191. Iron and Steel Ambition 3
Chapter 191 Iron and Steel Ambition 3
Guy Burns arrived at the lord’s mansion at 1:30 p.m. After taking a small seat in the parlor, the chief secretary came to invite him to meet with the master of the place.
After entering the lord’s office, he was first surprised at the simplicity of the furnishings, which did not look like the daily work of a nobleman of the rank of earl.
Then he saw the local lord Paul Greiman, as the outside world legend has it, he is very young, looks only about fifteen years old, this is the person who came up with the original design of the harvester ah.
At this moment this young count was standing not far from the door, seemingly greeting him.
Burns was about to salute according to the etiquette of visiting a high-ranking noble, but was interrupted by the other party’s voice.
“Welcome, Mr. Burns.”
Paul spoke first, stepping forward and extending his right hand to shake the other’s hand, then shaking it slightly up and down.
Was this Northwesterner etiquette? Rather simple, Burns felt the force coming from the other’s hand and subconsciously gripped Paul’s hand slightly harder as well.
“Greetings, Earl Gleeman. It’s such an honor to meet you, I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I saw that reaper. Oh! What a genius creation.”
Such bluntness in the first sentence, worthy of a man with a mind for technology?
“Haha! It’s also an honor to be recognized by an expert like you. Please take a seat!”
“No where, you’re really too modest.”
After both the host and the guest were seated, Paul first praised him for his merits in the development of springs, and then stated the purpose of finding him over – he intended to put him in charge of developing a set of hydrodynamic blower system to be used in his own soon to be newly constructed iron factory.
“Blower system? If His Excellency the Earl is going to use water power instead of manpower to drive the blower?”
“Exactly, and those traditional blowers don’t fulfill my needs, I need a blower with higher efficiency.”
Burns knew that the blowers widely used in metal smelting today were blower pouches made of animal skins, with air ducts and piston inlets controlled by an operator at each end of the pouch, and when the air was being fed, the operator tugged up on the pouch with a rope, then stepped on it to drum the air into the furnace, and each furnace was equipped with four blowers, operated by two men facing each other.
How much wind did the lords need?
Paul spread out a sheet of paper on the table with a drawing of the construction of a small ironmaking blast furnace, small but much larger than current furnaces.
“In my ironworks I shall employ a new kind of furnace, such as is drawn in the picture, and employ also a new kind of fuel, coke, which, however, does not burn as readily as charcoal, and must be fueled by the use of a greater amount of wind, so I have devised a new system of blast wind –Piston Blower. Of course, this is only a preliminary design, and it will require you to continue to optimize and refine it.”
A wooden piston blower was carried into the office by the servants, and the two men discussed around it.
There was a handle on top of this bellows, and when Burns pulled this handle outward, the air outlet blew out the wind, and when he pushed the handle inward back to its original position, the air outlet surprisingly continued to blow out the wind.
He tsked, “Lord Earl, may I take it apart and look at it?”
“Of course, please feel free to study it.”
And so the bellows was disassembled, and Burns quickly figured out its inner workings.
The interior of the airbox was fitted with a piston plate, and there was a rectangular duct in the lower part of one side of the box, with front and rear openings to the box, and an outward-facing outlet in the center.
A single-page, double-positioned flap inside the air outlet allows the air outlet to communicate with one half of the square tube, blocking the air flow between the air outlet and the other half of the square tube. The two portions of the square tube are pushed by airflow to alternate with the air outlet.
When the piston plate reciprocates back and forth, it can press the air out, thus realizing continuous air blowing.
“A simple yet ingenious design, it is capable of supplying air continuously without stopping than a bladder blower.” Burns commented, looking at the interior of the blower box in thought for a long time, and offered his suggestion, “I think the square box could be changed to a cylinder shape, which would be able to withstand higher wind pressure.”
Paul nodded, “As I said this is only a preliminary design, please be bold and experiment with improvements. In addition to turning it into a cylinder shape, perhaps you could try making it out of metal instead, after all, things made of wood are not as secure as those made of metal.”
“That’s not necessarily true, but I’ll try. Indeed, as long as you can design a reasonable hydrodynamic drive system, you can continuously blow air into the refining furnace through this kind of airbox.”
Curious, he asked, “What fuel prompted the ability to come up with such a blower?”
Paul set a dark stone on the table, “Coke.”
“Isn’t that the fuel coal commonly used in the Northwest? It seems to burn so easily.”
“No, this is what you get when you process the coal further; the sulfur in the coal would make the iron made unusable. And coke won’t burn sufficiently under ordinary conditions, so I need this new blower and a power system that can drive it continuously.”
“Leave it to me, Lord Count! I will live up to your expectations!”
“Good luck!”
“Then, if there is nothing else, I will take my leave.”
It looked as if Mr. Burns was already anxious to start his new job.
Paul, however, didn’t let him go, “There’s no hurry, Mr. Burns. I’m interested in your previous experience, would you like to talk to me?”
Burns tensed for a moment, Earl Graiman wasn’t going to talk about his previous imprisonment, was he?
His face rose and turned red, along with his neck.
“My lord, if you are referring to the matter of my imprisonment, then it is entirely that there is a villain who is framing me, and all the accusations are made out of nothing, out of thin air.”
This was a shame that lingered in his life.
“Please don’t be nervous, I don’t mind at all about this matter of yours.”
Paul smiled and gestured for the other party not to get excited, he already knew why Burns was in jail from Hansel, and his matter was still quite widely circulated in the kingdom.
“I heard Sir Abbott say that you don’t seem to be very well liked in the kingdom, especially among your peers?”
“Well …… I admit that they and I have different philosophies, and we can’t even say the same thing.”
He didn’t directly state that his imprisonment was related to his peers, after all, he didn’t have direct evidence in his hands.
“Then what kind of philosophy is it based on that makes you willing to teach those lower class people about mechanics for free, so much so that you risk being ostracized and suppressed by your peers?”
This was what Paul had wanted to ask from the start; perhaps, he could find a like-minded person in this world.
Thanks to “Zartoo” for the reward!
(End of chapter)