Before the controlled test, Austin used ore already in storage to solve another problem. Raw spirit iron would not melt in a wood-fired kiln. It needed an induction furnace and star-fire.
He pulled up the schematics:
He cut a round fire chamber in the northern annex and lined it with fused quartz. Copper coils surrounded the chamber. A tap at the bottom led to dry ingot molds set in sand.
Xiaoyao helped preheat the molds and brush them with graphite. He kept one eye on the water gauges.
“Test first,” Austin told him. “Then we run the chisel for ten minutes. No longer.”
“And the furnace?”
“The ore is already out of the vein. Heating a stored block does not add vibration.”
Austin fed a thin thread of star-fire into the chamber. The coils caught it and held the heat in a tight field. Blue ore softened. He added gold shavings, and the melt turned pearl-white with cobalt streaks.
He opened the tap. The alloy filled thirty molds without bubbles or cracks.
Austin tapped one with his pick. The note rang clear and long.
“Good boiler stock. Good shafts. Good tools.”
A traditional smith might have spent a year turning one bar into a famous sword. Austin made a five-foot pipe wrench, a metric socket set, and a three-drawer tool chest.
“Swords don’t lay pipe,” Austin said. “I need a wrench for a four-inch coupling.”
He held up the smallest socket.
“If anyone loses the ten-millimeter, the shop closes while we look for it.”
Xiaoyao wrote that down too.
By late afternoon, the new wrench hung above the bench and the test area was ready. Gu Qing had brought two villagers who knew the springs. They marked clear bottles from each source and placed simple flow floats in the channels.
Austin stood beside the chisel switch.
“Ten minutes. Record start levels, levels at five minutes, and levels at shutdown. If a pillar gauge moves, stop early.”
Everyone took a position. Xiaoyao held the main sheet. Gu Qing watched the return channel. Pug watched a moth and contributed nothing.
Austin closed the switch.
The chisel struck the blue vein. Ore dropped into the hopper at once.
For the first minute, every reading stayed flat. Then the lower outflow fell. The stream beside the vein rose. At minute three, the west bottle clouded with silt. At minute four, the return channel surged backward.
Xiaoyao called each number. Austin said nothing.
At minute five, the east spring float stopped moving.
“Shut it down,” Austin said.
The piston stopped. The production counter showed enough ore for another six ingots. It did not show the dry float or the muddy bottle.
Austin picked up the bottle and watched the sediment settle.
Xiaoyao waited for him to defend the machine.
Instead, Austin wrote one line across the test sheet.
Automation affects ley-line and groundwater stability. Cause not yet isolated.
“Keep the chisel off,” he said. “We start redesign work after breakfast.”
He looked at the full hopper, then at the dry spring bottle.
“Production can wait.”