Rurik intended to create an important facility for the Russians in this far north that they had never seen before, let alone imagined.
No one has any idea what the word "crane" means and what kind of positive changes it can bring. Everyone only knows that the equipment Rurik wants to make is capable of transporting heavy wood to cargo.
Rurik even boasted about the capabilities of the sled, saying that once the construction of this thing is completed, only two to four people will be needed to complete tasks that previously required twenty people.
If anyone else had said this, it would have been nonsense.
The words came out of Rurik's mouth, and everyone believed them to be true. Now, a group of strong Russian hunters suddenly turned into lumberjacks and carpenters.
Do you still want to hunt in winter? Maybe it’s no longer possible.
More than a hundred Rus' hunters who were good at logging and wood processing were lured to stay by Rurik with very real rewards.
The so-called running north to catch ferrets is to seek money, but rare ferrets are not often found, and hunting in extremely cold conditions is also very risky. Since they are all seeking money, Lord Rurik is willing to give
All the people who work for him have food and silver coins. Why not do this business of selling labor force?
Otto felt that his son's decision was a bit ridiculous. The strongest hunters stayed behind, making this year's hunting situation complicated.
"You just stay here and don't go there. I will take the tribe to catch the bears." Without further words, Otto led his "mighty" hunting team and rushed east along the coastline. As for when he will come back, Shao
It will probably take a month.
The main members of the hunting team are all there, and they intend to rush to the Oulu River Basin to compete with the local Kovin tribe for leather resources in the forest. By the way, they are also exploring and looking for new opportunities.
For example, the news about the Tavastians coming from the mouths of the Kovin people. If it is really discovered that these tribes have not surrendered to the Rus, Otto is not someone like Rurik who needs to think about it. He will not talk about it.
The truth is to attack directly. If you don't surrender, you are a potential enemy. Hunting enemies is a kind of hunting with great benefits.
Ironburg has been crowded for only four days, and both the permanent and temporary residents of the settlement have dropped significantly.
But the settlement was still bustling with activity. Rurik forcefully mobilized 300 men and all Covin women, a total of nearly 500 people, and under his personal control, he created a wonder - a large wooden rat cage.
crane.
In terms of principle alone, the squirrel cage crane is not a complex machine. For Rurik, who has received education in mechanical manufacturing and has made great achievements in this field, he naturally feels that it is simple.
In fact, it is clearly a Roman relic and was created by classical mechanical knowledge inherited from ancient Greece.
The Western Empire collapsed, and the inheritance of knowledge from the old era was also interrupted. Although the Carolingian Renaissance in Frankfurt salvaged some Western Roman heritage. Knowledge in building technology, painting, and engineering machinery was not available.
Now that the knowledge from Eastern Rome and the Great Eclipse is flowing in again, no one from the Franks to the nobles to the farmers knows what a squirrel cage crane is.
Fortunately, they at least know very basic knowledge such as the principle of leverage, so they are able to build stone castles.
In the current era, only those lords in the northern Franks, because they are on the front line of expansion and resistance to foreign counterattacks, have the motivation to spend huge sums of money to build stone castles. As for ordinary lords, they just sharpen wooden stakes and pestles.
On the ground, a so-called castle is built with pure wood.
What even the Franks didn't understand, the Viking tribes around the Baltic Sea had no way of knowing.
Today, Rurik is going to build and put the squirrel cage crane into use at the settlement of Ironburg on the banks of the Kemi River, at the end of the Gulf of Bothnia.
Because this is a great piece of equipment that must be manufactured. It is currently designed to serve winter material shipments. Those reindeer sleighs are equivalent to the "load trucks" of this era. Of course, it is very dependent on the fact that the earth and oceans are frozen.
, in warm periods, it can naturally be used as an ore loader for reindeer trolleys (with a very limited load capacity).
When it became successful, similar designs were used to build port machinery equipment for the terminals at Fort Ross and Ellenborough.
Rurik had to take precautions and consider that in the new era when there are more and more ships imitating Caravel-type sea-going ships, the loading and unloading of port supplies can no longer rely solely on porters. Moreover, the population of the Ross tribe is really limited.
Moreover, human resources are relatively dispersed, but they are highly dependent on ocean transportation of materials.
It is necessary to build long-arm port machinery cranes in ports, and even wooden gantry cranes are needed in the future.
After the plan was finalized, I even boasted about it to my father. If I neglected this matter, my reputation would be damaged.
Rurik called his workers into action.
It is too far-fetched to expect illiterate people to do complex work. The quality of the population under Ross's control is like this. Rurik has no extravagant expectations on their craftsmanship, only hoping that the "carpenters" among them are as good at processing as they claim to be.
wood.
After all, Rurik is a person who understands the management principles of "sweatshop" in the 21st century.
It is completely unrealistic to expect the tribesmen to really work hard for eighteen hours a day, like the English workers in the first industrial revolution. Because those bankrupt farmers do not have the right to beg, let alone go into the mountains and forests to become hunters.
In addition to giving the early factory owners a way to work, the only other way was to immigrate to the other side of the world and pioneer the wild west of the new world.
On the whole, the Russian people are still original, and Rurik cannot force them too much, even if his status is extremely noble.
Another factor limiting their working hours is the absolute lack of lighting at night.
The working time for building cranes is mainly during the limited daytime. When night is completely covered, it becomes unrealistic to continue the work in an all-round way.
In this way, Rurik divided his people into groups in order to maximize the efficiency that could be implemented within the limited day time.
People took action, some were responsible for sawing huge fir trees, some were responsible for cutting pine boards, and some were twisting hemp rope.
The most critical part of the squirrel cage crane is a batch of bearings made of metal. Only to manufacture these, Rurik decided to personally supervise the work of the Koven blacksmith.
As for the women, their biggest job is to be responsible for logistics. They have to take charge of cooking and laundry. When they have free time, they also have to help with the important work of twisting hemp rope.
More than 300 strong men turned Ironburg into a huge wood processing factory.
Especially for the six huge fir trees, Rurik never imagined that they would become the first wood to be processed for the smooth construction and use of the crane.
Why? Just because the wood quality of spruce is better than that of red pine, and it can withstand greater pulling force. Besides, they have been left in the dry and cold outdoors for more than a month, and they have become more tolerant.
Without oak, Rurik had to use spruce to make all the weighing parts of the equipment.
In this way, the ten pieces of wood in the middle part of the spruce trunk were slowly cut off by the two-person saw. Does a small boat with a displacement of fifty tons like Caravel need a thirty-meter-long mast? Only ten meters is enough.
That's enough! That's what Rurik thought, but with ten stikas and a nine-meter-eight-meter-long tree trunk placed in the snow, it was still very long.
In order to ensure the stability and resistance of the equipment to settlement, two cranes were built at a distance of about ten meters to lay the foundation outside the west gate of Ellenburg.
The strong man dug into the frozen soil and used manpower and reindeer strength to lay down two thick fir wood piles. The fir trees were quickly erected on top of the wooden piles. One end could be said to look up at the sky, while the other end was buried in the soil. This was very strange.
The thick wooden pole is the permanent fixed boom of the crane.
At its rear end, two "squirrel cages" with a diameter of four stikas are installed. The operator will walk in the cage and drive the bearing to rotate to continuously tighten the hemp rope to achieve the lifting of the crane. In order to ensure that the operator does not
It requires too much physical strength, and of course a pulley block must be used at the boom.
This is a device with an uncomplicated structure. Rurik initially thought of making a ratchet system. He especially thought of the "two-way ratchet wrench" of later generations. He could completely use this type of design to give the "ratchet" system.
"Cage" is a ratchet retracting and unwinding system, but it is still too complicated to think about.
Ratchet facilities are still needed, even if Rurik feels that the friction of the large amount of hemp rope wrapped around the bearing and the weight of the squirrel cage can withstand the pull of the transported object, ensuring that the operator can move in the direction
, easily complete the work of retracting the line and releasing the Range Rover.
Just in case, in order to prevent the heavy object being loaded from accidentally falling, a ratchet is still needed, but this ratchet is special.
Rurik decided that the huge squirrel cage itself would be made into a wooden gear. The ratchet latches for the rotation direction of the vacant squirrel cage were designed on both sides of the squirrel cage, so that the correct operation is all it takes to take in and pay out the wire.
The tenons are locked to instantly and completely eliminate the accidental falling of goods.
Looking at the rat cages, Rurik used as many as fifty carpenters to make four rat cages.
The squirrel cage is not round, but has sixteen sets of pine wood spokes pieced together to form a hexagonal shape. The so-called spokes are thicker pine wood, so when the squirrel cage with a diameter of nearly four meters was completed, it appeared to be crude as a whole.
It could be built more elaborately, but Rurik didn't want to waste so much time.
Making a squirrel cage is a big project, and making bearings made of chromium iron is even more complicated.
Ellenburg's largest furnace became the key to making bearings.
Making ball bearings? Russians do not have such high-tech capabilities, and even roller bearings cannot be made right now.
The largest stove burned some iron pillars. After they were fished out, they were immediately hammered by workers. According to Rurik's requirements, they were hammered into cylinders as much as possible, but only the two ends were required to be flattened (in order to embed the wood).
), and the overall shape is still guaranteed to be cylindrical.
There were no ball bearings. What Rurik thought of was metal hard-contact bearings. This technology was completely familiar to the residents of Ellenburg. The bearings of those waterwheels by the river had such hard-contact bearings. As long as they were diligently filled with grease, they would
Judging from the stable operation experience of waterwheels, this kind of metal hard contact is acceptable.
The men worked hard, and their reward was a hard quota of two pounds of oats each, plus fish and salt.
Each of them will also receive a "salary" of five silver coins. Among them, workers engaged in squirrel cage manufacturing and iron smelting will receive a "salary" of ten silver coins. This "salary" is fair and will not be paid just because they are Kewen people.
They receive a little less than the Russians. In terms of food supply, everyone is equally fair.
Rurik has ready-made silver coins on hand. If they are really not enough, he can directly exchange them for ready-made oats. Seventy thousand pounds of oats is no joke.
As a result, they mainly worked hard during the short daytime, and had to work for a while after nightfall. Ellenburg's daily oat consumption gradually approached the terrifying figure of one thousand pounds a day.
The high-intensity construction work lasted for a full twenty days before the two squirrel cage cranes built on hard soil were finally unveiled.
On the twenty-fifth day, the metal bearings between the two squirrel cages were connected. To erect the squirrel cages smoothly, Rurik simply used the wooden wall of Ellenburg, and the cable used the wooden wall as a force-bearing
At this point, inside the wooden wall, human and animal forces worked together to pull up the lying rat cage, and finally hung it on its proper bracket.
February 1st of the Julian calendar is also the coldest period in Ironburg. Corresponding to the cold is the enthusiasm of the residents of Ironburg.
Just yesterday, Rurik issued a big order: "We have been fighting for a whole month and have consumed 30,000 pounds of grain. All our efforts are for these two cranes. Now is the most critical moment.
, let’s install all the pulleys and cables!”
More than a hundred people completed the installation of the final parts at night, under the lighting of numerous bonfires.
When the sunshine of a new day shines on the earth, right next to the west gate of Ellenburg, two huge equipment with a strong punk texture stand in the world of ice and snow, as if they come from another era.
The squirrel cage crane appeared to be a success, requiring only one successful loading and unloading and proving itself reliable.
On this day, all the men, women, and children who lived in Ironburg came out in full force. There were also a group of people standing on the wooden walls and towers, hoping to get a good viewing spot to see this wonderful scene.
They clearly built it with their own hands and witnessed with their own eyes its transformation from wood to a standing "monster".
Mechasta was very emotional. He knew that the Iron Squirrel Tribe had really benefited from Rurik. For example, almost all the Corvin men had rounded up their chests with clear ribs because of their crazy eating of wheat.
, some people actually have belly fat. Even the women of the tribe, because they wholeheartedly deal with logistical problems, they get at least one pound of wheat every day. The mother naturally gives the grain to the children, and the children of the tribe also become fat. Above,
These are things that the tribal people never dared to think about.
All efforts were made for the equipment in front of him. Mechasta shouted excitedly, and his tribesmen also talked and laughed with smiles on their faces.
Rurik did not dare to relax at all. He ignored the laughter of the onlookers with a solemn face.
"Jevlo!"
"exist!"
"Start your performance according to our plan!"
"Follow your orders!" said the excited Jevro, who along with his three mercenary brothers, a total of four people, really crawled into the cage through the gaps in the spokes like mice.
Some other mercenaries used the hooks of the pulleys to hang the ropes tied to the pine trunks used for the test.
Seeing that Rurik was preparing to take action, the whispers fell into silence. Even Mechasta, who wanted to talk to Rurik, shut up now.
Everyone held their breath, and upon hearing Rurik's order, hundreds of pairs of eyes focused on the slowly rotating rat cage.
Instantly, a squeaking sound came, and the uncoordinated sound came from the hard contact of the bearing. Not only was it a direct metal contact, the bearing was not a real cylinder. It was a makeshift.
Heavy equipment, but its effectiveness cannot be denied.
There are mercenaries who are always responsible for controlling the ratchet latches on the outside of the squirrel cage to ensure that heavy objects will not fall when they are pulled up.
The wheels of the pulley are made of fir, with metal bearings embedded in the middle. The pulley is slowly rising carrying the wood. It has been being lifted, and finally it was lifted to the lifting limit of the crane, which is three stikas, about three meters.
Although this pine tree is not as extreme as the huge fir tree, anyone with a discerning eye knows that this thing cannot be carried by three or four strong men. As a result, the two people in the mouse cage were clearly walking around at will. They were indeed gone.
For a while, the extremely heavy pine wood was not only lifted up, but everyone also raised their heads and squinted their eyes to look at the high-altitude wood. Many people subconsciously thought that if they stood at the bottom and were hit by it, their heads would be damaged.
"Master, haha! It seems that we have achieved great success!" Yevluo in the mouse cage shouted excitedly.
Rurik was also very happy. He also squinted his eyes, especially looking at the pulley block at the top of the boom and the condition of the anti-wear iron sheet wrapped around the wood.
"Yevlo! Now there is one last test. Listen to my order and prepare to change the tenons! Yevlo, turn around and prepare to move in the opposite direction!"
The latch system operates in reverse. The squirrel cage and the latch work together to form an actual large ratchet. The two pawls and latch operate alternately, allowing the crane to have a controllable release function of the cable, which makes it easier to unload the hoisted materials.
Controllable and smooth.
The Covin people and the Russian people saw that just two people completed the transportation of heavy objects. Can the crane create greater miracles?
sure!
Finally, after a whole month of struggle, I have my final understanding today! February 2nd on the Julian calendar!