We repeated the drawing process until we had the full thirty-five meters of two-millimeter wire. We had moved on to using the drawing system I had prepared for the silk. One thing I didn’t realize at first was that its effectiveness in removing hiccups was far lower in this context.

  The big grindstones, intended to act as flywheels failed to maintain momentum each time, we faltered in giving motion, they shook and halted to a stop as the copper wire’s resistance swallowed all of it. The leather belts used for transmission were buzzing and screeching each time the process was halted.

  The belt’s deep hum could be felt in the grindstone too and after a day of drawing wire, I could feel it in my bones. It was our third day of work on the damn wire. We had to anneal it after every second draw which slowed everything greatly.

  There were other benefits, however. One of them being the fact that the wire could be directly rolled on a drum roll, allowing us to keep the wire of the ground and neatly arranged, ready for the next drawing die.

  Now we had to deal with the last, final drawing which would turn the wire from a two millimeter one into a one-millimeter cross-section diameter, size that would allow us to obtain the best starting torque considering our conditions.

  The fact that the oil and coke paste used to reduce friction between the copper and die left the wire dirty, filled with soot and oil, was making it hard to handle. I was pumping the bellows while Magnar was pedaling the wire drawing system.

  Slowly the wire was being spun on the spool, ready to be used to make the motor. I kept the fire low, keeping the coiled section not yet drawn at a constant temperature. It wasn’t what modern technology would have done, but we did not have the motors powering it.

  The fat melted and burnt as the wire passed through the die, it was already hot and the pressure from the die was leaving it glowing with a dull red light, rapidly cooling off as it traveled through, the air. The smell of hot charcoal and burnt fat spread out together with the smoke rising from the wire and the die.

  Half an hour later the final draw was done, and the dirty wire was neatly coiled on the spool.

  “Now… We need to wash it, I’ll go get the hot water, you take the spool off the shaft and be ready to drop it.”

  “Alright!”

  I went inside and brought out the boiling water. Magnar lifted the coil and let the wire slip into the hot water. I stirred in the pot a little and the water got covered in an oily layer of dark grime. A smell of smoke, soot and fried pig filled the place as the oily fat rose to the surface taking with it part of the soot.

  The surface of the water disappeared, covered in a layer of thick black sludge shimmering faintly in multiple colors. I watched the oil separate, moving up from the coils and joining the thick black blanket at the top.

  “What now?”

  “First we get the oil out, then we repeat the process two more times then I have to insulate the wires…”

  “When do I get to see the motor working?”

  “After I spin the wire around the ferrous cores. Which is after I insulate them.” I talked while grabbing a spoon to scoop out the oily grime.

  “Do you think you can finish today?”

  “Most probably? The lacquer I’m going to prepare dries really fast, but we have to do six wounds… two for the stator and four for the rotor. That will take some time.” I said while throwing out the soot.

  “Can’t you just get it done?”

  “Why are you so impatient all of a sudden?” I rose to my feet and faced him.

  “Well… You keep talking about the power of this electricity… But I still haven’t seen anything done by it. For me we’ve been working on a wild chase until now.” He looked away from me.

  “You’ll see it, if not today tomorrow. It will be done.” I assured him then got back to taking out the soot. “I need to figure out how to cool down the generator too, it won’t work for more than a few minutes at a time, the silk would get burned by the silver if we run it for longer right now.”

  “Couldn’t you have made more holes through it? You know… to let air flow?” Magnar asked, sitting cross legged next to me. “You keep talking about airflow.”

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  “Yeah, that would be a solution, if not for the fact that less material means smaller cross-section which means denser flow through an area which means more heat. In this case, I’m not sure air holes would have helped.” I said as I finished taking out most of the grime.

  I stirred the wires again, all so I could shake up all the fat. Nothing came up, so instead I decided on a foolproof strategy. Boiling! I was going to boil the coils, that way the oil would have no way of clinging to the wires, and it would naturally take away all the soot too.

  I lifted the pot and went inside. I put it over the stove. Soon it started boiling. I stirred inside, making sure to allow all fat to escape. I used a bowl to dispose of the fat, yet more dirt remained on the wires. Were I to leave it there, it would cause the insulation to crack later.

  I took out the copper wire and left it to cool a little.

  “Seems like it will need to sit for a bit before I can pass it through the alcohol bath and the lacquer bath.”

  “Isn’t the lacquer already just resin and alcohol? Why pass it through another alcohol bath?”

  “For cleaning. Leaving any soot or oil on those wires can prevent the lacquer from sticking and drying properly, or in the case of the coke dust, it can create heat spots in the windings and cause short circuits… In other words, overheating and meltdown. I could burn however the wire again, which would rid me of fat directly and after an alcohol bath and a good wipe, we could respool it just fine…”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I’ll just get the alcohol ready, the fire is already going, put the wire in. Then quench it by throwing it in water, make sure to have it ready, the wire can’t oxidize.”

  “Alright.” He went back out carrying the cooled wire.

  Meanwhile I got down to the basement. My new distilling set up was stored there along with the alcohol I collected during these two days. It was made using the last wing. By cutting it to get some extra material and rolling it into a cone I made the vapor collecting device.

  I then used leather, resin and the wing part I had cut to create a long hose. Most setups used coiled hoses, but I had no such thing, and they weren’t exactly mandatory. By just creating a zigzag pattern the exact same thing.

  By keeping some wine just below boiling point and changing it every once in a while, I managed to get a liquid that was about forty percent alcohol. The second run got me about a liter and a quarter of liquid so clear, it was almost invisible in the jar.

  I removed the lid clear lid from it. The fumes rising from the jar bit. It was a sharp, sting reminder of hospitals on Earth. It was alcohol, as pure as I could get it with no specialized technology…

  I brought the pot with the alcohol up and poured some in a large bowl, about a quarter of a liter. The rest would be needed to create the lacquer. I looked in my alcohol pot. ‘I can’t even be sure this will be enough…’ I sealed the container again frowning, to avoid surface dissipation as much as possible.

  Magnar came back with the cool, wet and soot covered wires. There was no longer any sign of oils on the wires, meaning it was time for the actual cleaning. I took a rag made of rough sack cloth and dipped it in the alcohol.

  I could feel its thick threads intertwining in my hand as I folded the piece of cloth. Then we went outside. I manually cleaned some of the wire, then got the cleaned part hooked to the spool again and started drawing the wire.

  I kept an eye on the thread as it was drawn through my hand. Each time the buttery orange-red of the copper was replaced by the dark, black soot cover I stopped Magnar, cleaned the rag and got it in alcohol again.

  Another half an hour later and it was done, we had clean, perfectly good copper wire, ready to be insulated. I brought out the pot of alcohol while Magnar brought some resin from the back. About a liter of alcohol mixed with about half a liter of resin.

  It took a bit to dissolve the resin entirely, especially since we had it in solid form and had to first cut it into small pieces. It felt like stirring in soup, except the smell was horrible. As the small cubes of resin melted in the alcohol, a minty aroma started to spread along with the insufferable smell of the mix base.

  “Take the wire off of the spool. I’ll use the cloth to point the wire downwards while you pull it. This way it gets in the mix and collects the lacquer necessary.”

  “Won’t proceeding like this make the wire bind together on the spool?” Magnar asked eyeing my mix with curiosity, one of his brows raised inquisitively.

  “No, this isn’t like heating the resin. The resin is dissolved in the alcohol, the alcohol evaporates fast, meaning that the resin will be left behind as it does and be deposited in a very, very thin layer over the wire. That is enough to avoid sparks in this case.”

  “But you used a very thick coating for the generator…”

  “Yeah, because that’s where the power is generated! Think about it, where do you need more insulation? Where you create the power, or where you use it?”

  “I don’t know…”

  I face palmed. “Anyway, the wiring of the motor makes the flow of electricity go the same way, there are few places where opposing flows go by next to each other, but those will get more insulation after wiring the cores.”

  “Sounds like a pain…” I started dipping the wire through the lacquer and gave the end to Magnar after it dried.

  “Oh, it is. We’re not going to make other motors after this. This is enough to prove to others that it works. I might release the idea and then I can simply buy the motors.” I replied while he went back to his position and hooked the wire to the drawing set up.

  “Won’t they be expensive?”

  “Ugh… How’d you think of that? You aren’t a money person…”

  I kept the wire going through the lacquer as Magnar started spinning the spool and drawing it on. The smell of alcohol and pine intensified over time as we got more and more wire through. Another half an hour later we were done, yet the sun was hanging lower, threatening with dark that could arrive at any moment.

  We hurriedly mounted one of the stator cores on the drawing setup we marked one of its sides, then started spinning it and counting how many turns we went. The core turned slowly, my fingers aching from maintaining the tension on the wire to guide the orange-red wire into fitting as tightly as possible, while Magnar turned the wheel.

  We had barely finished that Magnar had to leave, the dark chasing him back to the dormitory.

  One electro-magnet done, five more to go.