Author: kirabug

Day 237:

So if I carefully carve a long trench in a length of solid granite (since I certainly have enough of it) and then fill it with iron ore, I might be able to make a rail. And then if I douse it with cold water, that should be enough to shrink it to pull it out of the granite.

And then I just have to do it a couple dozen times over the course of a few weeks to actually make enough rails to move anything.

And then I need to do the same thing for curved pieces, or develop something strong enough to curve straight pieces, all while not snapping them, with the knowledge that my iron is still weak enough that I go through 20 iron pickaxes in the amount of time it would’ve taken me to wear out the battery in one laser cutter if The Company was here running this mission.

I’m thinking going back to digging is my best bet. This bucket of lava can just sit here for now. It’s got to cool down eventually, right?

Day 235:

The bucket worked.

Believe you me, filling a bucket with lava was no easy trick. First I had to find a lava fall, then I had to find a part of the lava fall that wasn’t flowing like water because that’s a bit more than I wanted to deal with, then I had to figure out how to divert some of it without melting the bucket. I mean, it’s really hard to tell where to apply lava to prevent bucket failure.

Strangely, a glass spoon worked best.

(Don’t ask when I made the glass spoon, just know that occasionally a person gets tired of getting splinters when they’re not good at making wooden spoons.)

So yes, lava in a bucket is just fine. It makes the bucket REALLY FREAKING HOT, but other than that small detail, and the fact that it doesn’t make any damn sense, it’s pretty handle.

Day 236:

It is too hot to carry. It eats the handle. Apparently the lava does not like to be moved.

I’m beginning to contemplate the idea of building some kind of rail system.

You’d think I would have thought of something like that a long time before, so that perhaps I didn’t have to carry bags of rocks around. But see, that would have been smart. And also that would’ve meant reinventing the wheel.

The thing is, creating wheels isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. It’s not like I have a jigsaw sitting around to carve the wood with. And I don’t have any engines to get a log spinning fast enough to smooth it. I could make a sand cast and pour an iron wheel, but that has its own challenges. For one thing, even the slightest flat spot can make a wheel useless, and for another, putting a flange on a wheel takes some special doing if one wants the rail car to not derail every time one goes around a curve.

And don’t get me started on making the rails themselves.

On the other hand, portable buckets of lava could come in handy. Like, could I forge things out of lava rock? Or dump them on zombies? I have so many questions and a hot bucket of lava (somehow it hasn’t cooled).

Day 234:

Discovered that if I put lava in a glass bowl, the glass is fine, but if I put a glass bowl in lava, the glass bowl melts.

This place is so weird.

Trying a bucket next.

Day 233: On the other hand, any day that you can say “I connected two previously disconnected passages, thus cutting a good 4 minutes off of my commute to the dig site” is a good day.

Today is a good day.

Also, the egg white seems to paint over the map pretty well but I’m thinking flour might do a better job. I haven’t discovered any bleach kind of thing yet.