The st twes unched without any issue, oed in a kill of a rge bony jawed leviathan, and the other injured a crab severely. A few days after the crab was injured, more parts of its shell drifted ashore, so I'm assuming some other leviathan fi off. In the meantime, I've pretty much finalized the design for the paper mae.

  Pulp is mixed and distributed onto the wire mesh, where it traverses multiple su boxes that pull a rge amount of the water out, while also somewhat pag the pulp due to the su forbsp; , the pulp is pressed tightly between two rollers where it adheres to a felt belt, which presses it twice befoing up to it's own su box a of heat fluorite to dry the felt before looping back down. At this point, the pulp closely resembles the sort of paper we would manually stack at the old facility, except it's in a long stretch.

  The paper rolls past ane felt line, being pressed a sed time before being handed off to pass through a weave of multiple heated drums that help press and dry the paper further. Occasionally in the weave, I've thrown in a few more felt belts, in case some of the heat or pressure drives out any residual water.

  At the end, the paper passes a few more straight shot pairs of drums which eventually lead to a rack where the paper is rolled around a tral roller. Overall, these st stages went past twe unches, and I'm nearly at the barge unch after a total of 133 days. I expect that getting the whole facility anized and structed as a single unit will end up taking another 100 days at least. Most of the maes are currently at the b area, and I pn on having the facility built near our tree farming area, so everything will ransported, and a few mana eo power it will also o be assembled.

  The barge resulted in another partial failure, with a crab leviathan being maimed but not killed. This time, we didn't notiy parts drifting ashore, so it may have survived the i. I'm personally overseeing and helping with stru of the paper mill now. I've put in requests for various items to be made ba town. The idea I had for potentially getting closer to the leviathan killshots is by utilizing a hot air balloohered to both the barge and nd. It be kept at a fixed distance from the barge, and then towed back to nd after the line is cut.

  There are some s about eagles potentially being disturbed by the ballooher before or after the detonation, but that's just another problem to solve. If we get them used to the balloon before we unch, then it should be fine. All of our current eagles have gotteo eating at the feeding area, and we haven't received any new ones in a few months, so we might be able to introduce them slowly to the balloon there.

  There are a few other issues that need solved with a hot air balloon beyond dealing with the eagles. Our balloon will o stay airborne for at least a few hours, and we'll o e up with a bunetal parts to handle whatever fuel source we choose to use. I really don't want to use hydrogen, nor do I want to use a lighter than air balloon here, since we're already w near explosives. That leaves me with three fuel sources that we could realistically use.

  The first option is syngas, which is essentially just non-busted off gas from cooking anic matter. It'd be easy to make, and we already have pns to make it by cooking wood in an airtight tainer and colleg the gas. The issue with syngas is that it's pretty energy poor, and I'd have to e up with all the pos to support a gas burner and ste system for the balloon.

  The sed option is methanol, which was the reason we wahe syngas. We need methanol as part of the bleag process for paper, so making it now could save us a lot of work down the road. It's also a liquid, which would simplify the design process quite a bit. The downside is that it's still quite energy poor. It'd be easier to use than syngas in the balloon, but it'd still require a lot of fuel.

  The third option is to try to refihat fmmable resin material that I'd gotten from the chemical pulping process. It seems to be quite energy dense, but it currently burns with a lot of smoke and char, meaning it'd foul up any burner I try to use. It's also far too viscous currently to utilize without a sedary heater to keep it hot enough that would flow easily. I'd guess that it's probably the de energy source we have, but it'd require a lot of experimenting to get right.

  I think I'll start with methanol as my target, si has a sedary use for us. If I ta that methanol is a pretty det precursor for other chemical produs, then it's all the more reason to try to utilize it for hot air balloon fuel.

  The attempt at a rge wicker basket made from tree saplings for the balloon gondo wasn't successful. Perhaps it's because the wood here is so soft that it just doesn't quite have the strength to hold up. So we're going to use a metal frame that will then have a wicker basket woven through it. That should give it the support it needs, albeit at the cost of a signifit amount of extra weight.

  A sed issue arose as well. Making a balloon is actually quite hard. I had requested a much smaller sample balloon first, and the results were disappointing. Trying to fill the balloon with hot air from a wood fire mao melt the roofing materials we po use. I had the bright idea of using pitch to try to seal the balloon, as it's quite useful for roofing. Unfortunately, with the flexibility of the balloon and the increased temperature, the pitch slowly dripped away, and we were stuck again. Even what little of the dwarven roofing material melted away all the same.

  Based on those observations, however, I'm assuming that the dwarf roofing material is either pitch from a tree we don't have here on the isnd, or it's treated in some way first. Iher case, ing up with a material to make the balloon airtight is going to be a huge problem. It o be light, flexible, and have a melting point high enough that it doesn't cause issues in a hot air balloon. Rubber es to mind, but that'd end up being it's own whole ordeal, and I 't even say for certain that any pnts would produough of the right kind of natural tex to utilize for that. Never mind trying to synthesize rubber, or for that matter pstic, without oil.

  Instead, we're probably going to have to make metal foil do the job, which means even more weight. While still probably doable, we're going to have a very minimal capacity for riders. It's quite the endeavor to work on. So, my pn now is to put the balloon portion on hold, get the gondo made, and see how well we manufacture steel foil. If we make the foil thin enough, then we should be able to utilize it as an internal coating in a balloon. Then we calcute the total mass of the system, and do some tests ohanol fme temperatures to determine what temperature the balloon operate at, and measure air density at different temperatures to calcute the volume that the balloon would o have to lift itself when running. After the barge unch, that's what I'll turn my attention to.

  The st four months were quite hectibsp; There were multiple small adjustments that were done on the neer mill to make sure everything would work smoothly and safely together, one of the three leviathan barges resulted in a leviathan going berserk o the shore for a few hours before another one came up and killed it while the other two worked as intended, and I started w on a roller mill to make steel foil he city. If we had the means and materials, I'd obviously have preferred aluminum foil to steel foil, but steel will have to do.

  The neer mill has begun to start up, and as per usual, there are dozens of small problems that I o solve before it actually runs as intended. Thankfully that doesn't really slow doweel foil mill, since I've worked with the bcksmiths before on the process of making sheets of metal. I'm having them work with the meics team to yout and power the facility. I've decided that it probably shouldn't just be a steel foil mill, however, and we should have it produce other sheet steel which is then rolled further into foil. Sheet steel has all sorts of other useful purposes, and we've now had a few years to build up our iron stockpile thanks to the basalt processing facility so ing up with good uses for iron will be us.

  I expect we'll start turning out product paper in a few months from the new facility, and we'll probably have steel sheet before then. The foil, oher hand, might take some time afterwards before we get it down. If it weren't for the additional use case for a hot air balloon to duct researd reaissa a higher altitude thahe top of our mountain peak, I'd probably call off the stru projebsp; At this point, we'll probably have killed off most of the leviathans before we ever unch a single balloon.