Sweltering Heat and Clay Dreams
"...There is a way." Chester, who looked ready to spring into action at any moment, instead sat inside the shelter, fanning himself with a piece of bark as he pondered.
'I get the concept of using a heavy weight as a flywheel to keep the rotation going... but can I make it out of wood? Stone would probably be best.'
But to drill a hole in a stone, he first needed to drill a hole in a stone. It was a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma.
'Well, if I just suffer through it once, everything will be much easier afterward.'
Lost in thought, Chester cleared away the pile of charcoal from the hearth as he usually did, when his eyes fell on the clay he had laid underneath.
"..." He tapped the clay—something he normally wouldn't have given a second thought—with his finger.
'It's hard.' Was it just because the clay had dried? But if that were the case, it should have shown the deep cracks typical of dried mud. There were none.
Chester cleared away the rest of the charcoal, carefully extinguishing every single ember before returning to the shelter to inspect the clay bed.
'It's turned into a solid slab.' When he tried to lift it gently, it peeled away from the ground with a sharp crack, coming up as a single, flat, rectangular tile.
Who would ever believe this had once been soft mud? As Chester stared at the fire-baked clay slab, Monia quietly went about her own business beside him.
Since Chester was too deep in thought to give her proper answers, Monia had naturally grown quiet as well. Of course, she made sure to express her intense dissatisfaction through her body language, her glares, and her sighs.
For instance, she would stop in the middle of a task just to glare at him for a long, silent moment. Or...
"Haaaaah..." "Haaaaaaaah..." She would sigh loudly and conspicuously. Or...
'Let's see if you can ignore me now!' With that thought, she would creep up to the motionless Chester and press herself flush against him, clinging like a stubborn burr just to be annoying.
She would drape herself over his back, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. Or she would lie down right between his crossed legs, making a complete nuisance of herself.
She even resorted to poking him all over, tickling him, and blowing gently into his ear. She tried absolutely everything.
'Give me some attention!' But Chester remained utterly unresponsive.
'...I knew there was a technology to bake clay into vessels. The Duke once acquired some porcelain from overseas. But wasn't that made by applying something called a glaze?'
Chester compared the crude baked slab in his hands to his memory of that exquisite porcelain.
'Perhaps those extra steps were only necessary to make it look like a work of art and increase its durability. If so, can a basic item like this be made simply by throwing it into a fire?'
Even if it could be baked, he didn't know whether it required direct contact with the flames or indirect heat.
'This is about more than just a simple flywheel.' If he could fashion flat plates, cooking would become infinitely easier. Right now, they had to wash themselves by trickling water from their bamboo canteens, but with a proper basin, they could enjoy a truly refreshing wash.
'Of course, if it's anything like the porcelain the Duke imported, the durability will be terrible. It'll break easily.' Making it thicker would increase its strength, but it would also make it heavier. In a survival situation, traveling light with only the bare essentials to conserve stamina was the golden rule; adding unnecessary weight was out of the question.
'It might not be practical as a portable tool, but just being able to make plates and basins at our base is a massive game-changer.' And that wasn't all.
'What if I could make a pot? Could we boil a proper stew?' Stew. Although Chester frequently made a makeshift hodgepodge stew, a proper stew slow-cooked in a large pot was on an entirely different level.
'It's been so long since I've tasted my mother's cooking.' His mother had been physically disabled. Falling in love with her was the sole reason Chester's father, a hunter who had roamed the world, abandoned his nomadic life to settle down in an impoverished village.
Though frail, his mother was incredibly dexterous and a magnificent cook. She would easily repair the gear Chester's father broke during his rough hunts, and she could whip up delicious meals even with the most meager ingredients.
'My mother's stews always had a bit of a kick to them. It never failed to stimulate the appetite.' On freezing winter days, his mother's stew was the most popular dish in the village. Everyone would gather to eat her hot, spicy stew, forgetting the biting cold and finding the strength to endure the winter.
"Alright, let's find some clay first."
Chester immediately set off into the forest in search of clay. But where exactly did one find clay?
'Dirt is everywhere. Clay is just dirt mixed with water.' After a brief moment of thought, Chester grabbed a sturdy wooden stick and headed toward the roots of a nearby tree.
He used the stick to vigorously dig beneath the roots, clearing away the topsoil and grass. Then, he scooped out the fine, crumbly earth hidden underneath and transferred it into his basket.
Thanks to the thick layer of leaves he had laid at the bottom of the basket, the dirt didn't sift through. He dumped the gathered soil onto a flat stone slab and sprinkled it with water from his canteen.
He added a little water, mixed it, added a bit more, and mixed again. Soon, he had a workable clay. It felt slightly gritty with tiny pebbles, but it wasn't bad.
'This will do.' A few impurities were perfectly fine. In fact, these tiny particles would act as a temper, making the clay stronger once baked.
'It's like building a house.' A house built with a wooden frame inside concrete was far sturdier than one made of concrete alone. As he kneaded the clay, the excess moisture began to evaporate, and the sticky mess became more pliable.
Once the clay reached the right consistency, it became easy to shape. Chester began molding it into a flywheel. It wasn't a complex design. His first priority was determining the ideal weight.
Grabbing a handful of clay, Chester hefted it in his palm to gauge its weight. "..."
'A lot of this weight is just water, isn't it?' Would that water remain after baking?
'Not a chance.' Once fired, all the water inside the clay would evaporate. He couldn't rely on the current wet weight to estimate the final product.
'I need to make it much heavier than I initially thought.' Chester gathered more clay and added it to the pile.
'Since this is for a pump drill and not a spinning top, I thought a small, light weight would suffice, but that's probably a mistake.' How much water was actually mixed into this clay? Without knowing that, estimating the post-fired weight was impossible.
'So, I'll make it excessively heavy to start with.' Excess was fine. If it turned out too heavy, he could always shave it down after it was baked.
'A disc shape is probably best, just like I first thought.' He had considered a conical top shape, but working with the clay made him realize how difficult it would be to keep it perfectly symmetrical. A disc was much simpler.
Since it needed substantial weight, a thin disc wouldn't do. Chester layered the clay to create a thick, flat, circular slab. Then, he used the drill shaft to pierce a hole directly through the center. Because the old flywheel had been removed, the shaft slid through easily, leaving a snug opening.
'I can attach the drill bit after I fit the shaft into the flywheel.' "Done."
Having finished the basic shape of the flywheel, Chester placed it directly onto the campfire burning beside him.
"...Is this really how you do it?" He knew it had to be baked. But was direct fire the right way? Perhaps pottery required a completely different technique.
Prepared to fail and try again as many times as it took, he watched the clay bake. After a short while, he noticed the moisture on the surface of the clay beginning to bubble and boil.
'Huh?' A split second later—BANG! With a loud pop, the clay exploded.
"Whoa!" Pelted by shards of scalding hot clay, Chester frantically wiped the mud off his cheek and splashed water from his canteen onto the sting.
He quickly threw dirt over the campfire to smother the flames, cleared away the shattered clay, and fell into deep thought.
'So direct fire is a no-go.' Shrugging off the failure, Chester quickly molded another flywheel and decided to try a different method.
'Let's test two methods this time.' First, Chester cleared the campfire to dig a shallow pit in the center of the hearth, placing one flywheel inside. Then, he rebuilt the fire over it, intending to bake it using the indirect heat of the embers.
Next, he drove bamboo stakes around the fire and laid green branches across them to fashion a makeshift grill. He placed the second flywheel on top, letting it bake in the rising heat.
'Baking it on a grill means the heat on the top and bottom will be uneven, so I'll have to flip it.' Chester prepared a pair of sticks to turn the clay. He waited patiently, drenched in sweat from the combined heat of the campfire and the sweltering forest.
After some time had passed, Chester sighed. "Well, that's a bust." The flywheel on the grill had cracked apart, the baked outer layer separating completely from the raw clay inside.
'I guess the heat needs to be applied evenly all around.' With that realization, Chester cleared the fire once more and dug up the flywheel buried underneath.
"Oh." As expected, the buried flywheel had lost its moisture and felt significantly lighter than before. But that wasn't the most important thing.
What mattered was that, unlike the exploded one or the split one on the grill, this flywheel had actually baked successfully, even if it was covered in hairline cracks.
"Well, it's cracked, so it's still a failure." Chester applied a bit of pressure to the clay disc. Instantly, the cracks spiderwebbed outward, and the flywheel crumbled into pieces with a dry crunch.
"Looks like I'll have to build a kiln first." Kneading and baking clay was surprisingly fun. It seemed this would make for an excellent pastime to break the monotony of deserted island life.
Chester brushed the clay dust from his hands, a satisfied smile playing on his lips.