Solo [Sultros Blades] Of Hilts and such

[Eanos]

7 Fall, 513AV

Now that the blade was coming along Eanos had reached the point where he could no longer delay working on the fittings that accompanied it. A blade was of no use to a swordsman on its own, it needed various parts to complete it. His discussions with Hadyn and the thoughts that they had triggered had weighed on his mind and he realised that there were some things that he could ask for her to complete for him. There was some decorative metalwork that would compliment the sword and she had a fine hand at that sort of work. He decided that he would concentrate first on producing the storage hilt and then he would work with Hadyn on making the hilt which would be both practical and decorative.

As ever he liked to plan and drew out a fresh sheet of paper and started making notes for the build. The blade with its collar was now effectively done, all that remained was the final polishing and that could not yet be done for there was still a period of test fitting and the creation of hilts etc any of which stage risked some damage to a finally polished surface. The polish would only be applied when all other things were done so that the final stage was merely to assemble and put aside for Aoren to collect. Polishing was also the stage at which he intended to finalise the gnosis treatment which he had started right at the very beginning. By leaving it to the last it ensured that the draining effect it always had did not interfere with getting the sword finished in time.

He wondered idly what Hadyn would produce for this sword, it would be a clear demonstration of her abilities, but he also realised that he hadn’t written anything down, so he stared with the decorative hilt.

Hadyn. End cap at top of hilt, collar at base of hilt. Sword hilt with collars. Collar at top of scabbard and bottom cap. Hilt decoration. Scabbard hook and tie sleeves.

He paused to consider if they should make something more but decided against it for this sword, which left his work outstanding. For him this was somewhat more simple for it was the hilt wrapping which he would hope to attempt the following day, plus the creation of the scabbards. Making two was perhaps unnecessary, but then it was one of the things that he had decided upon in order to ensure that the sword was very different to anything seen here in this city before. In his mind it added a mythos to the sword which was all the better. There was one area that concerned him heavily and that was that he had underestimated the time taken to finish the sword, and that in part was one of the reasons for his decision to get Hadyn involved. His pen tapped on the paper and he realised that he had miscalculated the time badly and would need to send a message to Aoren apologising for the delay. That was an annoyance, but one that could not be avoided for he refused to hurry any stage of the work.

[Eanos]

Having decided to make the storage scabbard first, Eanos was of two minds and after considerable indecision decided to reverse his choice. It would take him at least one day, and likely two to make the scabbards even by working long hours and if he worked on the decorative ones first he could then turn them over to Hadyn for her to work on. That would free him to work on the storage scabbard and then the polishing. With a little luck all would be completed at nearly the same time and Aoren wouldn’t be overly delayed.

With that thought in mind he got to work. The tools needed were the most basic of woodworking tools and ones which could as a result be found in any blacksmiths shop as they were used for the making of moulds, handles and the like. He didn’t carry much wood but again he had some for this very purpose for there was little point in being a bladesmith if you couldn’t put handles on your blades and put them safely into sheathes. It wasn’t work that he claimed to be an expert in but a little care and attention usually in his experience counted for much of missing skill.

He pulled out his limited selection of wood and started working through it to find a piece which was the perfect match for the sword. Which craftsman produced the wooden boards he wasn’t sure for it came in the same way that the rest of his supplies did which is to say the Knights arranged it. He still found it a slightly odd relationship, but it worked for them both and so he never allowed his thoughts to move beyond curiosity about it. The wood needed to be completely seasoned, which is to say that no moisture remained in it. If it did then the wood would warp as it dried further rendering it useless and moisture released in the process would rust the blade so it was completely inconceivable that he would use anything that was not completely seasoned. Fortunately in a forge, though the wood needed to be protected from dirt and soot, the heat was effective at ensuring that the wood remained completely dry.

Having chosen the wood that he wanted he put the rest away and laid the piece on his worktop. Using the blade as a template he marked it out roughly to give some idea of the size needed of the thick wooden plank and then cleaved the wood in two leaving the pieces that he wanted and putting away what was left that he did not. With the wood selected and cut to size it was time to make it into a scabbard. At no point in this process could he use any form of abrasives since there was too much risk that some might remain inside the scabbard and scratch the highly polished surface of the wood each time that the sword was drawn or put away.

[Eanos]

He started by carefully marking out the shape of the blade on each piece of wood where it had been cleaved cleanly in two. These would be the mirror pieces of wood which would be fitted back together afterwards and which would fit back together perfectly without gap, so it was important that the markings for the blade recess also matched as closely as possible. The design of the sword meant that there would always be a gap between sword and scabbard, it was important that it did not touch, but that space should not be so big that the scabbard itself could not be narrowed down outside to a slim shape without breaking through into an overly large recess inside.

Now that he had the sections marked out he could now decide where the wood would be cut to free the hilt section from that of the blade, and so he marked it and made the cuts. Returning his attention to the scabbard section he used a knife to score along the soft lines that he had drawn to outline the blade. These cuts served to act as a stop for the chisel and helped to ensure that it didn’t initially cut too far into the wood of the scabbard walls. Then he selected a chisel and carefully began to remove shavings of wood from inside the cut marks. It was slow and careful work, not the least because it was something that Eanos wasn’t overly experienced with but also because a single slip could easily ruin the work and cause him to need to start again from the very beginning.

As he worked with the chisel he paid greater emphasis to the side which would be the back of the blade for of course this part needed to be deeper as the blade was thicker here. This was also the edge where the back of the sword was most likely to touch as the sword was drawn so it was necessary to ensure that there was no roughness which would be felt by the person drawing the sword - an irritation every time that they did so. It was also necessary because when being sheathed the tip of the sword would also be running along here and he didn’t want any risk of damage to it in the process, no matter how remote such a risk might be.

From time to time as he worked, his attention on the part of the back of the blade he used the blade to test fit in the recess. Once it started to deepen along the back, and the part where the blade edge would be was hardly started he also remembered to cut a recess at the very end of the sword by the tip of the blade which would serve to catch and store any oil which might drip from the blade and so prevent it building up where the sword would be for oil would attract contaminants such as dust and dirt which aside from the risk of marring the blade by acting as an abrasive slurry, might cause the sword to jam inside the scabbard.

[Eanos]

Once the recesses in both sides started to become deeper he lightly oiled the blade and slipped it into the scabbard so that the oil would mark any places which were binding or uneven and could then be carefully corrected with the chisel. Now that he was back into the rhythm of the work, Eanos found it relaxing for the tensions that went with not having started something with a deadline and the worry that he wouldn’t remember properly something that he had been taught as part of his training back in Sultros ebbed away.

When the blade started to fit correctly then it was time for the final smoothing of the wood and this too he worked on carefully and with his full attention but now he was also careful to be relaxed about and not in a hurry. With a careful review to see which direction the grain of the wood ran, something he was confident upon in any case given he had been working with the chisel, he started the smoothing process with a knife blade held crossways to the grain so that it acted as a scraper and removed uneven or protruding wood fibres.

He had a choice of actions to perform next and decided to bring the outside shape of the scabbard closer in to the final shape. He worked a plane across the outside surface taking small shavings off and used the incised blade recess as a guide to the curve that the scabbard needed to hold. With that neatened it was time to cut the recess for the sword collar that he had made the day before. It was this collar that sat in the neck of the scabbard and held the blade immobile inside so that it could not touch the inside of the scabbard,so the fit was critical. It was also the fit that held the sword in the scabbard, so too tight would make it hard to free the sword but too loose and not only would it touch inside, but there was the very real risk that it would simply fall out, and that was a possibility that the smith did not want to even think about.

He spent some time on this, slowly paring away with the chisel and smoothing with the knife so that about the upper third of the collar fitted snugly into the top of the scabbard. With the interior complete it was time to glue the two halves together again. For this he used glue made from rice, which was a careful Isurian choice which he had noticed seemed to be completely absent from this city and demonstrated a difference in culture that was hard to otherwise describe. The glue was strong enough to firmly hold the two halves together, but at some point in the future the two halves could be forced apart once more so that the inside of the scabbard could be cleaned of oil and dirt and then glued back together again.

It was important that the two halves matched perfectly when it was glued and that the alignment was perfect otherwise the sword would not fit in and it would have to be taken apart again. Before he glued it together followed the same process with the hilt so that too was made to shape and ready. With the glue applied he wrapped cord around the pieces very tightly so that even the smallest gap in the wood was removed and then put the pieces aside to dry overnight. As an afterthought once the glue was drying he quickly made up a second hilt so that he could use it for practising on.

[Eanos]

With the pieces all glued together and the binding removed there was some careful testing of the sword into both scabbard and hilt. Fortunately there seemed to be no issues so the work could continue and Eanos breathed a sigh of relief that it had gone well enough for him to not need to correct it and so lose at least another day. He was certainly starting to feel the pressure on this one and promised himself once more to allow more time in future when promising delivery times to a customer.

Since he wanted scabbard and hilt to match in shape and form, he fitted the hilt to the tang with a temporary wooden pin and slipped it into the scabbard so that both were held firmly together. Taking his time and visualising the shape of the sword within he worked with a larger plane to remove the bulk of the waste wood, waste in this being in the woodworking sense for wood not needed in the final design. As he brought the shape closer so he shifted to a smaller plane. It would be a disaster now to take it too close into the the blade inside and to break through into the sword recess so he was exceptionally careful.

With the shape roughed out with the right overall curve in place from one end to the other it was time to start bringing the profile into place so that the scabbard was an oval with a bias to match the shape of the blade within. In this his guide was the hilt so he worked from that end. As part of his initial measurements that he took from Aoren he had measured his hands and so knew the correct thickness of the handle, a thickness which would continue down the sword right to the very end where it would taper just a little. At the same time he double checked the measurements of the blade length against the length of the handle to be sure that it too was correct. Once he was happy with the hilt he tapped out the temporary peg that secured it to the tang and made up a new one that would be finished along with the hilt.

Since this was to be the decorative hilt and scabbard, and he had by now given up hope of being able to produce a storage version in time, there would need to be some modification to the current gap between hilt and scabbard to allow room for the sword guard that Hadyn would make for him. Once more the restriction on using any form of sandpaper meant that he could not use that to increase the gap so worked instead initially with a plane and then with a sanding block prepared with some boiled reed which was slow but effective, the fibres of which were abrasive but were safer. He made the adjustments on the hilt end in any case as there was much less risk of contamination having any effect, but still the end of the scabbard needed to be cleaned up as it was simply sawn at the moment.

Now it was as ready as he could make it at this point and he needed to discuss this with Hadyn and see if she was willing to make the metal fitments for both hilt and scabbard.

[Taylani]

Eanos

Skill	Award	Notes
Planning	+2	-
Woodworking	+4	-

Lores

• Hadyn: What would she produce?
• Storage Scabbard first
• Wood working: Choosing the right piece of wood.
• Scabbard: Important for two halves to match.

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