He made a vast number of bricks, but did nothing with them.

After several failures he made two large pots, and two great pans, that would all four bear fire under them, and in the pans he boiled sea-water till it all evaporated and left him a sediment of salt.

This was a great addition to their food, and he managed also to put by a little.

But it was a slow process.
He made a huge pair of bellows, with a little assistance from Miss Rolleston; the spout was a sago-stick, with the pith driven out, and the substitute for leather was the skin of a huge eel he found stranded at the east point.
Having got his bellows and fixed them to a post he drove into the ground, he took for his anvil a huge flint stone, and a smaller one for hammer; heated his old iron to a white heat, and hammered it with a world of trouble into straight lengths; and at last with a portion of it produced a long saw without teeth, but one side sharper than the other.

This, by repeated experiments of heating and immersing in water, he at last annealed; and when he wanted to saw he blew his embers to a white heat (he kept the fire alive now night and day); heated his original saw red-hot, and soon sawed through the oleaginous woods of that island.