushing basins you have on Nekh naturally wore themselves down into a similar shape."

"Really? In that case-"

"Already done. Arc already had an alternative as soon as I brought the topic up."

"He's really useful . . ."

"Supremely. You have no idea how much of a pain in the ass a revision would be without him. That one little adjustment probably would have taken a few minutes."

"Minutes?"

"Indeed, now let's talk about the channel here."

"The drainage channel?" Donovan nodded. "What about it?"

"I understand your desire to adhere to the traditional design, but I would like to remind you that changes can be made. Are you positive this needs to remain a vertical cut in the basin?"

"Huh? How would you change it?"

"Let's first ask ourselves why the form of the drainage channel is a vertical cut on the original."

"Um, because it can be cleaned that way?" Donovan nodded his head, but also clasped his hands together to signal he was waiting for more. "And that's the only way to cut the stone."

"That's good, now what part of what you just said doesn't apply to this design?"

"The . . . stone?"

"Right, your new basin is to be made of steel. I know you didn't go too deep into learning about different material properties, but what are the biggest differences between stone and steel?"

"Is it the melting point? Can I form it a different way?"

"I won't say its an impossibility, but forming a pocket in a block of steel isn't easy. There's another property we can take advantage of."

"The hardness? Maybe the m-malleability?"

"Exactly. Instead of using rope and sand to weather a channel down through the stone, we can make use of steel's lower hardness and tendency to stay in one piece rather than shatter to drill a hole through it. Of course, Arc is likely to make the hole during forming anyway just because he can, but I'd like you to remember that info if you ever end up designing something similar in the future. Also, avoid having turns inside the block. It's fine to have two straight cuts from the outside intersect, but making the drill bit turn inside of the structure is difficult to say the least."

"U-understood, but how will the hole get cleaned?"

"Considering it will be a perfectly circular hole, probably some sort of push stick or plumb with the same diameter. You guys probably tied a small cloth to a rope and pulled it back and forth through the channel, no?"

"I don't know. I forgot to ask."

"Eh, no matter at this point. Stands to reason that any method they had before would also be replicable here. Do you want some sort of mesh or grate over the opening to prevent debris from entering?"

"What would the mesh be made of?"

"Steel. Arc can extrude it into fine little strands then knit them together and weld the edges to the rim of a little cap. Then you can just remove it for cleaning and replace it if it breaks. Did Arc go over it with you before?"

"He, um, he said mesh and I thought he meant something like cotton . . ."

"So you rejected it on the grounds of material waste."

"I'd need to burn it every time, and fine mesh would be too much of a pain to make, so . . ."

"Not an issue, but I think that would have been a fine opportunity to listen to his proposition."

"What if the mesh restricts the flow?"

"The opening could be made much larger to account for the diminished entry area now that it has something to prevent the berries from entering, maybe even having a separate entrance up top to catch what overflows from the channel."

"Then let's go with that, sorry."

"No need to apologize. This was excellently executed for a first project. Your hang-ups being related to misunderstanding what's possible or optimal are perfectly acceptable at this point. It's certainly saved the headache of doing it myself." Donovan scratched his chin as he read through some of the attached information. All of it was interpreted from Titanyana's incomplete grasp on the language, so there were some quotes scattered here and there that didn't make the most sense even with context, however the message being relayed was clear. "A few minutes of review is infinitely preferable to a few hours of research and design."

He caught an ear flick indicating irritation from her, probably related to his comment that this project would have taken only a few hours, but he paid it no mind. 

"So you decided on steel fermentation vats in the end, did you?"

"Y-yes."

"What made you drop the clay idea?"

"Well, um, I thought about how many of these vats we might need, and then about how difficult it might be to move something as fragile as clay around, and then I remembered that we didn't even have a source of clay or a kiln to fire something that big, and that it would take even more time to find and make those things, and then . . . well, I just didn't think we could get one made before the first harvest required them." Her ears drooped in shame. "I still think we should use the clay pots when we get the chance, but if you don't want to-"

"If your people determine clay pots are necessary, then they'll get clay pots. I might not be able to devote my focus to the matter if the situation is otherwise poor, but I've got no reason to stop some enterprising individuals from making them on their own. Anything to help us out of this command economy nightmare."

As much as he wanted to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship among the people, he recognized that now probably wasn't the best time for it. The need for free labor aside, they didn't exactly have money ready for use in this theoretical network of fiscal transactions, and plans to jumpstart it were anticipated to be quite grueling. There might have been a great deal of knowledge regarding the maintenance and development of such systems, but the creation of one from what might as well be scratch? All of the information on hand in that sphere was purely theoretical, and a lot of it presupposed an existing barter market to build from.

That wasn't to say there weren't plans, Donovan and Arc had identified a few possible routes to sparking the engine, they just had the potential for nasty consequences.

"At this point . . . yes, at this point the only thing I'd want is some sort of instruction on how this is to operate. I assume Arc couldn't quite understand your description?"

"Oh, yes. Normally you'd have a ten woman crew, one person to feed berries into the trough, one person to rake the must out of the wheel channel, four people to push the wheel back and forth, and another four to manage the channeling of juice to the vats, clean the wheel, and tag in for the pushers when they get tired." He'd questioned the length of the axle protruding from either side of the wheel, however this was easily explained by a second pair of hands. "The pushers first get the wheel out of its rest pocket and let it roll down to the bottom so they can position themselves on the axle properly. The channel needs to have a shallow slope so they can get it moving to and fro, but once they have a rhythm down they mostly just maintain it. Once they have the wheel moving, berries are fed in bucket by bucket to be crushed until the pushers feel there are enough, at which point the berries stop pouring in and the raker gives a few rolls for as much juice as possible to be squeezed out and drained before raking the must out."

"And it goes onto this grate at the end of the channel here, correct?"

"Normally it would be a clean cloth, but yes. It lets even more of the juice drain into the channel."

"Good to know. Anything else?"

"Um, after the berries are done being crushed, the wheel gets put back in it's place and the whole thing is cleaned. A rag is dropped into the bottom where juice has pooled but couldn't drain and then wrung out into the vat first though. We wouldn't want to waste it."

"Sounds good." Donovan nodded his head, putting the finishing touches onto the mini report for Arc. "May I suggest two more changes?"

"Of course!"

"First, I'd suggest hollowing out the wheel to some extent. Steel is about three times as dense as granite, and I imagine it was already quite difficult to move around. It's an easy enough fix, and depending on how it is done you might end up making it easier on your girls. I'd wager you might even be able to go lighter. Second, I would suggest some sort of disconnect between axle and wheel. I imagine it would be difficult  to implement with wood and stone, but a few ball bearings and a dash of graphite can prevent it from spinning while being pushed."

"Which would probably make it easier to grip, right?"

"Precisely. Any questions?"

"Nope!"

"Then work with Arc on those final changes and mark it complete. I'll authorize it as a priority construction and bring it down with the next load of cargo." He caught the tip of her tail flick in excitement. "Are the berries nearing maturation?"

"We think so. They've progressed past the range of red and orange we usually saw during harvests to yellow and dark green, but there were old paintings depicting the fields with yellow berries, so I think it's more like a return to form. We'll have to see though."

"Definitely keep an eye on it. Some plants on Terra that were otherwise fine could become poisonous in certain soils. Arc's soil analysis suggested it would be extremely unlikely but-"

"It pays to be careful. I understand."

"Good girl." Titanyana stood up as Donovan did, her innocent excitement at a job well done provoking a playful sadism in him as might Diana after a terrible pun. Swiftly as he dared without raising suspicion he closed in, taking advantage of her focus on the tablet. With a gentle nudge from his index finger he brought her face up and to the side just enough for a brief kiss. "How's that as a reward?"