The first part of making wire should have beeively simple. We just need a steel box with one end pletely open, and the other end with an inch wide hole or so. Then, I'll need a meical press on the rge opening that be ked with enough force to force a glowing hot ingot to deform through the inch hole. In practice, Karsh and I keep running into issues, and its beey-five days. The first attempt we didn't have nearly enough force to deform the ingot through the hole, the sed attempt one of the gears that we were using to give us extra leverage for f the ingot through gave way. The third time we got about half the ingot through the hole, and the other half deformed around the pte and jammed the whole mae as it cooled.

  The third attempt at least produced some result, so we're fident that we make it work, it's just a matter of how many more modifications will be necessary. I'm hoping it'll only be a matter of shaping the pte more precisely and operating the k faster to actually drive the ingot through. If we get this w, we'll still o move on to the step of drawing the wire out to make it smaller.

  After two more attempts over six days, we got the mae to work repeatably. After we made the pte oversized and then manually filed it down until it was aremely close fit, we broke anear due to the increased fri in the mae. After making the gears even thicker to pensate, we finally achieved making a wire extruder. Although the wire is incredibly thick still. The pn is to make a series of funnel shaped steel apparatuses that you literally pull the wire through to make it smaller. Karsh had actually dohis before he moved here, so I was free for a little while while he worked.

  In the mean time, the snow has started to melt, and although it isn't teically my job I do want to take a few days here to go check the rock dams as the water flow starts to increase. So far, it does seem like the water iream is a bit clearer than normal, so I'm ied in seeing how other parts of the stream look and if any of the existing rock dams need more work.

  I took five days examining the over three-hundred rock dams that the goblins have built over the past year. About a third needed some kind of minor updating, and about thirty needed major work done. sidering everything though, they're doing a really good job of levelling out the flow rate and keeping the water . There are still plenty more that be built, especially siold the goblins to hold off on building in the main stream until we saw how things went with the tributaries. I'll give the goblins insight into why the dams that need repair , and what they do to make them st longer. Other than that though, they should be good to start building them across the main stream as well. If they keep up their current pace, in a little more than a year they should have all these waterways modified.

  This is all in addition to the amount of rock that has been removed from the reservoir, expanding the capacity of the dam even further. It's easily triple the capacity of when I built it due to the amount of stone we've removed over time. I probably won't start filling the dam this year, but if we get a mine going this year so we have a new source of stru stohen we could start using the dam as more than just a flow equalizer.

  While I was doing all these examinations, Karsh was making the various wire drawing es I'd asked for. He should be done by now, so hopefully we'll get to attempt to draw wire.

  We ended up needing to build a few simple maes to give us enough leverage to actually pull the wire through the draw pte over the course of eight days. A one inch thick wire is just to to shrink by 10% manually with pulling. Thankfully, with those maes, we were able to pull the wire through a handful of successively smaller draw ptes until we had the wire down to about a quarter of it's diameter before it snapped.

  I was disappointed, but Karsh said it wasn't an issue. He said that the reason it snapped is that we'd worked it too many times without reheating the metal, and that if we just heat the metal until it was glowing, then tried it again, it should work. So we did, and sure enough, we were able to get it down to about a third of that diameter, or a twelfth of the inal size, before it snapped again. I was actually quite impressed by how effective this ended up being.

  After we reduced it twice again, it snapped, and even after heating it, it snapped. Karsh said not to worry, he had a few ideas, and that he'd be busy for a few weeks w on them. We're already approag the size that I'd like the wire to be, so we're already at a pretty good point. Holy, I thought I'd be w on this for much longer. At this rate, I probably won't need a mill to hahis unless I wao repce the ropes on the mountain winches with cable. That said, it shouldn't be hard to adapt the process to a more automated one if we end up needing it iure.

  If I'm going to be free for a few more weeks, then I'll have to find something to occupy my time.

  I spent the first three days of the een just thinking about what I'd like to do . It's kind of iing. I spent so long taking on one project after the other, but with so many projects going on around me, but none needing my help, I was at a loss as to what to do. So I made my the mountain to my old home and resumed excavating the stairway that is supposed to desd out of the mountain from the inside.

  Sure, I could go dig a fresh mine part of the the mountain, assist on some other project, or even just sit an rex, but I felt like getting bay roots. Pretty soon the goblin vilge will start whirring along on it's own for some time, and when that time es, I think I'd like to spent more of my own time up in my mountain home, away from the stant hustle and bustle of the vilge. If that time arrives, having a way to and from my home in winter would be ideal, so I figured I should get to work while I .

  After sixteen days of w oairs however, I recalled why I had disdain for them. The biggest part of the work is actually hauling stone, not cutting it, and for that, I'm only adding at most five airs a day. Which means I added about forty feet to the depth of the stairwell. A det k, but holy, if I got three goblins to help me I'd go three times as fast, so I might end up doing something like that. It was o at least experieurning to my roots and w alone for a few weeks again.

  Once I returo the vilge, Karsh had finished what he was w on, and showed it to me. He experimented with the sizes of the wire drawing es, and mao not only save a few steps that we'd had before, but get the wire down to the size I wanted. During the early steps, we were actually not aggressive enough with how much smaller we wahe wire to bee, and ier stages we were too aggressive.

  By making those adjustments, and experimenting with how ofte o be applied, he'd made the final produbsp; These wires are quite thin, so they're somewhat weak on their own, but they aren't brittle. One ingot ends up making hundreds if not thousands of feet of wire, but ends up taking most of a day to do, although again, most of the work a goblin could do without any skill, so it would all of Karsh's time to make wire if I .

  That one ingot also should be enough wire to make multiple fine meshes for the size of paper I want. I could make it myself, but I think I'd rather pay the weaver to make them after I work with Karsh to get a tempte board made for them. After that, I test if I even make paper from wood here, which was the whole reason I started this long endeavor.