(Flashback) The Ironworks: Of Fire and Alloy - Part 1

[Bandin Everdance]

Timestamp: 1st of Spring, 518 A.V.

"We'll start with the basics," Ros said.

The Isur man was ruggedly handsome, possessing the sharp angled look of his race in full and sporting a thin, ringed goatee. His powerful arm was deep and grey with silver lines running through it, almost as if it proclaimed by right to be made of rock and molten metal itself.

"You can shape iron well enough to do some work here," the master smith admitted. "I've got some teaching to do for you when it comes to that, but you'll carry your weight most days."

"You need to know more than that to really know what you're doing," Ros was upfront. "What separates me from any blue-blooded city smith is that I know the ins and outs of not only how I'm working, but what I'm working with. The alloys are mine to make and alter as I need to, project by project. Any old steel will make a sword, for example, but certain swords are meant for different types of fighting--each type of fighting will benefit in different trade offs of sharpness, brittleness, and weight. You can manage that somewhat with your crafting itself, but it all starts with the raw materials and with how you put them together, beginning from the very rocks themselves."

Ros held up his more human hand. "And I know you're not a weaponsmith; we can work on that too, but first the metalsmithing. It's the core of the complete craft."

Bandin felt a bit of pressure mixing in with the excitement. The man in front of him was obviously very, very well informed when it came to their shared trade of working metal; he'd without a doubt likely forgotten more than the young smith had ever know to even begin with.

"Alright," Bandin said. "So, where's the beginning, practically speaking? What's the hands on of that?"

Ros brought his raised hand to his chin and, almost without thinking, replied: "fires".

"Different from a forge bed?" the young smith inquired. "I've seen the blast furnaces."

Ros waved him to follow after him and began working.

"Just right," he said. "Different ore makes different metal. Different fires work different ores. And different woods make different fires."

"That's the simple way to say it."

They approached a large, stacked upcropping assembled from bricks and that sported a large opening.

"This furnace here has no coal or wood bed," he said. "We're not using it right now. Do you know why?"

Bandin paused; there was plenty enough work that the furnace could be doing.

"In a forge that always has orders, that could be using every bit of its resources, why is this one furnace empty and cold?" he further prodded.

"I don't know," Bandin admitted.

"Do you see the wood and coal there?" he asked. "Go to it."

Bandin kneeled down beside the burlap sacks of mined, black rocks leaning against the furnace; some were open, others were drawstring tied shut. Stacks of wood sat beside them.

"We keep the furnace cool to teach with it. We don't hoard knowledge here, but we expect you to learn it as the price for that," Ros explained. "It's worth the lost mizas to us."

"Wood burns cool. Hot enough to burn flesh and deform weaker steels, not hot enough to melt them down," Ros went on into an explanation of the fuels sitting in front of Bandin. "Coal is hard to catch, but it's good enough for the hard stuff. You make steel with coal."

"We're working bronze today, something good enough for a knife guard, since it won't be catching any large blows head-on, if the user is smart--it just doesn't need the strength in its hand-guard that a sword does. Steel would be a waste," Ros paused. "We aren't wasteful here. Even if the customer wants us to be."

Bandin picked up on what he seemed to feel was a philosophy of the smith; perhaps it was something cultural?

"Alright, so we'd go for wood, then? Since it's softer than steel?" Bandin guessed.

"We'd go for wood because bronze is made up of copper and tin. Bronze is the end-result; we're not worried about melting it right now. We're worried about making it. So, its the heat needed to smelt its components that we're going to focus on," Ros explained. "Always think like that. Don't be wasteful, again, not even in your choice of fuel. Coal isn't for soft metals, even if it'll smelt them."

Bandin picked up a bundle of wood, stacking his arms.

"More. Put that in the furnace floor and then grab another handful," Ros instructed.

The young apprentice did as he was told. And just like that, his metalsmithing journey had begun with the art of building a fire in a furnace.

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[Bandin Everdance]

"Don't stack it like that," Ros said; there was no harshness in his instructions, just a simple sharpness of authority--his way would be better, of that Bandin had no doubt.

"The wood needs to be balanced if you want a balanced fire," the Isur explained and guided Bandin in placing a few pieces down different. "Move that there and that there."

Bandin was trying to notice a pattern in what he was doing, yet at the same time it was difficult to glimpse just what this laying down of forge wood, in just this certain way, would garner.

"We ask for our cords to be cut well and even, but we can't begrudge them for not being perfect," Ros said. "Different pieces of wood are going to burn at different rates. The faster burning wood will weigh less, more quickly, and collapse or be knocked aside by larger and heavier pieces. But if you stack from light to heavy you'll have trouble keeping the light wood still and even during the stacking; you'll make mistakes or you'll waste time, neither is good."

"So?" Bandin asked. "What's the workaround?"

"Heavy on bottom, light in the middle, less heavy on top," Ros said. "But try to mix a light piece between every heaviest piece on the very bottom; thinner pieces catch light better and it already takes long enough for a furnace to catch heat. It won't cause the wood to fall too badly and it's worth the tradeoff. The fire will burn more brighter, more quickly, and it'll still be fairly uniform if you keep an eye for balance."

Bandin was doing his best to adjust the wood to the Isur's specifications, but felt like he was missing something. The master smith spoke almost as if he could predict and see how particular pieces of wood would interact with another when heated up, even before they'd been set ablaze.

"This fire'ing isn't going to be anywhere near perfect," Ros told him. "Don't expect perfection, especially not now, you'll be nowhere close, but strive for it long-term. Get a little better every time and once you've done it a hundred times you'll be a little bit better a hundred times over--and that's a lot, not a little."

"You don't have an eye for the way the fuel is going to react to the furnace bricks or even the workshop air, yet, let alone just how much heat you'll need for whichever alloy," he admitted. "You'll learn that by watching. We're starting with this, so you can start doing that. I expect you to know nothing at this point; relax into that, but don't slack off on me."

"And," the Isur smiled a little bit; it was a craftsman's hard, whimsical smile, "you're also learning this because we can't melt metal without a damned fire to heat up the rocks. Sometimes it's the utilitarian lessons that are the most important too, even if they keep getting more complicated the better you get at them."

That must be what artistry is: simplicity made complicated to produce straightforward results, Bandin thought. The Isur had so easily and bluntly put the concept into base, instructive words. The young smith began to wonder just how much he'd know when he was finally done with his apprenticeship.

If he was ever done. It seemed like Ros might have a hundred years of lessons to bestow. A lifetime's in earnest of experience and skill.

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[Bandin Everdance]

"Leave a gap there," Ros said and directed, pointing to the fire instinctively with his more impervious arm. "Right in the middle, just there."

"There's kindling in that trunk on the other side," Ross said. "You can lay an even bed, but I prefer to stack it in a cut out in the middle. Make sure the wood is firm and stable around it. We still want the flames to spread evenly."

Bandin went and retrieved what'd been asked for. The chest was sturdy Syliran oak and white-blanket lined; within it the swell of dried grass and paper sprung up.

"Just enough for that gap?" Bandin asked.

"Aye," Ros said. "Fill it well. Leave just enough space for the first embers to breathe. You might need to add more before the logs really get going."

"Grab the flint and steel from the box before you get up. It should be in there; let me know if it isn't, I've got some back at my forge."

He'd yet to have the chance to see Ros at work. Not for lack of trying, but the Isur was always here or there, running the shop and teaching both journeyman and apprentices alike. Bandin imagined that he could learn a lot just by watching a man like Ros work, especially so considering how much he was getting just out of listening to him talk.

The young smith filled the space he'd created within the logs, just as the Isur had instructed. He felt the sides of the chopped logs brush against his flesh, as he bent over, feeding the paper and brush tender mix in-between them. He kept the fire starter pinched tightly between the feeding hand's leftmost fingers.

Bandin stood back and drew his gaze to Ros, waiting for his approval.

The Isur approached; as always he never actually physically helped, only guided and gave reasons for what he asked for--he was lending his mind to his student, allowing the young smith to be the body that acted upon his knowledge so that it could become his own; Bandin was already getting used to it--it was the perfect teaching style for him. "Press it back some. Get it compressed enough to burn for a chime; we're going to have to keep adding for a while, might as well reduce the times that we have to to start it off. Grab another handful and make it all fit."

Without hesitation, Bandin followed.

"Now strike the tinder," Ros said then acknowledged that, despite being a beginner in working with alloys, Bandin was still a competent smith in his own right. "You know how to."

The young apprentice drew the flint across the steel lighting rod, sending sparks into the dried tender. Two sparks had the flames starting.

"Now we wait?" Bandin asked.

"It'll take a few bells to get this fire built up enough to smelt copper," Ros said. "Now you watch and listen. Let me tell you a few things that might help you with even the work you already know well."

Ros didn't leave the dirt work to his new apprentice alone. He told Bandin just when to add wood, how to shift a piece when it threatened to slow down the heating of the fire by its unexpected positioning. He even went on to explain the varying differences and natures of Syliran vs Kalean wood. Apparently it'd taken the master, and very meticulous, smith some time to adapt his skills perfectly to the wood of the Syliris region--something he spoke about with a matured, yet somehow almost childlike, gleam in his eye.

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[Bandin Everdance]

The blast furnace was radiating a dangerous, suffocating level of heat. Bandin had taken to only being able to shift the wood with an iron poker with glove and then being even that close was an uncomfortable thing. Even for a man who had grown up with the sweltering flames of forgework, the furnace was hot as hell. The very air in the front of the furnace rippled as if to prove this and further logs of wood had to be tossed in carefully from an armlength back; the only saving grace was that the low-sitting opening to the furnace was slightly raised from where the actual fire set, allowing some protection from the sheer heat by the clay brick mouth.

"See this, how the top of the hearth is covered within the furnace?" Ros asked.

Bandin could barely make it out, considering the furnace was enclosed and all, but there was some indication as to this fact. He could make out what appeared to be two ventways going up to the very crown of the open top.

"I can see that the fire is separated from the rest of the furnace," Bandin said.

"There's two ways to do this, but it has the same result," Ros said. "You can pump in the heat from two, or one, fires made from the side. I prefer a central heating bed of wood or coal, covered from the top and separated from the ore channels; it's more even in the heating that way, but you have to be careful about the heat's intensity since it's closer to the actual brick of the furnace. If you don't have izentor, or something else, worked into the stone you'll damage its integrity over time through sheer heat exposure," Ros explained. "Ultimately, the only goal of what we're doing here is to heat up the sides of the furnace and the central channel just above the fire source. That's going to melt the raw ore."

"Alright, we're getting close enough to a decent heat. I want you to remember this glow, the smell of the fire, and even the amount of sweat you're feeling on your brow right now. This is the heat we're going to need to keep up to smelt and refine softer ores and alloys," Ros said.

"More a trade than a science, just like smithing," Bandin observed. "Gotta get the feel for it or the knowledges no good."

Bandin threw another log in, noticing that the heat had died down just a little bit; he was pretty certain he'd felt the change on his skin slightly.

"Good," Ros said. "You're getting a feel for it, already. Your body already has a sensitivity to heat and gauging it. Forge work will put that skill into you. Now we just have to refine it and teach you the math behind merging metals and a few steps you'll need along the way."

"Sounds good," the apprentice replied.

"Aye," Ros nodded and retrieved a bag of what sounded like clanking together rocks.

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[Bandin Everdance]

"Keep the flames going," Ros said as he approached the young man with his bag of rocks, one of two that had been prepared and set beside the furnace.

He opened the drawstring as Bandin did his work of keeping the fire stoked; the young man still did his best to commit the workings of the furnace and its anatomy to memory, along with the feel of the specific level of heat as well--Ros seemed to be empathizing specificity and attention to detail, so he'd do his best to remember the specifics of all he could.

From the bag the Isur pulled a handful of orerocks that had only the smallest bit of orange and yellow hues in spacklings across their varied, but generally small, shapes.

"Bronze doesn't rust easily and it conducts heat much better than iron or even steel, but it's weaker," Ros explained. "There is no bronze ore. You probably already understood before coming here that it's an alloy. It's part copper and part tin."

The isur brushed some of the copper rocks through his grey, metallic fingers. Bandin couldn't help but wonder what it felt like to touch things with such a strange type of quasi-flesh as that; were senses dulled with the thick-looking, Isurian arm? Or was it an altogether improvement over the base, human design? He'd have to ask someday.

"In a pinch you can probably get away with throwing the right amounts of each ore type into the furnace. You'll get an uneven and somewhat uncontrolled mixing though and, since we're not in a pinch, we're not going to take any shortcuts," Ros continued. "We're going to refine each ore, both copper and tin, separately. When we're done we'll take the ingots and mix them in a ratio of a little less than ten to one. Bronze is mostly copper, which is a lesson for you: alloyed metals can change from their main components drastically with just a little alteration in what makes them up."

"Come over here," Ros said and brought Bandin to a small set of steps inbuilt into the furnace wall. "See the opening up here? That's the chute. They can get complicated, but I prefer to just have a hole. Less work and less upkeep. Simple works sometimes. Once we drop this in we'll get it into the chute where it'll start to melt and refine."

The Isur had dropped the ore he'd withdrawn back into the small bag and handed into to Bandin. "I've given you just about the right amount of ore to make an ingot. Remember that weightage if you can and, when you're dumping it, do your best to keep track of how much you see falling in. That'll give you a standard bar of two inches thick--that's an easy, transportable size, even for heavier metals."

Ros moved his way back to the hearth and wood bed; he tossed a piece of wood back into it. "One thing you'll need to remember is that wood fires consume a whole lot of fuel. It might be wasteful, but if you have limited storage space coal is sometimes the best option to keep on hand exclusively."

"Alright. Dump the ore into the chute," he instructed.

"I've got you," the smith replied and did as he was instructed; he watched the copper rocks clink down quietly into the medium-sized furnace.

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[Alric Lysane]

Bandin

Hi!

Should you return please update your CS and PM/DM me for your Grade!

~ Alric