The method that I came up with for using bimetallic strips to regulate temperature took some time to develop, and it's fairly crude. A small mana engine drives a dc generator, with the bimetallic strip acting as a switch to open or close a circuit to a second motor, which will mirror the drive of the mana engine when the switch is closed. Since both reactions we're interested in occur above the boiling point of water, we're going to use pressed plant oils as a fluid medium to regulate temperature. The bimetallic strip will be submerged in the oil as well to detect temperature.

The very basic method I've decided to go with for temperature regulation is having a copper plate be moved in and out of contact with both a heat fluorite plate and the container of oil. For safety reasons, the motor will push the plate in to add heat to the system, and the spring will remove the plate. To do this, the switch will remain closed at lower temperatures, and be designed to open as it heats up. For even more safety, a second less sensitive switch can also be added that closes at an even higher temperature, which would then move the heat plate down and away from the system, in case the conductive plate gets jammed somehow.

The bimetallic strips were easy enough to make by simply using a roller at high temperatures to bond the two metals together. In our case, we're using steel and brass for our two metals. Another useful function for bimetallic strips I'm utilizing is using them as a thermometer. After designing a set helical spiral, I was able to make use of the expansion properties of the metals to turn a dial along a temperature gauge. By using a regular themometer and water, I was able to set the scale that this bimetallic thermometer could measure. While it does still have a few degrees of error, it'll function well for measuring temperatures above the boiling point of water that I'd otherwise be in the dark about.

Making bimetallic strips that I could use, developing thermometers with them, making the glassware I needed and building the dc generators and motors took me a total of 16 days. Then, getting the diethyl ether reaction figured out manually took another 30 days. The biggest problem that I'd run into was I kept accidentally causing small fires and explosions, shattering the glassware I'd made. I was working with azeotropic ethanol and our concentrated sulfuric acid. What I found was that for diethyl ether production, the temperature actually needed to be kept fairly low, at only about 280 degrees Fahrenheit. If it went too high, the yield nearly completely disappeared, or caught fire, and below that very little happened. For all this testing, I was manually operating things using thermometers to jot down temperatures that things were happening at.

Once I knew what temperatures I needed, it was fairly easy to tune the bimetallic strips in the oil because all I needed to do was adjust the pin position that contact would eventually be made or removed at. So, at 280 degrees farenheit the first pin would lose contact, and the motor would lose power, allowing the spring to push the contact plate away, no longer providing direct heat to the oil. At 300 F, the second strip would close contact, moving the heating plate down, further away from the oil.

I quickly found, however, that the ambient heat from the heat crystal was still a little too high for my liking so, rather than just having an air gap between the crystal plate and oil container, I added a thinner lightstone layer that would move into place behind the copper contact plate. Either side of the lightstone layer has an air gap between the containers, so it more than doubled the insulation between the two components. Doing that seemed to work.

By using ground birds as test subjects throughout the process, I was able to determine when I was making ether versus just distilling acid mixed with ethanol. I'm also sorry to say that a few ground birds ended up perishing due to overexposure to impure ether a few times. Ultimately, I found that I needed to distill the ether, and tried a few different methods to help purify it. Interestingly, using pure salt seemed to help quite a lot. Based on what I saw, the salt is insoluble in ether, but would help turn the dissolved water into a brine, increasing it's boiling point and making separations easier.

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The next step will be testing the mechanically automated process of temperature control. If that works somewhat well, then I can more easily dedicate a few demons to handling the ether production process. Though I'll need to be somewhat careful about it. Ether is quite potent and has unique effects on the brain, making it somewhat addictive. The last thing we need is a bunch of ether addicts running amok on the island.

The mechanical process ended up being a lot of trouble. Many moving parts and contact issues were the biggest reasons it was difficult. Ultimately, I found that the contact plates also needed to have some amount of oil between them to allow them to move easily and have good contact. That wasn't ideal, as it meant that I needed to complicate the process somewhat, but I was ultimately able to devise a system that would drip a small amount of oil on the copper plate whenever it was in motion. That way it would lubricate itself every time it would insert or withdraw from the system.

After that, I had to do a lot of fine tuning on the speed that the motor would drive a rack and pinion to insert the plate, as well as the necessary spring tension to not stop the motor, nor drive the rack back too quickly. Fine tuning ended up taking another 17 days, but ultimately, I got it working comfortably. I ran a few batches of ether production, dripping in ethanol and distilling it off, until I was confident that it would run effectively and could easily be stockpiled over time.

I then brought on eight demons to work on this process to begin stockpiling ether for us. Training them only took four days before I was confident that they'd be able to handle the job and machinery, and know how to tell when something was working wrong.

We're quickly approaching the completion of the mana crystal now. My estimate it about another year until it's complete. I've been working on the acid and ether production for almost a year now, and we've just entered springtime again. I still have the nitrous oxide production to develop before I'm confident in our ability to actually anaesthetize anything for a prolonged period of time. The ether does a great job of knocking out the ground birds, but I've found that exposing them for too long always results in death, even when I supplement them with higher oxygen concentrations from our liquid oxygen supply. So I'm hoping that by lowering the ether concentration after knocking them out and supplementing it with nitrous oxide and oxygen, we'll be able to put them under for a much longer period of time safely.

I checked in on how progress was coming on the artificial nests and pathways to them, the eagle feeding area, the openable floors for removing the mana crystal, and the new bathhouse area. The feeding area is pretty much complete, which is good. They've constructed a few dozen artificial nests so far, and they expect they'll have just about 80 nests done by the end of this year. I'm hoping that will be enough.

The openable floors are coming along smoothly with only two floors left to construct. We've started to notice a small uptick in ambient mana in the surrounding area where we're growing the crystal now. I suspect it's a consequence of both more mana reaching the growing area and the pure size of the crystal at this point. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be negatively affecting the growth rate, which makes me wonder as to the exact requirements for growing them again.

The bathhouse is coming along well also. The uphill side of the city now has quite the sprawling bathworks of both indoor and outdoor pool areas all being fed from the highest pool which is almost completely sealed off. That is where the giant mana crystal will go. Once the mana crystal is put there, it'll be sealed off, with the only ways into that reservoir being through the relatively narrow pipes that direct water flow out to the various pools, or in from the stream inlet.

It's quite majestic so far, and it's only two-thirds complete. They've planned it out to handle a much larger population than we currently have as well. I've been told that it should be able to have about 2000 individuals in it at a time, though it'd be somewhat uncomfortable if they were actually at capacity.

The crystal's water feed has the ability to drip feed in other components, should we want to add in boiled wood water for better mana capacitance. Likewise, some of the pools also get more freshwater mixed in from the stream, to lower the dosage of mana applied. I've been told by Shasta that this is an important part of the baths around Par-Tor, as the water close to the crystal can be too mana rich for low level individuals, so it needs to be watered down to not harm them.

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