Solo [The Midnight Gem] Creatively Pouring Your Heart Out

[Kelski]

Timestamp: 70th of Winter, 518 A.V.

The life of a Master Jeweler could be sometimes repetitive. Kelski liked to change it up, especially when she was browsing the Seaside Market, looking for ideas, and stumbled upon Jewelcrafting Techniques she had never seen before. That was the beauty of a port city on a busy coast. Things came through from all different places. And she’d stumbled upon the booth almost by accident and found amazing pieces of sculpted metal jewelry which had techniques she didn’t understand.

Leaning over the display, Kelski plucked up an example and looked it over. The sculpted metal looked like coral, twisting and curving upon itself with no signs of how it was worked. She puzzled over it, and saw that whomever had crafted it had mounted little pearls for accents on it, making the finished piece beautiful. She sat it down, looked up at the vendor, and raised an eyebrow. “How was this crafted? It’s so unusual.” The Sea Eagle said reverently. The woman laughed.

“I didn’t make it, but I get it from my sister in Nyka. She’s very creative. She melts the metal, and while its still molten, she tosses it into specific things. She uses water, dried chick peas, straw, ice, and anything she can actually find to mold metal around that can then be broken out of it… like even food things like rice or dried pasta.” The tradeswoman said.

Kelski lifted an eyebrow. “That’s crazy.” She said with a laugh, then plucked up the small pendant, and handed the woman a silver for it. “It’s good to know new things though.” She said with a laugh, then started to turn away.

“Wait, if you like this you’ll love this.” The tradeswoman said, moving down the table to a lot of jewelry Kelski had overlooked. She plucked up another pendant, this one shaped like a coin, and handed it to Kelski. It had a very unique texture. It almost looked like tree bark. The Kelvic frowned. Puzzled, and pulled up her magesight, pooling djed from her well out into her bright silver orbs. Power flared within her, she studied the pendant, and found… absolutely nothing. There were no noticeable tool marks on it. In fact, it looked like poured metal since she could see a seam down the edge where the jeweler who made it had mimicked a coin patter.

“Was this poured? But I don’t get how they got the pattern.” Kelski said, asking curiously.

The sister, sensing another sale, showed no signs of ‘trade secrets’ as she spilled all her sister’s secrets. “It’s a mold made of bone… cuttle bone from a fish to be exact.” The woman said, taking the pendant back and running her hand across it. “It’s a long soft bone in the middle of the fish. It has a flat side and a rounded side. You sand the rounded side a bit flat, cut the whole bone in half, and it will form two pieces you can press together. Carving a pattern in it is easy, and you make channels for the metal to flow in like you do with sand casting. Then, when you pour the bone burns up, but it leaves that pattern.” She said as Kelski nodded.

[Kelski]

Handing over coins, she bought the small bark-looking pendant as well.

“Aren’t those the bones they sell to people that have birds? I’ve seen them for sale here.” She said, glancing around.

The woman nodded, adding “My sister picks them up off the beach. They often wash ashore.” She said helpfully, not realizing she was talking to another jeweler. Kelski thanked her profusely for her information, and set off in search of the supplies the woman had explained were in use for the unique pours. Kelski set off... in search of cuddle bones first.

After a thorough search of the market, Kelski had half a dozen cuddle bones, dried chick peas, pasta of all sorts, and two bundles of broom straw that the vender was sure she was going to weave into very fine brooms. Kelski shook her head, laughing a little. She couldn’t imagine weaving anything into anything, if truth be told. It all looked complex and a huge waste of time.

Taking her supplies home, Kelski set up the forge and got some silver ingot melting down in a crucible. She frowned at the metal thinking of the texture it would come out as if she poured it as is. Rough, and not the smooth glittering silver she wanted. Kelski reached across the forge, grabbed a small bowl of shaved soap, and tossed two pinches of the substance into the melt for flux. Flux would smooth out the melt, and make it reform better.

Then she contemplated what she could do. The pour would be big, so she needed to act fast. Kelski fetched a set of metal buckets from the barn and moved her stool over to where she set them down next to the forge. Concentrating, she drew up djed and converted it to res with a quick concentration. It took her a while, the bucket feeling like a big volume and the water being a new element. She pushed herself, oozing out the res, and began to fill the bucket with djed-crafted water. For some reason, she hoped it would be making the metal come out better – meaning smoother, less pitted, a more perfect pour. Kelski hadn’t mixed magic and jewelcrafting together before.

By comparison, she took a second bucket, filled it equally full of water from the actual well beneath The Midnight Gem, and left them side by side. She’d pour each at the same time.

Then, she took the bundles of broom straw, stood them up in waterproof taller crucibles, and set them side by side as well. Finally, in one last fireproof bowl, she poured out the dried chick peas and left them all set up. Surveying the work, Kelski didn’t think she could keep the melt hot between the pours, so she decided to do the two water pours at once, then reheat, then pour the straw and peas.

Slipping on her gloves, the Kelvic used her tongs to pick up the crucible – not bothering to skim because the impurities would pour out last with the good liquid metal coming off the bottom first – and moved swiftly. She dumped a quarter of the melt into the res-formed water, a quarter into the well water in swift dumps… then put the crucible back on the forge.

[Kelski]

She let it heat a few moments, then repeated the action, dumping half the remaining pour on the straw and half across the chick peas. Setting the crucible aside I its fireproof box to cool, she rehung her tongs, tossed off her gloves, and went fishing in the water. Kelski pulled out all kinds of interesting nuggets of metal, twisted and turned in abstract forms of contortion bespeaking the hot metal meeting the cold water.

The jeweler made a pile of the djed-born water, a pile of the normal water, then used a ladle to put out the burning straw and chick peas that had promptly caught on fire the moment she’d dumped the molten liquid over them.

Once that was a smoldering nasty smelling mess, she carefully picked up the un-burnt portion of the straw and began pulling it part from its bundle to free the elongated nuggets of metal from the weave. Those pieces, instead of being abstract coral-like creations were long slender almost metallic crystal looking pieces with vertical striations. They would make lovely pendants, unusual and interesting in their texture.

Each piece of metal was hot and she played the hot potato ‘ouch’ ‘ouch’ ‘ouch’ game on each of them plucking them out of the water and mess of burnt straw and peas. She only burned her fingers slightly, impatient to see if there was any difference between the djed-born water and the absolutely natural fresh cool well water.

Disappointingly, there was no difference between the two water pours. But as she moved through the pour materials, Kelski found there were big differences in the shape. The water created the coral like shapes and twists and turns of globs that interested her artistic mind endlessly. The straw of course made log striations, and the peas… wow the peas!

The chick peas were even more interesting. The metal had cupped the dried peas in many places creating interesting organic cups of metal that Kelski could clean and set with pearls or other rounded gemstones. She could even switch to a cheaper metal, add glass beads, and still have lovely, one of a kind necklaces for people with less coin to spend.

The metal was still warm that came out of the waters, straw and peas. Kelski inhaled deeply, pulled djed, and sent a breeze of air converted from res to circle around the pieces. It was good practice for her magic, concentrating the bit of res-born air to simply circle the metal pieces, cooling them gently. She leaned back on her stool, contemplating the pieces and what they meant while still holding the magic in check, her concentration on circling the breeze to cool. She’d focus on cleaning them up, polishing them, and then setting them with some gemstones to enhance the beauty. They’d be a unique addition to her normal stock in the shop.

So, with that, Kelski dismissed the breeze, gathered up the pours, and carried them over to her lap wheel. She took the time to change out the grinding wheel and put on a rough buffing wheel and got started coating them with polishing paste then buffing off the roughness on each and every big of the pours. Kelski cleaned them up nicely, put them through three cycles of buffing until she was down to a fine polish, and then left them all in a tray on her jewelers’ bench where she could solder some prongs on them in various places and mount gemstones and pearls.

Once done with that set, she was ready to try the last pour she had in mind for this series of experiments. She wanted to actually do the cuddle bone carve-outs and pours.

[Kelski]

According to the woman in the market, the cuddle bones made wood-like texture when poured into. The secret was to take the bone… which was like an internal skeletal structure of a squid… or cuddle fish.. and remove and dry it. Kelski had bought a handful of them already dried in the market because people often gave them to birds to nibble on for the beneficial minerals in them.

But artists used them too, mainly jewelers and metalsmiths, and she was eager to try both. Briefly the woman had described that her sister would take the softer part of the cuddle bone and sand it against a hard stone to flatten it perfectly. Then she’d carve molds in them, add sprue pour channels, and then would bound them together and pour metal in. Once dry, they’d pop out necklaces and trinkets that were definitely wood patterned shaped. Wood pattern was hard to replicate for jewelers and make it look real. But these trinkets that Kelski saw were absolutely perfect imitations of wood grain.

She was excited to try the new technique.

Sanding came first. The actual bones had one harder side and one gently rounded softer side. The softer side was the thing to sand, Kelski saw immediately. A rough but flat stone was needed, so Kelski just picked one of the hearth stones of the fireplace upstairs and stood there sanding. She ran the cuddle stones up and down the hearth blocks, over and over again evenly. She sanded each of her four bones just enough so they had flat spaces on their otherwise rounded surfaces that she could carve into as a jeweler.

The sand from the cuddle bones were a mess so Kelski carefully drew djed, formed res, and began to breathe out the clear fluid with all its blue and purple sparkles. Converting it to Air, she ran a breeze up and down the hearthstone, ferreting out any pieces of sanded cuddle bone and dust, then ran the little breeze around the hearth, in essence sweeping up the dust and depositing it in the heart of the fireplace itself where it would burn up harmlessly.

Magic for cleaning was so impressive to the Kelvic.

Once done, she took the cuddle bones back downstairs and outlined four chunky squares in each one. Then, with an incredibly sharp knife, Kelski gently carved out each square into a two by two-inch piece that she thought would make a great form for a chunky bracelet that would showcase the texture. The material was soft – soft enough she could actually dent with a fingernail – which made the carving easy.

So the first thing she did was cut the cuddle bones in half so the big cuddle bones could fit up against each other on the flat edges and make a nice smooth sealed surface for the molds to come together. She used a nice little jeweler’s saw to do the deed, cutting the bones in half neatly then checking the seal of the fit together. They matched perfectly.

Kelski was pleased.

Then the Kelvic studied the actual material of the cuddle bone itself intently. Kelski saw immediately that she could also make a wider variety of texture by pressing in various jewelers’ tools that would translate into raised portions in a pour which she could affix gemstone or other decorative elements too. This was like nothing she’d ever done. Sand Casting was vastly different… but this… this made Jewelcrafting easy. It was all in the carving. Just trailing the knife around the edges was enough to pull out material.

Truthfully, it was the easiest carving Kelski had ever done. She paid attention to detail, measuring the squares constantly in width, length, and depth so that all of the bracelet links would be equal. She even concentrated intently as she was prying away at the light material and produced a soft steady stream of res that formed a little wind that constantly kept the channels she was carving cleaned out of dust and excess cuddle bone. Kelski guided the wind to keep the debris gathered and swept up into her dust bin. She was proud of her control, for moving small particles of dust wasn't easy. The Kelvic probably couldn't do it with water yet being new to the element, but she was competent enough with the air for micro control.

Then, when she was done with the carvings themselves, she cut out a channel to leave a sprue for the pour to go into. The channel had to be wide to allow the metal to slide down quickly, so she angled the pour channels like a funnel, wider at the top and angle down into the mold.

[Kelski]

So basically, she had one half of the mold carved, and the other half acted just as a lid. Kelski lined up the two halves of the mold, clamped them gently together with her fingers, and with a jeweler’s tool she gently outlined the edge of the pour sprue from the carved section to the flat section so she could duplicate it on the ‘lid’ portion of the mold. Then, pulling them apart, Kelski went ahead and cut out what would in essence be the other half of the ‘funnel’ letting the metal into the mold. When that was done, Kelski replicated the process on the other cuddle bones, making them all equal. Then she pressed the molds together and bound them with jeweler’s wire that wouldn’t melt or burn under the heat of the pour. She wasn’t quite certain how long or how well the actual cuddle bone material would hold up.

All this work she was doing on the basis of hearsay and speculation. It was kind of fun, living on the edge as a Jeweler… and not nearly as dangers as walking down a dark Sunberth alley unarmed in the middle of the night.

Kelski looked at her setup, decided she needed a way to stand the molds upright and went over to her jeweler’s vice, opened it up, and put two thin boards on either side of the clamps. Then she slipped the cuddle bone pieces into the vice, lining them all up in a single line clamped gently In the board. Kelski wished she had some sort of firebox or burn proof area to do this in, because she was worried the pour would burn through the cuddle bone and end up on the floor. She didn’t want that to happen, but wasn’t sure she could prevent it. So she set a metal tray beneath the vice, just in case, so she could try and catch drips.

Then the Kelvic checked her forge, added some more fuel in the form of coal, and set up some melt in a set of crucibles. She decided not to do it in one big pour, but instead set up the arrangement to get the metal melted in two smaller crucibles, so that the pour wouldn’t cool too fast and seize up running the molds.

While she was waiting for the melt to get to the right consistency, Kelski changed out her lap wheels to buffing wheels and got out her silver polish. Then she dug around and found some sand-casted twigs she’d made days ago that were left from a different project and cut them to small lengths – but big enough to use as an artistic closure.

Making sure silver wire was at hand and her soldering iron was heating, Kelski set out some flux and got ready to finish the project.

Kelski headed back to the crucibles, skimmed the melt, and with gloved hands captured the crucible I her tongs and poured the first two molds. The stench from the burning bone was awful. Clouds of billowing burnt fish smell clogged The Gem’s workshop immediately. Not wanting to stop, Kelski changed out the crucibles and poured the last two, redoubling the amount of smoke. Her eyes watered, she gagged, and couldn’t get the still-hot crucible safely sat down fast enough to throw open the doors to the deck and the barred windows that allowed light into the shop.

Tapping her well and pouring out djed, she converted the substance to Res and then formed a strong wind that blew through the workshop. It gathered up the stench of the burning fish bone and corralled the wind, curling around it like a living serpent to physically push the stench and smoke out the open doors and windows. Kelski was a bit surprised she reacted so swiftly. She hadn't had to concentrate and hadn't had to really think about what she was doing. She controlled the wind, its pathway tracing where her eyes swept, successfully ending the stench's reign of terror over the building and the jeweler herself.

She could even hear Ebon coughing from the showroom.

It was truly gruesome. Even in the back of her mind, The Midnight Gem gagged almost outraged at the offensive smell. Kelski was fairly sure it was throughout The Gem and well into the showroom and probably upstairs as well too. The molds themselves were absolutely singed black and Kelski was immediately angry she’d wasted so much time carving only to have the molds destroyed. It looked like none of the melt went through the bone structures, but there was still a significant pool of slag melt at the top. She took a long moment to apologize to the structure and sooth it gently like a parent would sooth a stubborn child. Her mind caressed the building's awareness infusing it with love and regret.

It answered in kind, soothed and comforted.

Kelski didn't blame The Midnight Gem. The stench was literally the grossest thing Kelski had ever smelled. And she promised herself at that moment in time that unless the pour was really really good, she wasn’t going to ever do this technique again.

The wait for the bones to stop smoldering was agony, but when they finally felt cool to the touch, she released the bound cuddle bones from the vice, unwrapped the wire, and pulled out the squares she’d hoped to turn into a bracelet.

Truthfully, Kelski was shocked. They were… absolutely beautiful. The design was everything the vendor had said they would be. The actual pours themselves had tiny sprues along the edge that would trim off easily with a simple knife. It seemed that the metal found tiny natural veins to follow deep within the bone.

She took the links over to the sink, cleaned them up, covered them with polishing paste, and got busy polishing. She only did the edges with the buffing wheel, leaving the pattern in place to polish by hand neatly with a rag. Once that was done, she took her hot solder iron, pulled out lengths of premade chain, and quickly bound the links together with chain, then formed the clasp from the twigs she’d cast and cut to size from the earlier project.

It wasn’t Master Jewelcrafter level work, but it was definitely more varied stock for her store and incredibly beautiful in its design. Kelski would have never dreamed the pattern came from a fish bone that had been made into a mold.

Once the bracelet was assembled, she went to find Ebon to show him and get his opinion on the work as well.

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski


Research +1, Interrogation +1, Auristics +1, Reimancy +5, Metalsmithing +4, Carving +1, Logic +1. Architectrix +1, Cleaning +3

JC: Nyka jewelers use unusual pouring techniques (cuddle bone, chick peas, rice, ice, straw), Auristics: Can see toolmarks (or lack thereof) on jewelry, Sunberth: Seaside Market is good to find new techniques, JC: Cuddlefish have bones one can use as JC molds, JC/Reimancy: Comparing Magewater With Real Water In JC, Reimancy: Using Air To Cool Metal, JC: Using Cuddlefish Bones For Molds, Metalsmithing: Doing Unique Pours, Reimancy: Using Air To Clean The House/Workshop