Category: One Among the Dead

Day 488:

The sand mould worked! I have mostly-straight rails of the length I wanted, and they didn’t explode, and they seem to be pretty stable!

Now I  just need to do that a few hundred more times.

Plus they take a loooooooong time to cool.

So I’m going to make more frames, to make more rails, and see where I get with that. It’ll give me something to do in the evenings that isn’t sewing ducken skins together to make leather.

Day 487:

Building my new frame didn’t take long because I’d started one the other night in case something happened, which we all know it did.

(I’m still picking shards of lava-smacked clay out of my hair. Not sure how I didn’t lose an eyeball.)

So now I’m packing sand into it instead of clay. The sand here seems to pack well – the grains look and feel pretty consistent – so i’m hoping I can pack the entire mould, carefully remove the wood templates, pour the metal once the sand has dried, and maybe have rails.

Day 486:

I poured the molten iron into the frame and there was a lot of exploding and I don’t have a frame anymore.

Apparently ceramics shouldn’t be made with high speed and wet clay.

Back to the drawing board.

Day 485: While the clay settles in its mould, I’m going out and chopping down small trees to make sticks, since the whole reason I came back to home base in the first place was that I was out of axe handles.

But I’m also looking at the sticks and thinking I’m going to need a whole lot of these to make the cross rails for the rails. If I don’t anchor them evenly the rails won’t align at their junctions and then the cart or whatever I put on them will jump off the tracks.

I say this having built neither the cart nor its wheels. But I figure if I can’t make consistent rails it really doesn’t matter what else I haven’t made yet.

So, much tree chopping. Which ironically would go faster if I had a diamond axe. Which I’d have if I was down in the mine looking for ore like I said I would be. Which I need to make good tools to go capture sheep to make warm clothes to climb a mountain. Which I need to do to get the heck out of here.

I’m so tired, y’all.

Day 484:

Remember all that clay I was harvesting from the river? The good news is it packs really well. The bad news is it’s really really wet, even now, weeks later. (Probably doesn’t help that I’ve been storing it in a wooden barrel.)

I’m trying to figure out how to pack the frame I built with clay to make the rails without getting it filled with air bubbles, and all I can come up with is soaking it some more and then shaking it.

This is going to take days.