Solo Fine Threading V

[Willis Efram]

25 Winter 524

Smiling while hefting his gear and pack over his shoulders, Willis looked out over the commons. The raised wooden area was a nice place to work, particularly on sunny days, and if he could find a spot in the roofed area it would include shade and with its height an occasional cooling wind. At that time of the day the place was not too busy, someone knitting, someone repairing a net, and someone whittling a largish block of driftwood into something or other with various bladed tools. Plenty of space for Willis and his work, and less cramped than trying to do things in his room.

With a nod Willis greeted the others at work, not recognizing anyone he had met before but hoping it would give him a chance to interact with a few people and be better known in the settlement. Then making sure not to get in anyone's way Willis took up a spot at a table and began to unpack his things. He had his toolkits for working with leather goods, along with the leather and other materials stowed in his normal pack. Between them all it was a decent heft of weight to carry, but not too bad for the oversized teenager.

Before beginning his work as usual Willis tried to plan things out, Efram for his part lazily keeping an awareness of their surroundings while letting Willis get sucked into his work as he usually did. Most of his work had been simple repair, though he had the prior season made a cloak of sorts. However since then he felt he had improved, and so Willis was certain he could manage a more difficult new piece of work than a amorphous blob of clothing that did not need a defined limit and where a bit of excess would not matter much. Thinking things over the Akontak recalled one of the early items he had repaired, and so settled on making a leather bag or satchel of sorts. Simple, no metal, no fasteners or clasps which were beyond him to add on, just a squared off leather pack or container that was a bit flat, had a leather fold over the top to close the opening but made it easy to get into, and a strap to go across the neck and chest.

Picturing this out in his mind Willis began pulling out materials he would need. Various cutting tools and needles, some thread, leather for the body of the bag, a hole punching tool for openings to thread, and some chalk for marking lines and spots. He also took out some scrap wood he had on hand to use as a cutting surface, to avoid marring the commons surface or the table he was perched upon.

Once all that was ready Willis began picturing out his piece and marking the leather to get a good even sizing. Thinking it over, he knew he would need a large square piece for the front and back, a long narrower piece for the bottom and sides, and then either an extension from one of the side pieces or another piece that would come up and form the cover for the open top and drape over the other side to close it and keep it sealed. While working on these pieces Willis marked here and there with his chalk, bit by bit, mapping out his planned cuttings before he made so much as a single cut on them.

WC: 580

[Willis Efram]

After drawing out with chalk his planned cutting, and thinking on his work, Willis settled on a rough outline of the pieces. After thinking it over Willis decided that instead of making a separate piece for the top covering he would make the back side piece longer, in hopes that one larger piece of leather without a seam would work better than two pieces sown into one. The seams always being tricky, the Akontak knew the less of them there were the better. Also, he knew, since the overall piece was not too large it was possible to do this using the sheets of stretched out leather he had on hand. With a larger piece no doubt he would either need to fix several smaller pieces together or find one very large piece of hide that had been worked which would no doubt be harder to find and more expensive since it would need to come from a much larger animal. Using the more normal sized hides as he was currently was much easier and more effective in terms of cost and so the young leather worker did his best to work these sized pieces into his works.

To start off his work Willis focused in on a large somewhat rectangular piece that was a bit wider than it was tall, which would form the front of the bag once done. He choose this piece as he hoped it would serve as a good frame of reference for the rest of the piece, and as it would be easier to measure out the back piece which included the covering top part once the front was done than vice versa.

Taking a slow breath Willis looked over his markings one last time before he began, ensuring all where spaced correctly and there would not be any troubles, before finally preparing to make his first cut. While he had some smaller blades for finer details and finishing cutting work for the first initial cut he had a much larger and less dexterous knife. Usually though before he began that actual cut he would use yet another smaller blade which was meant more as a guide and used to just score a line where the cut was to be made. Checking over the line he had chalked on Willis slowly marked just outside of it with the guiding blade, slowly scoring a mark which would make it easier to work with the larger knife and cut off the excess.

Once he had circled this guiding cut around the entire surface of the leather Willis took out the larger cutting blade and began slicing through the leather all along the line. This piece of the work benefited greatly from his arm strength, surprisingly strong as he was for his compact build, slicing through the leather each time he bore down with the blade and slid it across the materials surface. Being an Akontak the youth was unsure if he was as strong as an Akalak, but he felt sure if nothing else he was stronger than a similarly sized Konti or human, and if he was weaker than a similarly aged Akalak that might be down to his shorter time training and living among those of Riverfall.

WC: 543

[Willis Efram]

Once the main cut had been made, Willis slowly compared this piece of the prepared leather piece against the other markings he had made. After all he did not want any specific piece to be off sized, and all of them needed to fit together to make the final finished product.

Satisfied with its rough size and shape Willis took out his smaller knives for paring, and began evening out the outer edges of the piece and making sure it was cut to just the right shape. While his work was towards a relatively simple piece, it was still harder to do this than simply patching or repairing others work. Carefully working those small knives with his fingers he cut into the material, no longer using the strength of his entire arm but now simply using the pressure of his hand and fingers to prune away bit by bit.

After several passes of this Willis felt he had the piece as close to his goal as he could get, once more comparing the final cut piece against the other markings he had made. With this in mind Willis slowly made a few adjustments here and there to make the other pieces in line with the first piece before considering what to work on next.

Settling next on making the curved piece that would serve as the middle of the bag, both being the bottom and sides of the container, Willis checked his measurements again before beginning his cut once more with the scoring of a guiding blade. This piece was much trickier than the first, seeing as it was one long piece that bent several times. Getting the size just right would be near impossible, he knew, and so he made sure to leave plenty of buffer space in his markings for replanning and resizing until it fit the first piece he had cut.

Once that scored line was laid Willis began once more with the arm strength powered larger knife along that same line, moving the leather along in places to keep it on his cutting surface of waste lumber. For now he was cutting out a flat piece that would soon be bent, which of course took different considerations than a flat piece that would remain flat. Once the main heft of this piece was cut out Willis took it up and compared it to the first piece he had cut, fitting it in place and seeing how it would look once they were sown together. This also involved bending and shaping the leather along the line of the sides of the other piece, ending with Willis once more making some chalk marks where he needed to prune away material. Since he only had the front side he only did this on the one side of the piece, waiting to do the same once he had also cut out the back and cover piece.

With those marks on the front side Willis checked his measurements and then slowly began pruning away at the excess pieces here and there.

WC: 510

[Willis Efram]

Having done the front side of the work, the middle piece, and pruned down both the front and the half of the middle piece meeting the front Willis took a short break. Standing up the Akontak stretched and flexed his body and muscles, and took a drink of water from his waterskin. Looking around he saw that the person fixing their net had left, only to be replaced with someone patching a shirt. Looking up at the sun Willis wondered how long he had been at work, but was certain it had been at least a bell or two.

Quieting his mind he took in a deep breath and felt the air, sensing the weather around him. For the next few bells at least he did not see any heavy rains, just some scattered showers and lighter rainfalls, not enough that it would affect his work in this roofed area. But he also sensed a much stronger downpour later that day, and made sure to have Efram remind him well before that time so he could stow his things and be back at his inn before then to avoid his leathered goods getting too wet in their current state. He also knew he would likely need to wait till the next day to finish any weatherproofing, and on this day just planned to cut out and prepare the pieces for weatherproofing and making holes for seams.

Measuring out the other two pieces he had cut out Willis felt he was slowly gaining a better idea of how long of a cut to shape when a piece would be bent later. Of course being bent would make the piece smaller, but each time he did a different such piece he got a better idea of how exactly that worked, and tried to predict what he would need to do for the sizing. However, still not confident at his aim for this he left plenty of leeway with his sizing that could be trimmed down later. He would for instance much rather trim every piece several times than find out even one piece was too small for his uses and forcing him to start anew.

The start of the back side was more or less the same as the front, but also had a large upward piece that came off the top and which would fold over the top and across part of the front. With all of this in mind it was truly the hardest piece on this work and the reason he had saved it for last.

With this in mind Willis measured out his markings one last time, and then finally began his cuts. Starting with the guiding cut he used that smaller knife to score a mark where he would cut. And then using his full arm strength and on the cutting surface he had slowly Willis worked his way around the piece to cut it out. This took awhile, almost as long as the other two pieces together, but eventually Willis was done with that main cutting on the piece of the work and ready to move on.

WC: 521

[Willis Efram]

Having cut out all of the large pieces for his work, all that was left to so was the preparation work. As he had done before when he cut the middle piece, Willis began marking out spots. This time he marked it on the larger back side piece, doing its preparations before anything else. Then using these as a reference he began paring the piece down in all the places he had indicted excess material.

This was something the Akontak had to repeat several times, matching up the sizes and shape, folding them into their final intended form, marking more spots that needed pruning, and then repeating that pruning. He kept at this until the back piece seemed fit, and moved on to pruning the middle piece. This was a bit quicker than the back but still required work to do.

Willis kept at this for a time, even pruning the front piece a bit, before returning to the back and middle piece. Finally after quite a few passes and small cuts and removals Willis felt he was close and held all of the pieces in place. Satisfied Willis nodded to himself, finding the piece to more or less appears as he desired it too look at the end.

Letting out a small bit of tension Willis appraised his progress. At this point the main body of the piece was done. All that was left to do was to gouge out the small holes where the seams would be sown, cut out the piece that would serve as the strap to carry it all, and to weatherproof it.

Considering his time before the rain Willis decided to just cut out the strap and to stop for the day, planning to do the final preparations the next day.

Considering the size of the bag he was making, and the give he wanted to leave on the strap, Willis quickly made some markings on some excess pieces leftover from his earlier cuts. Unlike the main pieces he did not need one larger block of a piece but could instead cut along the sides and edges of the excess since in the end the entire piece would be one larger curve of sorts.

As with before Willis marked out his planned places while leaving some extra room, measured once more, and then finally began his cuts with the scoring guider blade. This then as before led to him taking out his larger cutting blade where he cut out the larger bit of the piece. Using the guided mark he slowly traced along this mark and cut though the material to be left with a long length of leather that was a few inches wide.

Draping this over the piece he was temporarily holding together Willis measured out the strap, where he would connect it to the piece, and the seams, before once more taking out his chalk and pruning.

This would be the final piece of pruning left for this work, the more laborious part of the piece almost done, leaving only gouging out the holes for threading, adding the seams, and before this weatherproofing.

However this would wait for another day, and so once Willis finished the final pruning of that piece he collected his materials and tools, said goodbye and a warning on the incoming heavy rain to those still at the commons headed back to the inn before they struck.

WC: 570