Chapter 49: CHAPTER 49 - Casting.
October 1538, Capital City, Dharanikota.
Royal Palace.
WorkShop.
Rudra was tense. The heat from the Furnace did not help the situation. He was sweating all over, and the occasional breeze did little to relieve that discomfort.
"Be careful while pouring. A drop of that falls on your skin, and you can say goodbye to that part!" he warned his workers, as they helped him transport molten metal.
He was in his workshop where he usually did his experiments. This was a place that not many in the palace had access to. It was converted from an unused training ground, near the walls, previously used by the Royal guards.
Royal guards had a new training facility built for them and the old one in the Royal palace was converted for Rudra's personal use.
The old training yard now houses Rudra's gym, his chemical laboratory/Palace brewery, and his blacksmith workshop. Some places are still unused for anything that might come up in the future.
He was in the blacksmith workshop, trying to make the project he was working on, work. For the last month, he was once again holed up in the palace, trying to make a functioning cannon.
"There. Just like that. Calm and steady, boys." he whispered as they carried the large furnace ladle, with the help of a crane and his workers.
In the Ladle, there were nearly 200 kilograms of molten iron. To carry it, you may think the vessel required must be huge, but Iron is 7 times denser than water. All 200 kg of iron was in the ladle, which is no larger than a big bucket.
*TSSSS!!!!!*
The sound of molten metal touching wet sand, and evaporating all moisture, was audible to all of them, yet they continued the pour. In just a few seconds, the Molten, red-hot metal was transferred to the mould in the sand.
One worker carefully observed the mould, checking for any irregularities, while the other worker helped Rudra with the crane. In the mould, the freshly poured liquid metal bubbled violently, not out of the immense heat, but because of trapped air.
"Air vents, check!" signalled the worker observing the mould, confirming the additional vents placed in the mould to let air escape, were working as intended. The last time they tried all of this, it failed because of a few stray air bubbles, which compromised the structural integrity of the cannon.
"Remove the ladle," Rudra instructed the workers, who promptly took over the task that he took the lead in. Without the molten metal in it, it was a lot safer and easier to handle, and as its task was complete, it was useless, at least for the next part of the process.
"This time, it looks like we have a winner, Your Majesty." One of the workers, Somaiah, commented to Rudra. There was some truth to it. The few trail runs had various problems, and casting was one of them. From the looks of it, they had done the steps right till now.
"I told you, I am not the king in this workshop. Call me Rudra or Boss." Rudra absentmindedly commented as he checked the moisture distribution of the sand in the mould.
"Yes, … Boss."
"And Somaiah, You are right. It looks like the casting went well. We should not jump to conclusions just yet, but you have done well, All of you." Rudra complemented his workers. He knew he had their loyalty, but worker appreciation is one of the basic things to keep your workers happy and thus, loyal.
"Thank you, boss!" "Thanks, Boss!" the few workers in the workshop replied one after the other.
"Alright, to get the perfect cast, we have to let the metal rest for a bit. All of you worked hard. Now go take the rest of the day to yourselves."
Once again, the chorus of voices thanked him, and soon, one after the other, they left.
Rudra was the only one left in the workshop. Just before he left the room, he looked around the room, seeing how it changed in the past few months.
What was once a storeroom for the Royal guards, was now turning into a top-of-the-line Blacksmith station. Even since the last month, the changes have been immense.
A few months earlier, he started learning blacksmithing. He knew that, although there were many skilled blacksmiths in the kingdom, only a select few could implement his ideas, without additional input.
So, instead of depending on the others, he decided to learn the craft himself. He didn't whether it was because of the unorganized older memories, or if it was his latent talent in the craft, but he picked up the skill very quickly.
His workshop was in this room initially. It was originally geared towards making small items, so the equipment was of similar size. In the same workshop, he created the first flintlock musket, a few months ago.
But when it came to cannon production, the equipment became unsuitable. There was nothing wrong with it, just that they were not equipped to handle something, in the size of a cannon. It was still not properly equipped to make a large cannon, but, baby steps.
The older smaller furnace was replaced with a new larger one, with added instructions from Rudra to make it better. A pulley crane was added to the roof of the room, with tracks bolted on to guide it around. It had a metal chain, handcrafted, to move heavy weights around.
Cast iron was used for hundreds or even thousands of years, but making something as large as a cannon he was making was deemed difficult due to various factors. One of them is the fact that iron can set quickly, and needs to be transported in large quantities quickly, to cast something large.
That is where the Furnace ladle comes in. Initially, the plan was to use a steel bucket to transport molten iron because it was more resilient to heat. But they soon learned in their many experiments that, while steel didn't outright melt a the temperature of molten iron, it did warp. Quite a bit even, making it a one-time-use product.
So after some tinkering around, Rudra settled on using the same steel bucked, which now had its inner surface lined with fire clay. This meant that, while it still needs to be replaced, the added fire protection meant that, instead of replacing the ladle after a use or two, just relining the fire clay after a few uses was ok.
The heat causes the fire clay to turn into a ceramic of sorts and thus has its properties. Though the task took up a few days, they had finally managed to overcome the hurdle.
Then, Rudra took a look a the cannon blank, resting on the floor. It was an impressive 6 ft tall, the same height as Rudra. The carpenters did an impressive job on it. It provided a shape to make the mould blank in the sand and provided the outer dimensions for the cannon.
The mould itself uses filtered sand, taken right from the shores of Krishna. The outer mould was done using the wooden blank, but the inner bore also needs to be taken care of.
For a regular cannon, a complete metal cylinder was made, and the hole was bored out using a boring machine or a lathe. But Rudra did not have access to them and had to make do with using a cast bore before that machinery was made available to him.
So they are casting the cannon with a bore of 5-6 inches already built in. This severely affected the cannon's integrity and was quite difficult to get right, but sacrifices had to be made for the benefit of the kingdom. He could not leave it undefended for long,
After taking a last look, Rudra closed the door and left the workshop. The cannon will be left alone overnight, and will be transported to the firing range the next morning, if there are no problems with it.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was about to go below the palace walls, casting his house into darkness, or at least as dark as it could be in the afternoon shadow.
"Your Majesty." Vasekar calmly said as he started following Rudra, the dutiful servant that he is.
"Are you waiting for long, Vasekar?" Rudra said as they moved towards the kitchen.
"No, Your Majesty. I posted someone to watch your workshop and notify me of any activity. After I had got to know that your workers left, I figured you wouldn't be that far away." Vasekar said as the duo entered the kitchen.
"Clever. So, How was your first day as the minister of Royal affairs?" Rudra questioned, as he ignored the pleas from the chef to let him worry about food and started collecting ingredients from the pantry.
"A good First day I would say. I had to deal with reports of Crop production, financial woes of people and even a protest or two from our kingdoms more religiously inclined demanding an attendance with you. But Don't you think this is more your job, than mine?"
"A busy day I would say. But I cannot let you waste away, as a glorified property manager and my assistant. You are very capable and It would be a waste to let it go unused." Rudra explained, while the newly made cast iron pan got heated on the wood fire, which was always burning in the kitchen.
"Is this another way you are trying to escape from your Royal duties? You do know…" Vasekar, who was once Rudra's etiquette teacher, tried to give him a lecture but was interrupted by the expression of the chef, who looked miserable. " Do you have to do this, Your Majesty? You are the King, and there is a reason you have staff to do this."
Rudra, while the conversation was going on, cracked a few eggs into the hot oil of the pan. "Cooking? Come on Vasekar. You know I like cooking. It calms my mind. Besides, I eat our chefs' food every day."
"Do you though? I remember teaching you when you were young to always respect those who are working for you. Not only are you disrespecting the chef, whose name you don't know, by cooking yourself, you rarely attend a meal anymore, unless it is delivered to your workshop."
"Calm down, old man. I promise to be more mindful of my actions from now on." he scrambled the eggs in the pan while adding salt, and pepper. "Hey. What is the status on importing the thing I said u to import?"
"You have a captured portuguese diplomat, in the lockup, ever since the port incident. How would you think they reacted when Prabakar's foreign affairs staff reached out to the portuguese, asking for these 'chillies', 'tomato' and 'potato' samples? And they even have to import it from another continent, that is an ocean away from their homeland."
"Huh. I figured That would affect that. Still, That Pinto guy would crack, any day now. No one pisses me off, and escapes the consequences." Rudra explained, while gracefully transferring the prepared food onto a plate. Upon seeing that Veresan had a worried look on his face, he asked, "Hey, are you alright? You seem… worried."
Upon hearing the question, Vasekar just sighed. "I… I don't know, Kid. Miracles seem to follow you around. Just look at all of these. These last few months, everything is seemingly the same, but it's not. Sometimes I wonder, what happened. It feels like the curious and adventurous young boy I had seen growing up before me, had left for that forest, all those months ago, and never returned."
Rudra stopped at those words. He wanted to scream at Vasekar, to tell him that, nothing happened, but he knew that was not the truth. The truth was Rudra died that day, and someone else woke up. Who that someone was, he himself didn't know. Sometimes, he feels like a different person, sometimes he feels like nothing happened and he is just regular old Rudra.
So, he laid those doubts to rest once again. He would address them someday, but that was not today. He did the next best thing he he think of, to pacify the troubling thoughts in Vasekar's mind.
He held up the freshly cooked plate of food, and asked "Do you want Scrambled eggs?"
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