Sigh, looks like I can't slack off after all. No, wait. Be patient and explain it one more time. Maybe the Ink Marker just needs time to react?
To avoid having to do it himself, Shen Le patiently explained it again.
Seeing that the Ink Marker still hadn't reacted, he simply set it on the table, picked up another wooden ball, and took out a pencil. Then he began drawing on it, line by line.
He marked a vertex, drew an arc down the curve of the sphere, then another arc, continuing until the two arcs intersected. After finding the North and South Poles, he drew several lines from the South Pole to roughly divide the sphere into equal sections;
then he extended the meridians downward, divided them into several equal segments, and drew the lines of latitude...
He kept his head down and drew for half an hour. At last, he'd managed to mark up the wooden ball so it was more or less, probably, approximately even.
As for the precision, there was no point worrying about that. He could adjust it later while drilling...
Well, if he kept working like this, he should still be able to make a passable Devil's Work Ball. Shen Le gave himself a pat on the back, then turned toward the Ink Marker—
His smile froze on his face.
The Lead Weight stood upright, pointing skyward, with a tiny wooden ball balanced on top. It was steady as could be. The meridians and lines of latitude on the ball were clear as day, every line clean and precise.
By comparison, his own pencil-drawn mess, with its repeated corrections and crooked, overlapping, smudged lines, looked like a coal-hauling donkey standing beside a Ferghana Horse.
Shen Le: T_T
If you were willing to work, you could've said so!
You could've said so!
Oh, right. You can't talk. Then you could've tapped the table with the Lead Weight, or knocked the base against it, just to give me a heads-up?
At any rate, the wooden ball was already marked, so he couldn't let it go to waste.
Shen Le secured the ball in a Woodworking Clamp. He steadied the clamp with his left hand and picked up the pen-shaped Electric Drill with his right. Then he swapped in the thinnest drill bit.
"Bzzzz..."
The bit spun rapidly and burrowed into the wood, sending wood shavings billowing out of the hole like snow.
Shen Le held his breath and steadied the drill, guiding the fine, pen-tip-thin bit around the arc he'd drawn beforehand.
After one circuit, he saw that the drill had carved a perfect, slightly sunken circle into the wooden ball's surface...
Using that circle as a base, he drilled downward and inward, making a flat, circular surface. He dug out a tiny cylinder, removed the drill bit, and swapped it for a blade.
"Mm, looks like only a grinding disc can do the job..."
As its name suggested, a grinding disc was used to sharpen carving knives. A small disc could be attached to the tip of a drill bit, and both sides of the disc were exceptionally hard and rough.
Before these disc-shaped grinding bits existed, you could only turn a very thin straight blade sideways and slowly cut your way inward;
now, with a grinding disc, you could press it against the very bottom of the cylinder, keep it close to the edge, and let the blade spin rapidly to cut inward:
"Shh-shh-shh-shh... shh-shh-shh-shh..."
The umbrella blade shifted slightly, sending wood shavings flying. The inner and outer layers of the wooden ball naturally separated. Shen Le guided the blade along the cylinder's edge, turning it around once, then again, and again. As he watched the cut grow deeper, he figured that after making a full pass around the circumference, the inner wooden ball would be able to rotate...
"Ah!"
Damn it!
He'd cut right through the outer shell!
His first step toward making a Devil's Work Ball had failed...
My hands are so clumsy!
Shen Le drooped his head and lamented his carving skills, then tried again.
He'd marked out twelve circular holes on one wooden ball, which meant he had twelve chances to make mistakes. Whether he cut through a layer or bored straight through the whole thing, he had to finish drilling all twelve holes!
Then Shen Le put on a whole performance of spectacular, never-repeated failures:
"Ah! Cut through it again!"
"Again, again, again!"
"Ah, I cut through the second layer!"
"I cut too deep. There's no third layer left!"
"I drilled this hole crooked!"
"Crap, the inner ball fell out..."
Drilling twelve holes and hollowing out three layers in a wooden ball just 1.5 centimeters in diameter was far beyond Shen Le's abilities.
If an ordinary art student's woodworking and carving skills rated a 1—enough to get through assignments and occasionally earn an 80 from a teacher—
then Shen Le's skills, honed over three years of restoring cultural relics, would rate a 2.
After all, he occasionally had to carve wooden window frames or Wooden Que-ti Brackets, complete with dragons, phoenixes, qilin, pavilions, figures, flowers, birds, and auspicious clouds. Sometimes, the pieces were the work of renowned masters.
But carving a Devil's Work Ball—even one made with only three layers of wood—probably required a skill level of 10.
Shen Le drilled twelve holes and failed twelve different ways. He switched to a new ball, drilled another set of holes, and failed twelve more different ways...
"Seems... an Electric Drill won't work. I'll have to do it by hand. The drill's too fast, too fast. I can't control it..."
Shen Le sighed, put down the Electric Drill, and picked up the smallest Wood Chisel. He paused, then replaced it with a curved blade with a 7-Shaped Blade tip.
He worked slowly, shaving away at the gap between the first and second layers, bit by bit.
"Back then... the person who made this Devil's Work Ball didn't have an Electric Drill either, right? They had to carve and polish it by hand, bit by bit...
I guess chasing girls really is the greatest motivation. They were willing to challenge their own skills and make a Devil's Work Ball... So what am I even doing this for?"
Oh, right. I'm doing this for the superpower the Copper Fragment gives me after I restore it perfectly. Never mind...
Fortunately, making a Devil's Work Ball really was an interesting challenge. Shen Le got completely absorbed in it, enjoying every moment. He ruined one wooden ball, then another...
After working at it for several days, he used up the entire bag of practice wooden balls. By then, he could make a three-layered wooden ball whose inner layers could rotate.
The inner two layers weren't smooth, and they got stuck when he turned them, but Shen Le could now say with pride:
I made a Devil's Work Ball!
With the practice wooden balls used up, it was time to start working on the Jujube Wood Bead. As soon as his carving knife touched it, Shen Le let out a cry:
Help!
The hardness of jujube wood and that of the practice wooden balls—which might have been pine or Chinese fir—were completely different!
With pine or Chinese fir, he could hold the wooden ball in one hand and carve it easily with the other;
with jujube wood, one stroke drove the blade deep into the wood and the back of the knife deep into his finger...
A long, red mark stood out on his fingertip!
Shen Le's features twisted. He rubbed the joint of his right index finger against his thumb a few times, easing the red mark on his thumb. Grimacing, he carved another stroke, then another, and another...
"I can't keep doing this. At this rate, I'll ruin my fingers before I finish the Devil's Work Ball! At the very least, I'll end up with tendonitis or something...
Come to think of it, with the restoration this far along, could the Ink Marker already count as repaired?"