The Grantville Gazette - Vol 9 Part 9

Jakob stepped over to the forge and looked through the heat shimmer at the steel blank. He stepped back and he grabbed the drop forge's drive belt lever. All signs of humor left the young blacksmith's face and he carefully nudged the drive belt onto the pulley. With a groan the drop forge's ram rose. With equal care Jakob set the drop lever and disengaged the drive belt.

"Rudy," Jakob called, "bring the blank."

Rudy fished the white-hot bolt blank out of the forge's fire with a pair of long tongs. He placed the blank on the drop forge's die plate and stepped back. Jakob took the tongs from Rudy and poked fussily at the blank. Satisfied, he also stepped back.

"Everybody clear?" Jakob asked. Each blacksmith answered, "Clear."

Max held his breath and waited. Herr Reardon and Herr McConnell had stressed one last step for "safety." Jakob reached for the drop lever and hesitated. He turned away and walked once around the drop forge, checking that everyone was standing well back from it. When he reached the drop lever he glanced around again and called out, "Dropping!"

KATHUNK! The floor shook as the ram dropped. Tools lying on workbenches jumped and added their clinks and clanks. A carelessly placed bar clattered on the floor.

Jakob re-engaged the drive belt pulley and the ram groaned upward again. Setting the drop lever, Jakob waved theatrically at the exposed die. Left behind in the die was the newly forged bolt blank.

"Wow!" Heinrich yelled. "That's great! And so fast! Can you do more than one bolt at a time?"

"If they are small enough," Jakob answered proudly. "This one is too big and has to be done alone but we've got dies that do two, four, and six smaller bolts at a time."

"What happens to it now?"

Jakob looked over at Max. Max allowed himself a slight smile. "Go ahead, Jakob. Explain it."

"First we pry this out of the die." Jakob picked up a short pry bar and moved nearer the drop forge.

"We'll let it cool off and a lowly apprentice gets to remove the flashing." Jakob pointed with the pry bar.

"Then it goes to the thread rolling machine."

"None of the other blacksmiths around here have drop forges, do they?" Heinrich asked.

"No. This is the first. It's also the first to use steam power," Jakob answered with pride.

"Come on, Jakob," Rudy spoke up. "It's getting late."

"Keep your pants on, Rudy," Jakob jibed back. "I don't know why you're so worried. The frauleins prefer Heinrich or me. You're so ugly . . ."

"Journeyman Neder. Apprentice Betche," Max said sternly.

Both boys settled down and Jakob began prying the bolt blank out of the die. It was stuck and he grunted.

Heinrich looked puzzled. "Why won't it come out?"

"If you'd had a ton of iron dropped on you . . ." Jakob moved, prying the bolt head from a different angle.

"They often stick." Max answered for Jakob. "The up-time machines have a device that pushes the blank back out. This is just a simple machine so we have to pry the blanks out."

"Some of them," Jakob panted, "are more stubborn than . . ." His left foot slipped a bit before finding purchase on the drop lever. The ram dropped.

Jakob's right arm was under the ram as it slammed down and its weight pulled him down and forward into the side of the drop forge. He could hear someone screaming before things got bleary.

Rudy leapt forward and grabbed Jakob, keeping him from pulling on the ruin of his arm. Heinrich joined him in supporting Jakob.

"Carl, Rolf, get a bar. We have to lift the ram!" Max shouted. He grabbed a large pry bar leaning against a bench. Rolf and Carl-Maria seized others turned to the drop forge.

"Ready?" Max asked, his voice tight.

"Ready," Rolf replied and set his pry bar.

"Ready," Carl-Maria echoed.

"Karl, Hans, the wedges, quickly!" Max ordered. "We cannot hold it up long. On three. One, two, three. Huh!" The ram rose reluctantly until it was far enough up for the young apprentices to slip the wedges in a little way.

"Again. One, two, three!"

The ram grudgingly moved up a few inches. It was enough for Karl and Hans to shove the wedges fully into place.

When the ram's weight came off Jakob's arm, the severed artery began to spurt. Heinrich let go of Jakob and stood up. He pulled his belt off and whipped it around the remains of Jakob's arm, tightening it until the spurting stopped. Heinrich tugged on the belt end, thinking to neaten up his improvised tourniquet but it seemed to be caught on something.

"Sorry, Heinrich," Rudy said. "I gave him the end to bite down on. Hans! Get over here and get my belt off."

"Rudy, I think that you can let him down to the floor now." Max spoke slowly and calmly. "Rolf, your English is best. Call the hospital and tell them what has happened. We need their ambulance here as fast as possible."

"Yes, sir." Rolf bolted for the shop office and its telephone.

"How is he?" Herman Glauber's face was full of concern.

"Sleeping. He woke up for a bit and tried to speak. The doctors say that he'll live. They worked on him-operated-for hours. The right arm is gone below his elbow." Martin's voice shook. He wavered unsteadily toward a chair in the dark living room. "The doctors tell me that they can stop the wound festering. He might even regain sight in his eye. For now Jakob is out of pain and his life is in the hands of G.o.d and the American doctors."

"Good, good. Jakob's a good boy, smart, too. Here, just sit and I'll fetch you something to eat and drink. No." Glauber waved off Martin's feeble protest. "Frau Kunze left some dinner in the refrigerator. Iknow how to heat it up quickly."

Martin sank back into the chair, suddenly realizing how tired he was. He closed his eyes for just a moment . . .

"Martin, wake up. You need to eat something before you sleep."

"What? Ah, thank you, Herman, thank you." Martin struggled to open his eyes. The steam coming off the bowl of stew brought a loud growl from his stomach, reminding him he'd not eaten for a long time.

"What time is it?"

"Just coming up on two A.M. I should say, two A.M. Thursday morning." Herman sat on the couch.

"Have you had anything to eat or drink since Tuesday's lunch? Oh, and do Jakob's parents know about the accident?"

"Huh. I'm not sure when I last ate," Martin choked out around a thick slice of bread. "I don't remember eating. As for parents, Jakob's are dead. It was his cousin that signed the apprenticeship papers. I think that they've moved back up to Madgeburg. The cousin is a mason. Frau Kunze will know."

Glauber turned on the lamp sitting next to the couch and settled back. "Yes, she will know. If they are still in town she has probably already told them about it. What happened? Do you know?"

Carefully placing his tray on the coffee table, Martin gathered his thoughts. "Yes . . . I got there after it happened, but soon enough that Max had just sent for the . . ." fumbling for the English word, Martin finally gave up; his mind wasn't up to it. ". . . the hospital wagon."

"Ah, the ambulance."

"Yes, that's it. Ambulance. Max, Carl-Maria, and Rolf got the ram up and drove wedges in to hold it up.

Rudy was holding Jakob. He stuffed the end of his belt between the boy's teeth to give him something to bite on. Heinrich was there, too. He, Rudy, and Jakob had intended to go off to the Gardens together.

Heinrich bound up Jakob's arm. The doctors said that it was Heinrich's actions that stopped Jakob from bleeding to death."

"Ah, yes. Adolf got some of that out of Heinrich. Not the part about saving Jakob, though. According to Heinrich the accident is his fault. He dared Jakob to do something-load the blank?-in a hurry so that they could leave early," Herman Glauber stated flatly. "If so . . ."

"No!" the volume of his reply startled Martin and he continued in a quieter tone. "No, Heinrich wasnot at fault. That much I got from Max who also tried to take the blame." Martin rubbed his face and sighed in frustration. "It was a silly accident. We were running bolt blanks for the new farm machines and we're behind because USE Steel was late delivering the metal. Everyone was hurrying and we shouldn't have been. You've seen the drop forge."

"I have, but I don't understand it."

"We make up blanks that have enough steel or iron to make the wrench or bolt or what ever part we want. The blanks are heated in the forge and are placed on the die and then the ram and punch are dropped. The weight presses the hot blank into the die. Then the punch and ram are raised and we pry out the formed piece." "Yes, I remember seeing that when you first installed it. But the part I saw didn't look right." Herman shook his head. "Not right at all. It had the form of a wrench in the middle but was surrounded by a skirt of thin metal."

"Oh, yes, that's the flashing along the parting line-extra metal that squeezes out where the punch and die meet. It gets cleaned off later. The hardest part of the operation often is prying the formed piece out of the die. The Americans' machines have a piece that forces the part out. Of course the American machines also automatically heated and fed the parts. Ours . . . ours is a simpler machine."

"Simpler, and one that we could make. How many years will it be until we can make machines like the Americans' had? Or will it be decades?" Glauber snorted in disagreement. "Herr Reardon himself complimented you on your design. And I've heard Herr McConnell bragging about how cleverly it works. You figured out that a small steam engine was all the power needed. The Americans kept saying it needed a big electric motor-a motor that could not be built yet."

"Well, yes. It might be decades . . ." mused Martin, distracted from his recollection of Jakob's accident and injuries.

Glauber's voice brought Martin back to present. "The ram and punch are the part on top, correct, the part that drops down?"

"Yes, and that is just what happened. Jakob was reaching in to pry out the formed part. Somehow he kicked the drop lever. When it came down on his arm, his face slammed against the ram. The cheekbone broke and fragments went up into the eye. I thought he was dying when we got to the hospital. Herr Doctor Nichols himself a.s.sured me Jakob would live."

"The Moor? Ah, I've heard that he does miraculous work. If the Moor says so then the boy will live.

What job will you give Jakob when he is well? He's a smart boy and he learns things quickly. Adolf could use a bookkeeper in the furniture shop . . ."

"No, not a charity job-he'd not like it. Jakob is a blacksmith to his heart. Have you seen the steel rulers we made?"

"Seen them? I have two of them in my tool box. They are as good as those the Americans brought from up-time."

Martin smiled in agreement. "Yes, yes, I'm proud of those rulers. Jakob did much of the work. In fact, he built a pair of little machines that we use to make them. He's even trained two girls to paint in the numbers and lines."

"Girls? When did you hire girl apprentices?" Herman chuckled. "Now if word of that gets to Hubner-oh, what a fuss he'll raise!"

"No, no, not apprentices. Actually the girls are part of the cleaning crew. Jakob worked many late nights on his little machines and these two girls kept asking him questions. The painting takes a very steady hand and a fine eye. He told me that he was tired of being the only one of us who could paint the rulers properly so he got this idea . . ."

"And got the girls to do the work." Glauber shook his head. "That boy will go far. Are you paying the girls extra for their work?" "Yes, they get a dollar for each ruler that pa.s.ses Jakob's inspection." Sighing Martin leaned back. He was starting to feel the tension ebb from his shoulders and back. "Jakob's young, but those rulers are journeyman level work. I think we should give him his papers and his own little shop. Those rulers sell as fast as we can make them, you know. There are other fine instruments we've been looking at, too. Just a week ago one of the Americans from the school came by with an odd kind of ruler, one they use for drafting. He wants us to try and reproduce it. I've been meaning to talk to you and Adolf about it because it can be made from wood. That small shop, two doors down, is vacant. That's the place for making steel rulers and other fine instruments-away from the dirt and smoke of the forge. By the time Jakob comes out of the hospital, I think we could have it set up. Hubner be d.a.m.ned. I'll hire the girls full time to a.s.sist him and get him some likely young boys as apprentices."

"Ah, hard work and new ideas . . ." a beaming Glauber started.

". . . make for wealth." finished Martin, smiling back.

If at First You Don't Succeed . . .

by Paula Goodlett

"That will never work."

Margaret looked up at her younger brother, Nathan, and stuck her tongue out at him. "Says you. And what do you know, what with all your years of experience?"

"Pa says it won't work. And you've wasted your time. Time you could have been doing something more useful."

Nathan was only six. And kind of a pain in the rear. Margaret sighed. "I worked for the blacksmith's wife for a fortnight to earn these. It's mine and I'll do what I want with it." She kept pushing the tiny pins through the length of leather. She'd marked the leather with a dot in every place it needed one of the pins.

She'd already finished the shorter piece that went on the small wooden drum. This length was for the larger drum and she had a thin strip of leather that would make a figure eight and follow the drawing she had. The drawing made sense. She could see that if you turned the crank, the drums would rotate and thewool would be drawn in and onto the larger drum. It would be nice and straight and let her spin finer thread. That's what the lettering under the drawing claimed, at any rate.

"Pa still says it won't work."

"We'll see then. There, I've finished the pins." Margaret stared at the drawing again. "Now I just have to glue this to the larger drum, tack it down, then put it together. And I'll be ready to try it tomorrow.

"Won't work."

Margaret just glared at him.

"h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation!" Margaret glared at the machine she'd built. "It should work. It looks exactly like the drawing."

Nathan wiped his nose on his arm, then peered at the paper. He was terribly short-sighted and usually had to hold anything he wanted to see close to his nose. "Hmm."

"Hmm, what?" The tangled mess of wool just wasn't carding properly. It was straighter than it would have been in the usual locks, but it wasn't as straight and pretty as the hand drawn picture showed it could be.

Nathan peered again. "Well, looks to me like you've done your pins wrong. See this?" He handed her the drawing. "Those little pins? They've all got a bend in them. In fact, it looks to me like the pins on the big drum and the little drum point in the same direction. And it isn't up, like yours are."

Margaret stared at the drawing. Just barely, if she looked really hard, she could see what Nathan was talking about. Then she looked at her homemade "drum carder" and the hundreds of tiny pins. She felt like weeping for just a moment. "Well then. I suppose I'll just have to find a way to bend them, won't I?"

Waves of Change

by Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff

"I WANT TO LISTEN!!!" Joseph screamed, making it impossible for anyone to listen.