Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 141 - 58: Shaping Wood into Wheels

Leaving the mountainside, it was already dark when Chen Zhou returned to the cave dwelling.

The rain began to intensify.

Without thunder or lightning, the entire forest was immersed in the rustling sound of rain.

The unconstructed wall stacks at the cave's entrance still let water in. Chen Zhou placed a few wooden boards over the trench, but the rainwater seeped in everywhere, providing only minimal shielding.

Light the lamp, start the fire, boil the water.

While waiting for the water to boil, Chen Zhou separated the three logs he had carried back. Two were left to dry for later testing, and one was split directly.

To bend wood into wheels, one must choose long and evenly wide, properly repaired wooden strips.

But Chen Zhou knew his first attempt at bending wood was just an experiment with a very slim chance of success, so he casually repaired the wood into long strips to first observe the effect.

The boiled water in the large iron kettle was reserved for steaming.

The roasting was done using a small stove.

Simply removing the flat-bottomed copper pot allowed the flame in the stove pit to transfer heat upward.

He held the wooden strip, repeatedly roasting it over the stove pit, while maintaining an appropriate distance to prevent the wood from igniting or being scorched.

On his first attempt, he couldn't accurately gauge the temperature, and, feeling that the moisture within the wood had dispersed outward and the strip had become somewhat hot to the touch, he stopped roasting.

During the continuous heating process, the wood fibers became softened.

The long wooden strip felt like its bones had been removed, leaving behind a stiff "corpse."

Gently applying force, Chen Zhou felt the wood strip slowly bending without breaking, so he increased the pressure slightly.

Even softened, the wooden strip was harder than vine, requiring significant force to bend at all.

During the wood bending process, Chen Zhou discovered a problem—the size limitations of the stove caused uneven roasting. Recently heated areas were softer, while cooler regions were hard and lacked flexibility.

Wheel bending is a continuous process that changes the entire wooden strip.

Uneven heating caused some areas of the strip to become soft while others remained hard, increasing the likelihood of breakage or making it difficult to shape it as desired.

Putting down the slightly curved strip and looking at the burning small stove, Chen Zhou concluded that roasting wouldn't work for now.

The iron kettle had been boiling for a while; it was time to try steaming.

Steam might maintain temperature longer than flame, potentially having a wood-softening effect, thus improving the bending wood process.

Moreover, steam wasn't as dangerous as flame, incapable of igniting the wood. The strip would need to stay near the iron kettle's spout to enjoy the steam, requiring less concern.

...

Open the kettle lid, releasing the steam inside.

Chen Zhou grasped the end of the strip, placing the front onto the kettle rim, and slowly moved it to ensure the steam acted on every inch of the strip.

After a moment of thoroughly steaming the entire strip, he attempted to bend it again.

For this attempt, he specifically brought over a large iron canister, pressing the strip against the canister's broadest part, trying hard to shape it to fit the canister, into a complete circle.

The steam effect surpassed roasting but still couldn't solve the uneven heating issue.

After nearly an hour of steaming, the kettle nearly ran dry. The bent strips remained partly soft and partly hard, unable to be adjusted freely.

During this process, Chen Zhou identified another issue—

Even if he could heat the entire strip evenly, it was impossible to bend it into a perfect circle. At best, he could form two semi-circles of equal size and later join and adjust them after cooling and hardening.

With the large iron canister, achieving identical curve sizes with semi-circles is feasible, but uneven heating is a troublesome issue.

Considering the wheel size, each strip would need to be at least a meter long.

To steam a meter-long strip, he'd need to build a steam-receiving conduit.

The conduit could be made of bricks, pottery, or metal, sealed at the front, open at the rear, with an entry for steam at the base.

When the water boils, steam would pervade the conduit, creating a semi-sealed high-temperature area, allowing the entire strip to be steamed, completing the first bending step.

Compared to steaming, the materials needed to roast strips are simpler.

Chen Zhou's preliminary idea was to build two parallel special long furnaces or erect a hollow furnace over a meter high.

While heating the strips, like quenching a blade, they'd be placed horizontally between the furnace pits or vertically in the furnace center, allowing the surrounding heat to act uniformly on the strips, achieving the desired effect.

Importantly, neither the long furnace nor the hollow furnace require bricks, ceramics, or metal—using stones and white clay would suffice, making them far easier to build than steam conduits.

...

After experimenting for over three hours and burning through the kitchen's firewood reserves.

With two slightly curved wooden strips in hand, Chen Zhou realized he was far from success.

The first attempt clearly ended in failure, yet throughout the process, he accumulated valuable experience.

Once two pseudo-poplar logs dry, the hollow furnace or steam conduit can be constructed for further testing.

Retrieving his notebook, he recorded his feelings and ideas within.

Chen Zhou specially flipped through some recently written pineapple ink traces and, seeing those hadn't faded or vanished, breathed a sigh of relief.

He knew of some natural dyes that would disappear automatically.

Those dyes contained many volatile components, initially vibrant but fading or disappearing completely over time.

While sketching the hollow furnace structure in the notebook earlier, he suddenly thought about pineapple ink, worrying it was one of those rare disappearing dyes, prompting him to flip back a few pages.

Fortunately, encountering self-erasing natural dyes isn't easy.

Months passed, yet the pale purple inscriptions were still clearly visible on the paper.

...

Turn off the light, placing the notebook back in the drawer.

Resting on the bed, unable to sleep easily, Chen Zhou replayed the recent wood bending experiment in his mind.

He concluded he couldn't master the wheel bending technique in the short term.

Urgently needing a cart, the best immediate method was to cut down a tree with about a meter diameter, slicing the trunk into thick round pieces, then carving them into precise circles, hollowing the center to lighten the weight, creating wheels.

To save time, he planned to make a unicycle cart, using metal tubes as the axle.

The cart wheels consume the most time and complexity during manufacture.

Building a two-wheel cart necessitated ensuring both wheels were of equal size and adjusting the axle, consuming significantly more time and effort than creating a unicycle cart, which offered similar user experience.

Aside from creating the unicycle cart for assistance, he also intended to clean a flat path between the camp and the cave dwelling.

This trail only needed to be one meter wide, free of roots or stones, without pits or bumps, allowing the unicycle cart to pass smoothly.

On a primitive isolated island, one couldn't ask for much.

Even possessing such a simple path, the wear rate on the unicycle's wheels would notably decrease, and transport efficiency would greatly enhance.