The new core had three rough faces and one good one.
Irna set the good face upward on the bench and told everyone not to admire it yet. The second workshop had finished the outer rough work while her own machine completed the pump guide already promised to another town. The guide had left on time. The isolated-core project had not bought its first gain by quietly taking that town’s repair away.
Iven ran a straightedge along the finished face.
“Enough stock on the far shoulder.”
“For the first test body,” Irna said. “The final piece gets its own material. This one tells us where we’re wrong before we spend it.”
Neri opened the new section beside the old equalizer drawing. The common balance passage had been removed from the proposed service entirely, not blocked with a plug against a wall that could not carry the pressure. Two separate control paths would meet only at a visible isolated test point, with a failed position that left the receiving branch unavailable.
It was less compact than the catalog part.
It was also honest about what independent meant.
