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cast-iron kitchen products, plumbing parts, and clocks were all being made by spring, as well as our older
brass works' lines of church bells, windmill parts, hinges, and other hardware. I wanted to add paper,
printed books, and cigarette lighters in the near future.
We expanded the paperworks from a two-man outfit to one where a dozen men worked, and added power
machinery to cut and mash the linen rags to pulp. Within the year we added a papermaking machine, which
was a major undertaking but not a major headache. I'd at least seen a papermaking machine.
For a printing press, I decided to bypass the evolutionary step of the flatbed press and go directly to a
simple rotary press, and to cast the type in a solid line, rather than bothering with movable type. I drew up
what
I thought were some very simple designs, but they took a team of our best machinists along with the
Moslem goldsmith over a year to make them work.
And the cigarette lighter took. the longest damn time. We actually spent three times as many man-hours
developing it than we did on our first steam engine. It had seemed so easy in the beginning.
We had flint, steel, and white lightning for fuel. I drew up a simple Zippo-type lighter, except that I made it
cylindrical instead of flat to simplify the machining, and with a pull-off cap because we didn't have a decent
steel spring to hold the usual flip-top in place. It was bulkier than the modem equivalent, but these people
used pouches instead of pockets, so that wasn't a problem.
The problem was in generating a spark. Flint was harder than any steel we could make. The spark wheel
wore away before the flint was touched, and all without a spark. I even sacrificed the disposable butane
lighter I'd had with me from the twentieth century. We took it apart but didn't learn much, since the flint
was about gone.
But flint gouged up the modem spark wheel as well, which told us that the flint in a lighter wasn't like the
flint we were using. This got us to collecting flint from every source we could find, but all of it seemed to
be the same.
I finally dropped back and punted. Some of the more expensive modem lighters used a quartz crystal that
was struck by a tiny hammer to generate a spark electrically.
I found some quartz crystals in a shop in Wroclaw, and had our jeweler cut several pieces at different
angles of the crystal. Within a week, we had a working lighter! After that, it was just a matter of tooling up
for a very profitable line.
It can take a half hour to start a fire with flint and steel, but it only took moments with one of our lighters.
You just took off the cap, raised the little weight on its slider, let it drop and presto! Fire! We sold them by
the thousands! It also gave us a nice market for lighter fluid, which was wood alcohol, after a while.
By then, spring was on us and it was time to get back into the construction business. Transporting coke by
pack mule from Three Walls to the boat landing on the Odra River was extremely expensive. After that,
transport costs by riverboat weren't nearly so bad, about one-twelfth the cost per ton mile.
Many of Count Lambert's knights had followed his lead in digging coal mines for fuel, now that potbellied
stoves were available. Questioning them and going down most of the shafts, I was able to map out the
coalfield fairly well.
All indications were that I could dig for coal right on the riverbank. All through the winter, I'd had six men
digging a pilot shaft there on some of Count Lambert's land, and they'd struck coal five dozen yards down.
It made all kinds of sense to build a mining-and-coking operation there, so I made a deal with Count
Lambert for half a square mile of land and as soon as the weather broke, I got ready to head there with a
construction crew.
FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI
It was early morning, and we were mounted up in caravan fashion to go to the new lands sold to Sir Conrad
by Count Lambert near the River Odra. There we would open mines for coal and build coke ovens of a new
design.
Sir Conrad rode up the line of loaded mules and three gross men, seeing that all was ready. I was stationed
near the front, next to Sir Vladimir. The three Banki brothers were away making final arrangements for
their upcoming weddings, which we were all looking forward to.
There was a great commotion at the gate, and I looked to see the merchant Boris Novacek, a friend of my
lord Sir Conrad, crawling through the wood gate on his knees and elbows, for he had no hands!
Sir Vladimir shouted for Sir Conrad, and we both rode to Novacek's aid. Yet Sir Conrad passed us and was
there first.
"Boris! What happened?" Sir Conrad shouted as he dug out his medical kit.
"What happened?" Boris said, half dazed. "Why, they cut my hands off."
"Who did this?"
"I don't know. We were never properly introduced." Novacek tried to laugh, but tears came out. "Do you
have any water?"
Sir Conrad threw his canteen to Sir Vladimir, who sat Novacek up and held that strange metal bottle to his
lips.
"You!" Sir Conrad shouted, looking at a young man in the crowd that was gathering, "Run and get
Krystyana!"
"You! Run and get a stretcher! You! Have the men stand down. We leave at three!" Sir Conrad ordered
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