Throughout the entire winter, Lin Qiaozhi devoted almost all of her energy to technical practice.
Aside from taking New Year’s Eve, the first day of the Lunar New Year, and the second day of the Lunar New Year off, she spent every night honing her skills in her dreams.
To forge iron, you first have to be strong yourself.
Only by steadily advancing her own abilities could she learn techniques of a higher level in her dreams.
Otherwise, even if masterful craftsmanship and cutting-edge techniques were placed right before her eyes, she would not only fail to comprehend them, she might not even realize they were valuable.
She practiced without missing a single day throughout the entire winter break. Nine hours every night, and at least seven or eight hours during the day with tools in her hands. Having invested that much time, she could feel herself improving at an astonishing pace.
Lin Qiaozhi decided it was time to begin making the mold for the Tieniu 55 tractor’s side cover.
The first step was to collect a piece of material large enough for the job. The stock provided in the school’s workshop for student practice simply wasn’t big enough.
“Here to collect materials?” Li Lishan, who was on warehouse duty that day, smiled as he accepted her requisition slip.
Lin Qiaozhi smiled. “Take a look, Uncle Li.”
As Li Lishan recorded the request, his eyes fell on the material list. The required dimensions and specifications were clearly marked. Years of warehouse management experience made him realize what it was for almost instantly, and he looked up in surprise. “You’re starting on that side cover already?”
“It’s the side cover mold,” Lin Qiaozhi corrected.
“Ah, close enough.” Li Lishan wheeled over a handcart made by the factory itself, sturdy and reliable. “Wait here. I’ll load it for you.”
He pushed out a small cart piled with steel from the warehouse. Some of it was new stock, though most consisted of scrap pieces discarded by the workshop. As he loaded them, he reminded her, “This steel isn’t cheap. Use it carefully. If you end up scrapping too much, you won’t be issued another batch.”
“I know.”
Steel was expensive these days. The country was tightening its belt and gritting its teeth to drive steel production. It certainly wasn’t meant to be wasted.
Otherwise, she would have started long ago. Why would she have waited until her skills had gradually reached their current level?
Pushing the cart loaded with steel, Lin Qiaozhi headed from the warehouse toward the school.
The path took her past the factory’s basketball court.
Two teams of teenage boys were playing.
With a loud clang, the ball bounced off the rim without going in.
“Hahaha, Zhao Song, you’ve really gotten rusty. How come you suddenly changed your ways and stopped spending all your time practicing in the workshop?”
The court erupted in laughter, and someone exposed the real reason. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of Lin Qiaozhi?”
Cradling the ball, Zhao Song jogged a few steps, bounced it on the ground a couple of times, then raised his voice. “Who’s scared?” He shrugged indifferently. “I just can’t be bothered competing with her.”
Can’t be bothered competing with her?
Passing by, Lin Qiaozhi nearly burst out laughing.
After the new semester began, she rarely saw Zhao Song in the workshop anymore.
Once upon a time, she had been chasing after him.
She had hoped to erase the gap created by those years through sheer hard work.
When she finally surpassed Zhao Song and became Engineer Lu’s chosen apprentice to accompany him on outside assignments, she had cried tears of joy.
But somewhere along the way, Zhao Song had gradually faded from her field of vision.
Lin Qiaozhi continued pushing the cart forward and arrived at the workshop.
After the new year, there were noticeably fewer people. Many students came less and less often, until eventually they hardly showed up at all.
Only familiar faces like Zhou Shu and Xu Guanping were still around.
The place was much quieter and far more spacious.
“What made you go get new practice material all of a sudden?” Xu Guanping walked over and asked. After last semester’s graduation assessment, he had already more or less secured his assignment. He had chosen the most demanding mold fitter group under Engineer Qiao.
After what happened with the Railway Bureau last time, the two of them had become fairly familiar with each other, and they would occasionally exchange technical insights.
Lin Qiaozhi lifted the piece of material she had collected out of the handcart.
The massive block of steel immediately attracted everyone’s attention.
“Take a look.”
As she spoke, she set the steel block onto the workbench with a heavy metallic thud.
“Looking at a piece this big, you can probably guess what I’m making, right?” Lin Qiaozhi said while tidying up her workbench and arranging her tools. Then she noticed one oil-groove chisel was missing.
She was about to get one from the toolbox in the corner when Zhou Shu, standing beside her, reacted first. Swiftly, he handed over the oil-groove chisel at his side. “Sister Qiaozhi, use this one. I’m done practicing for now, so I don’t need it.”
Xu Guanping lent a hand, adjusting the steel block into position. He circled it, looking it over from every angle, then clicked his tongue. “These are the dimensions for a Tieniu 55 engine mold.”
He hadn’t even attempted one himself yet, nor did he have much confidence in doing so. “No wonder everyone says you’ve got guts. Last semester, your graduation machining accuracy had only just barely crossed the 0.10 mm threshold. After one vacation, you’re already planning to tackle this?”
Lin Qiaozhi smiled. “Take a guess. Do you think I practiced over the break?”
She blinked twice.
Xu Guanping: “…”
He forced a smile. “You can’t possibly…”
“Haha, you guessed right! Well? Want to see how much I’ve improved?” Lin Qiaozhi grinned as she coaxed him. Having someone highly skilled as an assistant would make the early rough machining go much faster.
Xu Guanping felt his heart bleed.
He wanted to bang his head against the table. He had guessed Lin Qiaozhi would keep practicing during the break, so how had he not paid more attention himself?
Lin Qiaozhi took a folded sheet of paper from her pocket.
She unfolded it layer by layer and spread it flat beside her.
It contained a precisely drawn mold blueprint. Every edge, every corner, every curve was meticulously labeled with dimensions, including length, width, height, radius, and other measurements.
Xu Guanping didn’t even bother returning to his own workbench.
He handed Lin Qiaozhi V-blocks, dividers, a height gauge, and other tools, intending to observe both her technique and her skill.
Sometimes, watching each other’s techniques could improve one’s abilities more than burying oneself in solitary practice.
Following the blueprint, Lin Qiaozhi marked the various dimensional lines for the length and width on the steel block.
She then picked up her dividers, adjusted their opening according to the drawing, and cleanly and confidently scribed a smooth arc.
“I’ll double-check it for you.” Xu Guanping picked up a ruler and height gauge, carefully verifying every measurement.
After measuring, Xu Guanping quietly drew in a breath. The fact that Lin Qiaozhi could lay out the markings so cleanly and decisively not only showed how proficient her layout work had become, but, more importantly, that she had already memorized the blueprint inside and out.
Lin Qiaozhi was more than happy to have someone help with a second inspection. Working with smart people really did save both time and effort.
Inspection was essential.
Generally speaking, the larger the mold, the more likely it was to be entrusted to experienced veteran craftsmen, because if anything went wrong, the losses would be enormous.
Making molds already involved significant material loss. One crooked cut could ruin an entire block of steel, forcing the work to start over. Worse still, if the mold itself contained defects, every item produced from it on the production line afterward would also have defects.
Some factories couldn’t solve such problems themselves, yet didn’t dare tamper with molds that had cost a fortune to purchase. Afraid of ruining them entirely, they simply kept using them as they were. As a result, the products they manufactured were of poor quality and tended to develop problems after prolonged use.
Some fitters with insufficient skill couldn’t even identify where the problem lay, because their own technical level wasn’t precise enough.
All they knew was that the products their factory produced used solid materials and high-quality steel, yet somehow still broke down easily.
That was why molds, as the mother of industry and the starting point of the production line, demanded absolute care and precision at every step. There was no room for carelessness.
She didn’t know how other factories did things, but at Hongqi Factory Technical School, students were taught from the moment they enrolled to develop the habit of carefully verifying their work.
Once the inspection was complete, Lin Qiaozhi pushed the steel block on the handcart to the workshop that housed the lathe, and Xu Guanping helped her secure it onto the machine.
“Hummm…”
Lin Qiaozhi steadily guided the lathe’s cutting tool, performing broad cuts across the steel block.
Before long, the once-solid block of steel had begun to reveal the rough outline of the side cover.
Xu Guanping also became interested. As he helped cut the power to the lathe, he reached over and replaced the cutting tool with a drill bit to make Lin Qiaozhi’s next step easier. At the same time, he said, “Next comes drilling the crack-stop hole, right? Want to check the blueprint one more time to be sure? If the hole cuts into the line and there’s no machining allowance left afterward, this piece will be scrap.”
The crack-stop hole he mentioned was a small hole drilled at a specific position in the metal stock to prevent tearing during chiseling.
According to the requirements for this part, there had to be a certain gap between the drilled hole and the arc line. If the hole cut into the line, the part would no longer have any machining allowance.
Hearing that, Lin Qiaozhi took a deep breath. She carefully confirmed the position of the crack-stop hole once again, then operated the lathe fitted with the drill bit. With a buzzing zzzz sound, it slowly aligned with the marked position.
It wasn’t particularly smooth or effortless, but at least the crack-stop hole was successfully drilled.
The two of them immediately leaned in to inspect it nervously.
Then they both let out a sigh of relief.
It hadn’t cut into the line!
“Not bad. At your current level, if you can finish making this die successfully, then even if you went to a small machinery factory in a more remote area and worked on products with lower technical difficulty, you’d be capable of handling fitter work on your own,” Xu Guanping said with admiration.
“More or less. Let’s move on.” Lin Qiaozhi nodded. Successfully completing this die really was invaluable training.
They carried the roughly machined workpiece back to the workbench.
She wiped it clean with a rag.
Lin Qiaozhi compared it against the blueprint once more and decided to start from the lower right corner of the side cover plate.
Bending over, she began the fine finishing work, filing away little by little.
The countless hours she had spent scribing fine layout lines and filing metal flat layer by layer had given her an increasingly refined sense of touch.
Bent over the workbench, her filing was steady and methodical.
Xu Guanping tidied up his own workbench. When he came back, Lin Qiaozhi had already finished shaping one corner at the end of the side cover plate.
He looked more closely, and his eyelids twitched.
He was no longer a freshman who had only been at the school for less than a year. He had seen the work of many senior fitters and would not be easily astonished by technical skill. But the problem was that Lin Qiaozhi’s technique had advanced so dramatically yet again!
He did not dare make a sound, afraid of interrupting her work.
So he could only stand to the side, his eyes fixed intently on the file in Lin Qiaozhi’s hands.
It was only after Lin Qiaozhi straightened up to stretch her back that he finally asked in utter disbelief, “You broke through that quickly? You skipped straight past two-precision accuracy and reached an accuracy of seven si?”
…
Translator’s Note:
I couldn’t find a reference image of the side cover panel mold itself, but I did find a photo of the Tieniu 55 tractor, the model Lin Qiaozhi is making the mold for.