Solo First Day on the Job (Part 1)

[Maria Talwa]

1, Winter, 518

Maria had managed to get a job at Silvertongue's by commenting on some of the pieces that were on display. Her comments had leaned more toward technical terms, such as gem purity, cut, and other bits of shop talk. The conversation had lasted about half an hour before Maria mentioned that she was looking for a job, and Cosette took her up on that offer. The shop was certainly a lot higher class than what she was used to. Walking in through the front door she looked around at all the merchandise that was on display. To try and make herself fit in better, Maria had put on clean, neat clothes to make herself look professional.

She didn't own anything fancy like silk, but could pass herself off as better than dirt poor. Aside from some wool winter clothing she had, Maria's entire wardrobe was black, and today was no different. She was dressed in a nice shirt and loose skirt with boots. Three walls of the bottom floor were lined with display cases that made Silvertongue's look like a very nice place to pick out something beyond the normal garbage most people made do with. There was a small work table behind the front counter which is where Cosette was sitting. There was a jeweler's loupe in the woman's eye and she appeared to be working with a small collection of gemstones. It caught the woman's attention when Maria walked behind the front counter.

“There you are, I was starting to think you might be late on your first day.”

“I usually try not to make a bad first impression on the job. What would you like me to do?”

“Hmm, before we get to the doing, I think we should review knowing. Follow me please.” This was something that Maria had expected. She only hoped it would be enough, because her job was still probationary, based on how much she knew about the trade. They went upstairs into one of the office rooms that was out of sight of the public, and there Maria saw a small jeweler's forge. It was smaller than what one would normally see in a smithy, but it was just perfect for melting down gold. The room was hot, and Maria could see there was already a crucible being heated.

“So how hot does gold need to be?”

“1,100 for ore, 1,950 for refined gold.”

“Very good. I'm refining some gold to increase the quality, and it's ready to come out, feel free.” When Cosette motioned to the forge, Maria walked over and looked around for the tools. Putting on a pair of gloves, she took some tongs and removed the crucible. There was dross on the surface, so she took the skimmer off the table and carefully skimmed the top, disposing of said dross in a small waste bucket, then put it back into the forge.

“Why did you put the crucible back in?”

“I was taught to always skim twice, to get as many impurities out as possible.”

“Seems like you had a good teacher, skimming twice is a good habit.”

WC: 520

[Maria Talwa]

“You uh, have a retort somewhere around here?” Maria said, looking around the room.

“Oh right,” Cosette snapped her fingers and walked out of the room. She returned shortly holding the item in question. “I was cleaning it out and forgot to bring it back in here. Alright, let's head back downstairs while that cooks.” The redoubt was set in the room, and they returned to the first floor with the table that had the gems on it. Reaching into a drawer under the table, Cosette took out a small leather bag, dumped the gems into it, then dumped the bag out on the table. At first Maria didn't know what she was doing, until taking a closer look.

There was colored glass mixed in with the gems, and when the woman motioned to the table, the reason was obvious. Taking the jeweler's loupe, Maria carefully sorted them into two piles. There may have been a lot that she still had to learn about the jeweler profession, but she did have a good eye for stones. When the separating was finished, Maria had managed to put the glass and gems into two neat piles, then put the loupe down and looked back to Cosette. The woman leaned down over her shoulder and carefully inspected them, without using the loupe, then nodded.

“Very good, seems you know glass from stone.” Once that was done they went back upstairs to the forge. There the crucible was removed, and the gold was skimmed a second time. Like she had seen before, Cosette produced a graphite mold with a bar shape cut into it, and Maria knew what to do next. Unlike trying to pour gold into a ring mold, this was easier. Making sure to keep both hands steady, she was able to pour the gold without making a mess of things.

“This helps to bring anymore impurities to the surface, after which the gold will take a nice little bath in the retort along with some nitric acid.”

“Yes it will, how are your appraisal skills?”

“Poor.”

“Then I suppose we'll have to practice then, won't we?” Cosette took a bit of a different approach to helping Maria learn to appraise the value of gold, and how to tell the difference in quality. Producing a wooden box with gold ingots, each about 2.5 grams, she poured them out onto the table, turned them over and mixed them up. They all had their purity stamped into the face. With Cosette watching, Maria tried to pick out the quality of each ingot, then turned it over. Each time she got it wrong, which was almost as much as she got it right, her new employer would offer little tips and pointers, and also telling her what to watch for. After another try on mixing up the ingots, Maria did a little better, but not much. The skill of being able to judge the quality of gold on sight, was something that would most definitely require practice, and a good bit of it. She was just glad things seemed to be going well so far.

WC: 520

[Maria Talwa]

Once the bar had cooled and been removed from the mold, it was put into the retort, after which Maria and Cosette took a little time to talk about the shop, business, and that was when Maria remembered something. A little skill she'd learned from Otis some time ago. This time it was her turn to snap fingers upon remembering this, thinking it might be a good idea to show Cosette that she wasn't as thick as a brick.

“May I see the books?”

“The books, what for?”

“I'd like to show you something a former employer taught me.” At first Cosette seemed a little suspicious, but eventually did allow her to see the books. The ledgers that Maria were shown only detailed sales, not purchases, or anything else. That came as no surprise, and she wasn't about to get pushy about seeing anything else. If things did work out, Cosette would show Maria more, when and if, she felt like it. Looking everything over carefully, she flipped a few pages and began to read over the information. At this point, she couldn't even be sure if these books were real.

“From what I can see here, gold is trending well, silver is pulling up a nice second, and copper... is not doing well at all.” Seeing that her brows furrowed gently before looking up. “Any idea what happened? Sales are pretty low, even for copper.”

“A ship brought in a load of copper ingots about two months ago. Market got flooded by low quality street vendor garbage.”

“That sucks, but it would explain the small selection of copper jewelry on the first floor.”

“Yes, but it's good to see that you've got the brains to track market trends through sales records.” With that taken care of, they checked on the gold bar. When Cosette removed the bar from the mold and placed it in the retort, they talked a little more, mostly about nothings like weather and interesting but pointless developments in town. Once the bar was ready to take out of the retort, it was washed in a bucket of water and held up with tongs. Now of much higher purity, it glistened almost as much as Maria's eyes when she looked at it.

“Now that is a bar worthy of being made into jewelry,” Cosette said.

“Yes it is.”

“Want to give it a try?” That pulled Maria's attention away from the gold bar, and to Cosette. She was surprised to hear that, thinking that her job would have been much the same as before, practicing the small stuff before moving on to anything bigger.

“Me, making something, seriously?”

“Yes seriously. You're not going to learn just by grading gems and gold. Do you know anything about sand casting?”

“Not much.” Taking a two of the ingots that had since been placed back in the box, Cosette put it in the crucible, got the forge fired up again, and placed it inside. Maria was also glad it was near a second story window, so most of the heat wouldn't be trapped in the room with them. She watched as Cosette took some equipment out of a nearby storage chest. It appeared to be two small metal circles open on both ends, a bucket of red sand, a small hand knife, hammer, a thin rectangular piece of metal, a small container of powder, and two small circular metal plates. There was also a small wooden box.

WC: 578

[Maria Talwa]

All eyes and ears for this, Maria watched over a shoulder very intently. When Cosette opened the small wooden box, there was a ring inside that looked like it hand a small metal rod attached to the side about two inches long. This made Maria furrow her brow curiously, wondering exactly what purpose it served in the whole sand casting process. Nevertheless she stayed silent and decided to watch the process first, asking questions later. Then Cosette picked up one of the metal circle, which was tall but thin. There was a small half inch square section cut out of the side.

“Alright, this is your basic sand cast mold. As you can see there is a small section cut out, that's your funnel, we'll discuss that more in a minute. The ring in the box is called a pattern. Now when you do this, you start by setting the mold funnel side down, and then you take your pattern and center it inside.” Cosette took the mold and did just that, set it on the table with the funnel side down, slid the pattern in through, and centered it.

“The next step it to put the sand into the mold. You want to do this gently, because you don't want the pattern to shift. It won't ruin the casting if it moves a little, but you should try to keep it centered.” Some of the red sand was taken out of the bucket by hand, and placed into the mold over the pattern.

“Now we use the hammer to pack the sand.” Hammer in hand, she began to pack the sand in the mold, smacking it down quite a bit. Then a little more sand was added on top, and hammered down again. Once finished Cosette took the piece of metal and scrapped the top. “You'll want to pack the sand tightly, so that it gets into every part of the pattern. You don't want any spaces at all. Now we'll take the knife and start carving around the ring. We want at least half of it uncovered, like so.”

Turning the mold over, the sand was carefully cut away from the ring, and this part Maria paid special attention to. Cosette had a very steady hand, and moved the knife around carefully, without cutting too deeply. Slowly the sand is removed from around the pattern, exposing roughly half of it. The sand was also cut out of the center, and near the funnel. Maria was starting to get a good idea of what was going on, but continued to watch in silence. For someone as experienced as Cosette, the process went like child's play. On the other hand, Maria doubted that her first several attempts would be anywhere near as smooth as this. She still felt a little giddy though, this being a large part of what she'd wanted to learn for some time now. Learning about gems and gold was fine, but she wanted to see how the jewelry was made, and that's exactly what Cosette was doing for her. Once the knife work was finished, the sand was smoothed with a finger.

WC: 526

[Maria Talwa]

“Since we've finished this part of the process, next we want to use a little powder. The purpose of the powder is to keep the sand in the two sides of the mold from sticking together.” The powder from the small metal container was gently sprinkled on the mold and spread around by hand. “Now we'll fit the two sides of the mold together. Naturally we want the funnel to be lined up. Also make sure the outside is clean, and then just snap it together.”

Upon closer inspection, Maria saw that there was an inner section of the first mold that was higher on the inside of the mold piece that Cosette was working with. She took both halves and snapped them together neatly, holding it up for Maria to look over carefully. Right now she was trying to drink in every last detail, and paying attention to everything her new employer said. The next part didn't need as much explaining. Taking more sand and placing it on top, the hammer came into play again.

“Be careful with this part, and don't go berserk with the hammer. It's a good way to screw up the casting. On the other hand, don't be surprised when you do. The first few times you're liable to fail rather badly. I did.” In a manner similar to the bottom section, the top was packed down, but Maria could see the hammer wasn't applied as liberally to this part of the process. Like the bottom, once the sand was packed down, the slender length of metal was used to cut the excess off the top and smooth it out. Then Cosette began to cut around the funnel.

“This is where you need to pay close attention. I'm about to take the mold apart, but do NOT, I repeat, do not try to twist it. Otherwise you can kiss all your work goodbye.” Considering everything she'd seen so far, that made since to Maria. Twisting would ruin the pattern on the inside. It took a bit of effort on Cosette's part, but she managed to get the two halves apart without messing anything up.

“I think I see where you're going with this. Next you'll try to lift the pattern straight up and out?”

“Indeed I will.” She watched as Cosette lifted the pattern out carefully, then set it on the table. “Alright, we're almost ready. Just like when we took this apart, don't twist. Also don't set it down too hard either.”

With the mold put back together and laid on its side on the table, Maria could see the hole in the sand made by the pattern was just perfect for pouring. Taking the two metal discs, Cosette placed them on both ends of the mold, then began to loosen a small vice attached to the side of the table. The mold was clamped into place, when she looked over and pointed to the forge.

“Would you bring the gold over here please?” Eager to keep going, Maria put on the gloves, then used the tongs to take the crucible out, and carefully brought over to where Cosette was working.

WC: 527
Total: 2,671

Part 2

[Orakan]

Maria

Skills

● Observation - 5XP
● Socialisation - 3XP
● Jewelcrafting - 2XP
● Appraisal - 1XP
● Logic - 1XP

Lores
● Location: Silvertongue's Silver Tongue
● Silvertongue's Silver Tongue: New place of employment
● Cosette: Owner of Silvertongue's Silver Tongue and your boss
● Silvertongue's Silver Tongue: Layout
● Metalsmithing: Skim twice to remove as much impurities as possible
● Jewelcrafting: Using a jeweller's loupe to identify stones from glass
● Metalsmithing: Making use of a bar mould
● Appraisal: Judging the quality of a bar of gold by sight is difficult
● Metalsmithing: The process of making a bar of gold
● Jewelcrafting: Sand casting technique: process and equipment


Misc/Penalities/Loot

Please deduct the cost of Maria's new wardrobe from your ledger.

Comments

Please be mindful of Maria's skill levels.. Please stop playing her being perfect at everything. Please don't play NPCs oocly... I did not award powerplayed skills.
Don't forget to edit your request in the grading queue.