Chapter 18
The success of improving the rifle seemed to have given me more confidence than I deserved.
Having already turned a finished rifle into something better, I thought I could manage a pistol on my own, too. In my previous life, I’d analyzed completed designs and suggested improvements based on simulation results. So I figured that, given enough time, I could make a pistol whose mechanism I understood.
That illusion had completely vanished before winter arrived.
I’d worked out the feeding path for the wooden pistol to some extent. If I nudged the slide by hand, all seven dummy rounds would enter the chamber one after another. By changing the magazine height, feed ramp, and length of the magazine lips, I’d gotten a rough idea of the path the rounds would take.
Once I’d smoothed out the feed ramp, the extractor started causing trouble.
I bent a thin brass plate and attached it to the inside of the slide. It hooked into the groove at the rear of a dummy round in the chamber and pulled the round along when the slide moved back.
When I pulled the slide slowly, the dummy round came with it.
But when I pulled it a little faster, the brass plate spread open and let go of the round.
To fix that, I put a thicker brass plate in the same place. But the extractor wouldn’t flex enough to get past the groove at the rear of the dummy round. I shaved the tip thinner, and it caught once or twice, but after only a few movements it spread open again.
‘Is this the wrong shape?’
I vaguely remembered the extractor on the pistol in my mind being longer and thinner than the one I’d made. Or perhaps it was set deep inside the slide and barely visible from the outside.
I couldn’t picture its exact shape.
When you ran out of ideas, you had to make up for it with better materials. In the end, I asked the watchmaker to make me the same shape out of spring steel.
He studied the drawing for a long time, then said with an uncomfortable expression,
“The part you’re asking for has to flex just a little, then return to precisely the same position every time.”
“Isn’t that what a watch spring does?”
“Clocks don’t operate amid gunpowder residue and impacts. And a spring stores force by winding a long, thin strip in a regular pattern. But this is a short hook that has to withstand impacts without losing its shape.”
He pointed to the tip of the extractor I’d drawn with his fingernail and said,
“Making it the same shape won’t make it the same part. We’d have to decide on the type of steel and the heat treatment after machining, too. I can make small springs, but I can’t take responsibility for a gun part.”
The carpenter had said something similar.
When the wooden slide started twisting on the rails, I asked him to carve it more precisely. He set down his measuring tape and held the wooden pistol up to the light by the window.
“Your Highness, wood of this size changes with the weather.”
“It fit yesterday. Why is it sticking today?”
“It may have absorbed moisture overnight, or one side may have dried out in the heat from the stove. It’s difficult to keep the gap you want if we’re using wood.”
“What if we made it out of brass?”
“Then you’ll have to take it to a workshop with metalworking equipment.”
The Imperial Palace did have a small lathe and a drill for repairing clocks. But we had no equipment to machine a pistol frame and slide to precise dimensions, let alone make identical parts over and over again.
More than anything, the palace craftsmen didn’t want to put their names to making something like a gun.
I’d thought all I had to do was design it.
But in reality, I needed materials, machines, measuring tools, and people to test the design. Drawing a straight line on a plan and machining steel to match it so it would move the same way hundreds of times were completely different things.
Even so, I didn’t give up. I kept experimenting with whatever I could do in my room.
First, I covered the wooden dummy rounds with thin brass sheets. I wanted to see how the friction compared with actual metal parts, rather than wood rubbing against wood.
But once the surface changed and the rounds grew heavier, the magazine spring I’d already adjusted became useless. The first round pressed too hard against the magazine lips, while the last one rose slowly, only after the slide had already passed.
I tried winding a new spring myself.
I thought I’d cut the same length from the same wire and wound it the same number of times, but one was easy to press with a finger while the other was so stiff I could barely fit it into the magazine.
“What? Why are they different?”
I measured their overall lengths with a ruler. They were nearly identical. They had the same number of coils, too.
The watchmaker placed the two springs side by side and examined them for a while.
“Their coil diameters are different. The spacing isn’t even, either. You must have applied different force while winding them.”
“That small a difference?”
“A spring can change because of a difference that small. Similar shapes don’t necessarily make identical parts.”
He pressed one of the springs with his finger, then let it go.
“To make the same spring over and over, you have to record the wire’s thickness and length, the coil diameter, and the spacing. You also need a tool that can wind them consistently.”
“Can’t you make one for me now?”
The watchmaker fell silent for a moment, then replied cautiously,
“Your Highness, I’m the person in charge of the clocks in the Imperial Palace.”
His words meant he wanted me to stop asking him. I apologized and sent him away.
That evening, I was winding a spring alone when the end of the wire cut my finger. The cut was small, but blood dripped onto the brass magazine. I didn’t think much of it, wrapped a handkerchief around my finger, and tried to carry on.
Someone must have told Mother I’d hurt myself; the door suddenly flew open.
“Bessie!”
Mother looked at the room before she even looked at my hand.
A small knife, a file, wire, and brass plates were scattered across the desk. Failed springs and dummy rounds littered the floor. Black grease stained my dress sleeve, and the wooden pistol lay half disassembled beside the bed.
“What on earth is this mess?”
“I cut myself a little.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
Mother called for a servant to clean my wound. Then she ordered them to remove every knife, file, piece of wire, and small hammer from the desk.
“No. I’m still experimenting.”
“Your room isn’t a factory.”
“Then I need a proper place.”
After the words left my mouth, even I paused for a moment.
It sounded like I’d gone too far. Mother narrowed her eyes when she heard me.
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of asking for a gun factory inside the Imperial Palace?”
I didn’t answer.
But apparently my silence was answer enough for Mother.
“Absolutely not.”
With my tools confiscated, I had no choice but to continue designing on paper for the next few days.
But unless I moved an actual model, I couldn’t tell which parts were catching or where. Paper didn’t create friction, and even if an axle was crooked, it would only tear. It didn’t expand when heated or wear down after moving back and forth in the same place repeatedly.
In the end, I secretly took my tools back.
Oskar agreed to keep watch for me.
“I’ll knock twice if someone comes.”
“What if it’s Mother?”
“Three times.”
“What about Father?”
“Once.”
“Why is Father’s signal shorter?”
“Because Father comes in without knocking.”
It was surprisingly logical.
That night, I tested the locking mechanism between the slide and barrel again.
I attached a short brass link beneath the barrel and connected it to a pin in the frame. When the slide and barrel moved back together, they had to travel a set distance before the link rotated and pulled the rear of the barrel down.
When I moved it very slowly by hand, it seemed to work properly.
The barrel and slide moved back together.
The link rotated.
The rear of the barrel dropped, and the locking lugs slipped out of the grooves inside the slide.
This time, I pulled the slide back a little faster.
Clack!
The barrel didn’t drop.
The pin caught at an angle, bringing the slide and barrel to a complete stop. When I applied a little more force, I heard a crack from the wooden lug supporting the link.
A small piece of wood flew toward Oskar. He ducked and shouted,
“I almost got hit!”
“That’s why I told you to stand off to the side.”
“You were standing in front of it!”
“I made it.”
“That’s an even stupider reason!”
I couldn’t argue with him.
When I examined the broken part, I saw that the wood around the hole for the pin had split.
Widening the gap between the pin and the hole let it move, but the rear of the barrel wobbled noticeably. If I narrowed the gap, even a slight angle in the pin stopped the mechanism.
I couldn’t even tell whether the wood was failing to hold its dimensions or whether I’d placed the pin in the wrong spot.
As dawn approached, I was still sitting on the floor with the failed parts spread out around me.
Three magazines.
Seven springs.
Four bent extractors.
Two broken barrel lugs.
Several dummy rounds jammed in the chamber.
Oskar was leaning against the bed, dozing as if he couldn’t stay awake any longer.
I picked up the wooden pistol and moved the slide. It caught halfway.
I pulled it back again, and this time the magazine fell out.
“God, this is impossible.”
Oskar opened his eyes.
“What?”
“I can’t do this alone. I absolutely can’t.”
It took longer than I’d expected to admit that.
My pride had stopped me from asking a technician for help from the start. I had a finished mechanism in my head, so I thought I could build it on my own. I wanted to design it myself and have other people make the parts to match my drawings.
But what I needed now was someone who could find the parts I’d gotten wrong.
I needed someone who could decide what kind of steel to use, make the same spring over and over, explain why a part had broken, and tell me what to change in the next prototype.
And one person wouldn’t be enough.
When I improved the rifle, I’d started with the barrel, bolt, magazine, and production process Paul Mauser had already perfected.
But this pistol had no finished foundation I could use. Every part had to be fitted to every other part inside a tiny frame, from the beginning.
Precision machining, sheet-metal work, spring making, heat treatment, and so on.
Not a single one of those problems could be solved with plans on a desk alone.
As I put the parts scattered across the floor into a box, Oskar asked,
“Are you giving up now?”
“No.”
“You just said you couldn’t make it work.”
“I said I couldn’t do it alone.”
I put the broken barrel lug into the box last.
“I need to bring people together.”
“You’re not going to send it to Mr. Mauser?”
“That alone won’t be enough. If I have to send every changed part to the factory, it’ll take too long.”
In my previous life, I could have checked a simple shape the same day with a 3D printer in a school workshop or lab. I could have drawn up the plans and tolerances for metal parts under real loads and sent them to a specialist company.
But here, drawing a plan didn’t mean the part would be ready the next day.
I needed a place where designers and machinists could check the results together and remake a failed part right away. I also needed machines that could cut steel instead of wood, and measuring tools to check the same dimensions over and over.
Oskar asked, looking confused,
“Then what are you going to make?”
I closed the lid of the box.
“A workshop.”