HFQ Official Snippet #9

runsforcelery wrote:
oh, I don't know: scouting, coastal patrols, carrying dispatches, picketing major enemy ports, acting as signal relays for the main fleet . . . little things like that.

By the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy had expanded to over 600 ships, only 175 of which were ships-of-the-line, and that represented a drop of around 20% of its peak line-of-battle strength. In effect, the RN had effectively defeated the French battle fleet — rather the position Charis is in right now vis-à-vis the Church — but had been forced into an enormous expansion of lighter vessels because of all the hundreds of things navies do beyond simply fighting battles.

Taking the ratio between British ships-of-the-line (the equivalent of the Charisians' "galleons") and their lighter units, you get a ratio of roughly 2.5 frigates, brigs, sloops, et cetera to every ship-of-the-line. In the Imperial Charisian Navy, effectively all of those functions "below the line" are carried out by schooners, and at the moment the Charisians have multiple hundreds of them in service.

Trust me, they been finding things to keep themselves busy doing, but if it turns into a matter of providing convoy escorts against a serious threat to the Empire, they're available for that, too.

Hi RFC,

I'll take your word for it. We'll just have to wait and see how Rock Point deals with the worries he expresses in the snippet. I await that with pleasure.

Don

JRM wrote:

n7axw wrote:

As an example, In my shop, I have a caliper that enables me to make precise measurements, let's say down to a thousandth of an inch, or its eqivalant in metric. This intrument permits me to lathe or grind down a piece of metal to the point where it would fit exactly into the perfectly round hole that the same instrument permitted me to drill or bore out.

There are no calipers in church shops.

Don

This is absolutely my last word on the subject.

LAMA August 896 Ch V Page 108 paragraph 2

Safeholdian timepieces had been precision instruments from the very beginning of the human presence on the planet, although each of them had been individually built by master craftsmen like Bruhstair, without a trace of standardization.

If we start with a clock gear that has a random size, every other gear and moving part in the clock must be proportional to that part. The teeth of a given gear must be very close to identical and symmetrically placed if the gears are to mesh smoothly. How can that be done without a caliper? Now if all they were building were clocks for the town square, this argument might not hold water, but Clyntahn in his rage destroys a grandfather's clock.

In summary, the church has shops that measure parts to thousandths of an inch, even if they can't agree what the units of those measurements are. The church shops have drop hammers, water powered machinery, and accumulators. The plans stolen from Siddarmark describe not only how to make high quality steel, but how to use a steam engine in that process.

James

I think the difference between precision and accuracy for guns applies here.

The clockmakers can make very accurate clocks, but only by doing a LOT of work to get the parts right, and not knowing how that would actually work I can't say if they need actual identical parts in every clock or the they just need to be built to the same ratio, there's some iterative process involved against a reference clock or something else entirely. And I'm also pretty sure the passage you're quoting refers to all those clocks being one off pieces

As a long-term model-maker I can say that a difference of 10 thou is blatantly obvious and 50 thou is enormous. Habitually working with small parts accustoms one to seeing them - I work down as far as 5 thou for some things without needing calipers so measure them. So yes, any skilled craftsman can tell at a glance whether parts will fit together.
Cheers
John

Guardiandashi wrote:

The parts in all of these rifles— all of them, My Lord— are effectively identical. I’ve measured them very carefully and found some extremely small variations in size, but none of them are significant.

So how could "small variations" have been measured without calipers?

James

at a guess especially if he used a really good magnifying glass he could see pretty small variations. I am going to guess on the order of 10-50 thousandths of an inch.

the real deal with precision tools like calipers, micrometers, etc. is they they both read faster, AND can be set to a predetermined setting so that you can check and recheck as you get close to the desired measurement.

now my suspicion based on everything I have read is that a lot of the things both sides are dealing with within ~1 1/100 of an inch is effectively identical, granted that might not be the case with the newer rifles, but I suspect that a certain amount of "slop" can be resolved by things like the brass etc.[/quote]

SCC wrote:I think the difference between precision and accuracy for guns applies here.

The clockmakers can make very accurate clocks, but only by doing a LOT of work to get the parts right, and not knowing how that would actually work I can't say if they need actual identical parts in every clock or the they just need to be built to the same ratio, there's some iterative process involved against a reference clock or something else entirely. And I'm also pretty sure the passage you're quoting refers to all those clocks being one off pieces

The part JRM quotes (around p170 in LaMA) talks about the extraordinary amounts of money master clockmakers earn. By implication they are a pretty scarce resource and their clocks are for the rich only. It is not going to be easy, quick or simple to use them as the basis of a revolution in manufacturing.

Oops that would be page 108. Edited once for accuracy.

alj_sf wrote:The key point is that the church don't have, and can't have, a standard inch due to the writ.
Charis has one. In our world the original mere-etalon is still stored in the Pavillon of Sevres even if it was replaced by a wavelength measure, and even the US inch is nowadays defined in relation to it.

So each factory has slightly different measures, whatever precision the machines and calipers can achieve. And there is really no way to reconcile the variations. Jigs even to a good precisions is not enough

More, their machinery, due to the lack of standard, are built with lesser precision geometry, and one of the hard rules of manufacturing is that you need at least a 5x factor increase regarding the precision of the main guiding parts of any machine. btw geometry is key here not dimensional.

This is true for any measure.

For drawing processes in particular, even slight variations of pressures will attain very different results which may the difference between a jam or not.

...

I have 2 Howa-made Weatherby .243s. I like to necksize to extend brass life when I reload, but with these 2 guns that is not possible. I either have to keep the brass separate or full length resize as the chamber in one will not accept reloaded ammo that has been shot in the other. (You can go the other way, of course.) And they are both nicely built guns that shoot very accurately.

But the point is that both of these guns were made by the same manufacturer using the same specs and obviously have differences in the chamber.

As for the pacific rim countries with their tiger economies, they weren't handicapped by the proscriptions or the doctrine the church imposes. Neither, I might add, was Shannon Foracker. The inquisition would have sent her to the punishment as a servant of Shan-wei for sure!

Don


I wouldn't mind another April Fool's chapter related to that scenario. Merlin, Nimue and Cayleb could watch the replay for hours while giggling over Shannon saying "oops." Of course, they might need another temple after Foraker finished ...educating the neobarbs.

FrigidSoul wrote:As for the pacific rim countries with their tiger economies, they weren't handicapped by the proscriptions or the doctrine the church imposes. Neither, I might add, was Shannon Foracker. The inquisition would have sent her to the punishment as a servant of Shan-wei for sure!

Don


I wouldn't mind another April Fool's chapter related to that scenario. Merlin, Nimue and Cayleb could watch the replay for hours while giggling over Shannon saying "oops." Of course, they might need another temple after Foraker finished ...educating the neobarbs.

sorry this prompted a really snarky thought. I realize "merlin" likely doesn't want to do it because several stages of the plan would be too "blatant" (and it might involve lots of resources he doesn't really have) but I could see in theory a way to get around the orbital bombardment system but it would take time and doesn't directly change his immediate goals.

1st he uses his manufacturing gear to build and expand the cave or start on a second roughly equivalent facility, this one he sets up as a manufacturing facility, with a fabricator plant (which means it would need access to raw materials.)
once this facility was built up "enough" have it manufacture a few items that are blatantly moderate to high tech.
1 recon satellite or a set of them, to get a really good look at the orbital bombardment system from hopefully beyond its engagement range, and try to identify both its defense installations, its bombardment launchers, and its control systems.

2 active weapons systems specifically designed to disable /destroy the bombardment system from beyond its own engagement range. the only concern is if the guys that set it up were crazy enough to put in a scorched planet subsystem IE sterilize safehold before allowing the bombardment system to be taken out.

I will say that this should be able to be determined based on the number of launcher cells and reasonable ideas of the payloads in question.

like I said I don't expect merlin to go there but ....
it would at least get the threat of orbital interdictions off their backs.

Hmm, the Gabba meet humanity of the Honorverse, I think they would have the s*** kicked out of them Oops hell, roll pods!

Speaking of Oops and the Go4, the COGA don't have computers for Shannon to work her magic on Remember electronic are a no no on Safehold.

Poker

Now Poker, all Shannon has to do is get her hands on the computers in the basement of the Temple.

pokermind wrote:Hmm, the Gabba meet humanity of the Honorverse, I think they would have the s*** kicked out of them Oops hell, roll pods!

Speaking of Oops and the Go4, the COGA don't have computers for Shannon to work her magic on Remember electronic are a no no on Safehold.

Poker

My point was really more about precision machining than precision measuring, although you obviously enough can't have the machining without the measuring.

I was in a shop one time watching a guy re-bore a 327 Chevy to 30 thousands over. The means of measurement was right on the machine and he could set it to exactly what he wanted and we stood there and watched the head go around and around, gradually working its way down. The end result was a mirror smooth cylinder wall which with a caliper measured out at exactly 30 thousands over. The pistons were small enough so there was enough "slop" to accommodate the compression rings.

He also had a valve grinder so that when everything was put back together, the compression was exactly factory standard.

The ability to do this sort of thing is what Howsmyn has been learning and getting increasingly better at.

By way of contrast, I don't think the church can manage it. They might get close enough to use leather rings with a steam engine like early steam engines did in real time. But the result of that would be that the hp would be so low that they probably would have very limited application.

As for the possibilities of back engineering the M96, it might be possible, but it would be tough. Remember Thirsk's pet wizard commenting about reproducing the Mandrayan. This would be much worse.

Not only would they have to get the barrels of the gun effectively identical. They would have get the formula for the bronze just right. They would then have to roll it out close enough so that there was very little variation in the OD of the bullets. Then there would be the business of mass manufacturing the bullets. I doubt they would have a clue on how to manage that. They would have to duplicate the magazines to hold the bullets. And I'm sure I haven't thought of everything.

It wouldn't surprise me if in HFQ we started to see assembly lines for various sizes and different levels of complication of steam engines. That would be a real game changer, wouldn't it?

Don