"Make sure the plating is welded perfectly! We can't have even the smallest openings!"

With the drastically increased output of the iron mines after the introduction of not only more efficient s.h.i.+ft system but also all sorts of steam-powered utensils from the automated mine carts all the way to the stationary augers moved on the same kind of tracks as the carts, the need to increase the smelting capability of my mining town appeared.

During my absence, seven new blast furnaces were built, but considering the fact that sooner or later, cast iron would become too fragile for my needs, I decided to once again throw myself into the euphory of innovation.

At first, the new blast furnaces that were luckily placed all near each other were put out of the work. Even though this would cause the stall in the process of turning cheap ore into usable iron, if I wanted to make this entire process more efficient, now was the perfect time to do so.

Yet rather than completely revamping the current smelting scheme, I simply introduced a new method of increasing its efficiency that I found during my spare time of sorting through the system options.

In short words, by blocking the exhaust gases from the blast furnace from escaping, they were funnelled into a pipe that would lead them to the set of three buildings. Said buildings were circular on their base, with most of their inner part filled to the brim with bricks. By pus.h.i.+ng the already hot air through those bricks to the final exhaust where it was ultimately released into the atmosphere, those stoves were capable of heating the air that was forced to follow circular path from the bottom entry all the way to the upper opening, all the while taking the heat from the hot core.

Only when the air reached high enough temperature would it be released inside the steam intakes for the new blast furnaces, changing just a single think of their design. Rather than supplying the air directly from the empty s.p.a.ce around, the blast furnaces were fed preheated air, allowing the entire mechanism to use only about a half of the fuel that it required before!

But that wasn't the end of my inventions! 

Due to the fact that sooner or later I would have to start producing steel, using the fact that I was already improving the design of my furnaces, I directed quite a lot of manpower from managing the new furnaces into creating the one, ultimate tool that would finally allow me to produce steel in industrial amounts. 

Bessemer furnace. 

The other useful blueprint that I found after hours upon hours of scanning through the system capabilities. While complicated when one first took a look at it, it turned out to be one of the simplest mechanisms that I could ever bother myself with creating!

Just by making a huge bowl with a thin opening and lining its insides with heat resistant, limestone bricks, I only had to add special air blasters to its bottom before the design would be finished!

For the furnace itself at least…

Yet what would be the hardest part for any of the future constructors that would later figure out this design, was already solved by my industrial foundation. 

Due to how there was just a single opening in the entire furnace, it had to point upwards while the smelting process was ongoing, yet angle towards the earth when it was the time to extract the finished product from its belly. Considering how heavy this several meters long and thick bowl was, if not for my ability to poach an entire steam engine just for the sake of turning it around when required, I would have to create a complicated set of pulleys and rotors to make simple workers capable of turning this monstrosity around!

But just when I was about to celebrate how easy it was to create this steel making machine, I realised that it wasn't all that simple.

In short words, this Bessmer furnace worked by filling the furnace with a hot iron, then blasting it from the bottom with the preheated air. This was another reason why I decided to introduce the air stoves a the same time as I started working on this new, steel making contraption. 

By blowing hot air through the molten iron, it would purify it from most of the dirt and allow the workers to reduce the amount of carbon in the mix, turning originally weak iron into one of the most important products of the industrial world - steel!

But it also came at a huge cost.

While providing hot blast for the smelters was as simple as it could get, doing so for the Bessemer furnace required me to sacrifice five d.a.m.ned engines just to make the flow of air powerful enough to stop the molten iron from blocking the blowing tubes!

Yet as soon as those problems and cost were taken care off, all that was left for me was to watch and observe how the workers connected the metal plating together, added a small line of molten iron to make sure it was welded together, only to repeat this process over and over again. Only where those simple iron plates finally started to take the form of a half of the desired bowl, did another batch of the former serfs got to lining it up with the limestone bricks and connecting everything together with just a bit of the cement mix. 

"With this, we will finally be able to start producing some weapons…"

Even if I could easily reproduce reaper guns with my current production ability, it wouldn't change the fact that in reality, there was rather a single-use weapon due to how quickly the barrels were losing their shape due to overheating. Only when the proper rifling would be introduced along with the steel to make more resilient parts for those guns would I be able to think about fortifying my entire investment!