From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 58: Turning Wood into Wheels
It was already dark when we left the mountainside and returned to the cave.

The rain is gradually coming.

There was no thunder or lightning, and the whole forest was immersed in the rustling sound of rain.

Water still seeped into the unfinished wall at the entrance of the cave. Chen Zhou put a few wooden boards on the ditch, but the rain could not penetrate through any gaps and could only provide slight shelter.

Light the lamp, make a fire, and boil water.

While waiting for the water to boil, Chen Zhou separated the three logs he had carried back, leaving two of them to dry before testing, and splitting one log directly.

If you want to bend wood into a wheel, you need to choose wooden strips that are even in length and width and are trimmed straight.

But Chen Zhou knew that his first attempt at bending the wood was just an attempt and the probability of success was slim, so he just trimmed the wood into long strips and prepared to see the effect first.

A large iron kettle of boiling water was reserved for fumigation.

A small stove is used for grilling.

Simply remove the flat copper pan and the flames in the pit will transfer the heat upwards.

Holding the wooden sticks, Chen Zhou repeatedly baked them on the stove pit, keeping a suitable distance to prevent the wood from being ignited or burnt by the flames.

On his first attempt, he didn't get the temperature right. He felt that the moisture in the wood strip had been baked out, and the whole wood strip became a little hot to the touch, so he stopped baking.

As the heating continues, the wood fibers soften.

The long wooden strip looked like its bones had been pulled out, leaving only a stiff "corpse".

Chen Zhou applied force gently and felt that the wooden strip was really bending slowly without breaking, so he increased his strength a little.

Even the softened wooden sticks are harder than rattan sticks, and cannot be broken without a lot of effort.

In the process of bending the wood, Chen Zhou discovered a problem - due to the size of the stove, the wood strips were baked unevenly. The areas that had just been heated were softer, while the areas that had cooled were hard and less tough.

Turning the wheel is a continuous process that creates changes to the entire wood strip.

Uneven heating will cause the entire wooden strip to be soft in some places and hard in others, making it easy to break during the bending process, or it may be impossible to bend it into the desired shape due to its stiffness.

Putting down the wooden stick that he had bent into a slightly curved shape, and looking at the burning stove, Chen Zhou thought that roasting with fire would not work for the time being.

The water in the iron kettle has been boiling for a while, it's time to try fumigation.

The temperature of the wood strips transferred by the water vapor may last longer, and the heat may also soften the wood and improve the effect of the wood bending.

Moreover, water vapor is not as dangerous as flame and cannot ignite the wooden stick. Just keep the wooden stick close to the mouth of the iron kettle to enjoy the influence of water vapor, which is less worry-free.

……

Open the lid to release the steam.

Chen Zhou pinched the end of the wooden strip, placed its front end on the edge of the pot, and moved it slowly to ensure that the power of the steam could act on every inch of the wooden strip.

After a while, when the whole wooden strip was fumigated, he tried to bend it again.

To assist in this attempt, he brought a large iron can over, pressed the wooden strip against the thickest part of the can, and bent it with force, trying to make it fit the body of the can and form a complete circle.

The effect of steam fumigation is much stronger than baking, but it cannot solve the problem of uneven heating.

After steaming for nearly an hour, the entire pot of water boiled down, but the bent wooden strips were still soft and hard, and the shape could not be adjusted at will.

During this process, Chen Zhou also discovered a new problem:

Even if he could make the entire wooden strip heat evenly, he couldn't bend it into a complete circle. At most, he could bend it into two semicircles of the same size, and then adjust and splice it together after it cooled and hardened.

With a large iron can, it is no problem to complete a semicircle with the same curvature, but uneven heating is a headache.

Considering the size of the wheel, each wooden strip must be at least one meter long. In order to fumigate this meter-long wooden strip, he had to build a pipe that could hold the steam.

The pipe can be made of brick, ceramic pipe or metal, sealed at the front and open at the back, leaving an opening at the bottom for steam to enter.

After the water boils, steam diffuses into the pipe, forming a semi-enclosed high-temperature area, which can fumigate the entire wooden strip and complete the first step of wood bending.

If it is baking wood strips, the difficulty of manufacturing the equipment is relatively simpler than fumigation.

Chen Zhou's initial idea was to build a special long furnace with two parallel furnaces facing each other, or to build a hollow furnace more than one meter high.

When heating the wood strips, just like quenching a sword, place the wood strips horizontally between the two furnaces, or vertically in the furnace center, so that the heat from all sides acts evenly on the wood strips, and the ideal effect should be achieved.

Most importantly, both long furnaces and hollow furnaces do not require bricks, ceramics or metal materials. They can be built with stones and white mud, which is much easier to build than steam fumigation pipes.

……

The experiment lasted for more than three hours, and all the firewood stored in the kitchen was burned up.

After putting down two slightly curved pieces of wood, Chen Zhou knew that he was still far from success.

The first attempt obviously ended in failure, but in the process he gained valuable experience.

After the other two fake poplars are dried, you can build a hollow stove or fumigation pipe and try again.

Take out a notebook and write down your feelings and ideas.

Chen Zhou deliberately flipped through the words he had written with pineapple ink a few days ago, and was relieved to see that the handwriting had not faded or disappeared.

He had heard that some natural pigments would disappear on their own.

Those pigments contain many volatile ingredients and are brightly colored at first, but as time goes by, the main ingredients evaporate and the colors gradually fade or even disappear completely.

Just now, when he was drawing the structure diagram of the hollow furnace in his notebook, he suddenly thought of pineapple ink. Worried that it was one of the rare self-disappearing pigments, he flipped forward a few pages.

Fortunately, it is not so easy to come across natural pigments that disappear on their own.

Several months have passed, but the pink and purple handwriting is still clearly visible on the paper.

……

Turn off the lights and put the notebook back in the drawer.

Lying in bed, unable to fall asleep for a while, Chen Zhou reviewed the log bending experiment that had just ended in his mind.

He felt that he would never be able to master the technique of bending wood into wheels in the short term.

Now that he urgently needed a cart, the most suitable and quickest way for him was to saw off a large tree with a diameter of about one meter, then cut the trunk into thick round slices, and then chisel them into regular circles, hollow out the middle part to reduce the weight, and make wheels.

In order to save time better, he planned to make a wheelbarrow with the axle made of metal pipe.

The wheels of the cart are the most time-consuming and complex parts to manufacture.

If you make a two-wheeled cart, you have to make sure the two wheels are as consistent in size as possible, and you also have to adjust the axle. This takes much more time and energy than making a unicycle, but the user experience is not much better than a unicycle.

In addition to making wheelbarrows to assist in transportation, he also wanted to build a flat road between the camp and the cave.

The path only needs to be one meter wide, and there should be no tree roots, stones, potholes or dirt on the road, so that a wheelbarrow can pass smoothly.

Located on a pristine island, we can't expect too much.

Even if you just have a simple path like this, the wear rate of the wheelbarrow's wheels will be significantly reduced and the efficiency of transportation will be greatly improved.

(End of this chapter)