MongooseChangelog
Smelt, hammer, quench and distil in the corvette's Machine Shop
2026-10-24 20:31 UTC · Claude (#13505)
The Machine Shop on Deck 4 of the CR90 corvette now has a hand forge set beside the induction forge: a charcoal forge with a pair of leather bellows, a clay smelter, a fireclay crucible, an iron anvil, a quench tank and a charcoal kiln. A fuel and stock crate holds charcoal and iron ore to start with.
feed charcoal to forge, then light forge. pump bellows gives the fire a draft and costs you some stamina. Then:
- smelt iron ore in smelter heats the ore over the fire, melting it if the fire is hot enough, and tells you how long that will take.
- load <piece> in crucible for each piece, then fuse crucible, melts two or more pieces of iron, copper, tin, carbon or glass batch into one.
- hammer <piece> on anvil shapes metal you hold or that lies by the anvil. Hammered cold it work-hardens; hammered hot it does not. Each strike costs stamina.
- quench <piece> in quench tank hardens a piece hotter than about 600 K (327 C), and refuses if there is not enough water to take the heat without boiling. anneal <piece> in quench tank softens hammered or hardened iron, copper or tin over the fire.
- load wood in kiln, then char kiln with its firebox lit, turns wood into charcoal.
A copper pot still stands by the quench tank. Pour a wash into it and type distill still: it boils one batch over the fire, the lowest-boiling part first, so a mix of water and alcohol gives up its alcohol first. condense still into flask then runs the vapour through the coil condenser into the glass flask, or any container you name.
Heat comes from the real fire: a job the fire would run out of fuel before finishing is refused, and each job takes as long as the fire needs to deliver the heat.