How to make gears, treated planks and metal blocks

Short answer: gears come from the Gear Workshop, which turns 1 plank into 1 gear every 3 hours (about 5.3 a day on a 16-hour shift). It costs 100 science, 15 logs and 25 planks, and needs 120 hp of power. Planks come from a Lumber Mill (Folktails) or Industrial Lumber Mill (Iron Teeth). Treated planks, metal blocks and extract come later and need more science, power and some new raw materials. Here is the whole materials ladder for both factions, with how many of each building to place.

Step 1: logs and the best tree for wood

Everything starts with logs. A Lumberjack Flag (free, 1 worker) cuts trees in its area and a Forester (30 science) replants them. Which tree you plant decides how much wood a patch of ground gives you.

Tree	Days to grow	Logs when cut	Logs per tile per day	Extra harvest
Oak	30	8	0.27	none
Maple (Folktails)	28	6	0.21	3 maple syrup every 12 days
Mangrove (Iron Teeth)	10	2	0.20	4 mangrove fruits every 10 days
Chestnut (Folktails)	23	4	0.17	3 chestnuts every 8 days
Pine	12	2	0.17	2 pine resin every 7 days
Birch	7	1	0.14	none

Oak gives the most wood per tile over time, but its first logs take 30 days. Birch is the opposite: weak per tile, but you get logs after a week, which matters in the first few cycles. A common plan is birch and pine first, oak in the big forest once the colony is stable, and pine kept standing near a Tapper's Shack for resin. Logs per tile per day here is logs / days to grow and ignores the lumberjack's walking and the Forester's replanting time.

Step 2: planks

Folktails build the Lumber Mill: 1 log to 1 plank every 1.3 hours, 1 worker, 50 hp, 15 logs, available from the start. That is about 12.3 planks a day. Iron Teeth build the Industrial Lumber Mill: 1 log to 1 plank every 0.63 hours with 2 workers and 75 hp, about 25.4 planks a day, so one Iron Teeth mill does the work of two Folktails mills. Neither mill makes more planks than the logs you feed it, so a plank costs one log for both factions.

A Folktails Power Wheel gives 50 hp, exactly one Lumber Mill. An Iron Teeth Large Power Wheel gives 300 hp, enough for four Industrial Lumber Mills, or two Gear Workshops (240 hp) with 60 hp to spare.

Step 3: gears

The Gear Workshop is the same building for both factions. At 3 hours per gear it is slow, so gears are usually the thing your construction queue waits on. Gears go into 27 of the 51 workplaces, plus the Medium Tank (30 planks, 20 gears) and Large Tank. Worked numbers for a 16-hour shift:

• 10 gears a day: 2 Gear Workshops (5.3 each), fed by 1 Lumber Mill (Folktails) or 1 Industrial Lumber Mill (Iron Teeth), 10.7 logs a day, 240 hp for the workshops.
• 20 gears a day: 4 Gear Workshops and 2 Lumber Mills, or 1 Industrial Lumber Mill. That is 480 hp for the workshops alone.

The production chain calculator sizes this for any target and draws the chain.

Step 4: treated planks

The Wood Workshop (800 science, 250 hp, 20 logs, 40 planks, 40 gears) turns 1 plank and 1 pine resin into 1 treated plank every 3 hours, about 5.3 a day. Resin comes from pine trees through a Tapper's Shack (500 science). The wiki puts one tapper at roughly 20 to 22 resin per 16-hour day, and each pine gives 2 resin every 7 days, so one shack can keep about four Wood Workshops busy if it has around 75 mature pines in reach (21 a day / 0.286 per pine). Treated planks are needed for the Mine, the Large Water Pump, the Dirt Excavator and other late buildings.

Step 5: metal

Scrap metal first comes from ruins: a Scavenger Flag (250 science for Folktails, free for Iron Teeth) sends a worker to strip them. The Smelter (300 science, 200 hp) melts 2 scrap metal and 0.2 logs into 1 metal block every 2 hours, 8 blocks a day from 16 scrap. Ruins run out, so the late game answer is a Mine (Folktails) or Efficient Mine (Iron Teeth): 4,000 science and 10 workers, turning 1 treated plank into 5 scrap metal every 1.8 hours. The Efficient Mine has a second recipe that adds 2 extract for 10 scrap. Iron Teeth also have the Metalsmith, which makes metal parts from 1 scrap and 0.2 logs every 3 hours.

Extract and the badwater goods

The Centrifuge (600 science, 2 workers, 200 hp) turns 4 badwater and 0.1 logs into 1 extract every 0.75 hours, about 21 a day. Badwater comes from a Badwater Pump or Deep Badwater Pump (250 science each). Extract goes into the Iron Teeth Grease Factory, the Folktails catalyst recipe in the Refinery and the Efficient Mine. Explosives come from the Explosives Factory: 5 badwater for 1 explosive every 3 hours.