Completed [Sultros Blades] A Drawn Out Sai

[Eanos]

14 Fall, 513

Link to Sultros Blades

It was rare that Eanos had reason to make sai, it was an unusual weapon and he couldn’t recall seeing anyone carrying them in the city. Of course since he rarely ventured outside of his shop other than for the most essential reasons this perhaps wasn’t overly conclusive.

He reviewed the notes he had made and the measurements he’d taken and made some preliminary sketches. He was aware of the theory of how they were handled and knew that there was considerable variation. Largely he suspected it was because using the sai were a natural extension of unarmed combat skills and few went to a teacher in order to learn how to use them.

He would also have to work carefully if he were to stay in budget since the price he’d given was very competitive; even the Ironworks would probably charge much the same. But in truth as weapons went they were simple enough to make and required none of the skill in creating a blade edge which drove up the time and cost of an edged weapon.

A smith could never be quite sure how a weapon would be used once it had left his shop, but not even an owner could predict that, especially if the weapon later changed hands, so he could not make assumptions and could not cut corners.

One of the uses of a sai was to trap a sword blade, and then to disarm or break the sword. Of course that required skill in the user, but that wasn’t his problem, his problem was in ensuring that the sai was capable of resisting a hard driven sword. He needed to ensure that it resisted even a sword that he had made, though there were limits to what he could do for the price.

Sai were often made with a tapering blade, and part of the reason, as he understood it, was to make it easier to avoid the sword hitting the sai square on. If a sword did hit square on then there was a very real risk that it could break past the sai, either cutting through or pushing it out of the way, with very poor consequences for the sai user. But, if the sword hit any sort of glancing blow then the sword blade would slip down the sai blade and be stopped by the guards, which could then be twisted to trap the blade.

He considered the structure, knowing that the guards needed to be strong enough to stop that sword, slowed though it should be. Swords had similar guards also to protect the hands, but they were rarely made with the understanding that the guard was intended to take powered sword cuts.

At the Ironworks, he guessed that a smith would weld the guards onto the blade and this was an option as it made the creation much simpler. Eanos however had in mind the possibility of creating it in one piece to make the join of blade and guard stronger. By necessity there was a limit to how strong the guards could be as they were a key part of how the weapon was used and in fact this was one of the things that made the weapon mostly unique. Not only were the guards used for trapping swords, they allowed the user to flip the weapon around, so not only could it be used point first as a pseudo dagger, but it could be used hilt first - the handle acting as a knuckle duster and the blade a protector for the forearm. Beyond this the sai could be swivelled mid strike to add momentum to the hit.

[Eanos]

With his notes reviewed and sketches drawn with appropriate measurements it was time to start on the forging. He selected a suitable length of steel and set it in the forge to heat, manipulating the bellows carefully and shifting it around until it heated enough for him to start work.

The bar was thicker than he needed so he worked from habit and using a hammer started to reduce the thickness of the steel down to something not far off of the maximum width of the blade but with enough excess to allow for the profile to be modified and rounded accurately. This first weapon was the simplest, far harder would be making the second well enough that the two were functionally identical.

He moved between forge and anvil, his hands working with practised skill as the bar profile was changed to match what he wanted. When he reached the area where the guards would be then he left the bar thicker until finally he cut off the shaped metal leaving enough metal to shape the counterbalance as necessary.

Now it was time to start on the more careful and detailed work so the bar went back into the forge and Eanos changed out the hot cut chisel from the hardy hole for something more suitable. Careful blows of the hammer reshaped the handle section, flattening it out and then using the chisel to separate it out into three so that it looked indeed much like the fork that the customer had alluded to.

He slipped the hammer back into the rack and returned the sai to the fire. Now it was time to be an Isurian smith and take a massive short cut not available to other smiths. He held the end of the blade in his right hand and waited as the handle area, and in particular the joint of the three parts came to heat. This required careful attention as the metal was of different thicknesses which meant that the thinner parts would heat faster and reach a higher temperature. The guards would burn if he allowed it whilst the joint with the handle was not yet hot enough.

He shifted the coals around with the fingers of his left hand to direct the heat exactly where he wanted it, then carefully and slowly bent the guards out until they rested exactly at right angles. As he did so he pulled out a small amount of djed and transmuted it so that he could see into the metal with his auristic vision and check that there were no flaws, no splits or other weak points caused by what he’d done. He expected none and was pleased to find none. Normally he would have set the steel aside now so that it could normalise and the crystals in the steel that had melted in the heat reform to follow the new shape, but he was now happy that there was no need to do it so he continued.

With the fingers of his left hand now he slowly reshaped the guards, pulling the steel down and out so that they became narrower and round. It was rough work for the final shaping would be done more carefully with files, checking that everything was identical and matched. He reshaped the handle in the same way, smoothing out the rough work left by the hammer and chisel then turned it round to set the blade to heat.

When the handle had cooled enough to grip comfortably with his right hand and the blade was hot enough he repeated the process again. Now the weapon was recognisable as such. He set it back on the forge to heat and then left it to normalise.

[Eanos]

The cooled sai lay on the anvil, blackened and rough but ready for working. With the scale removed it looked more presentable but still in need of work. The first step with the soft metal was to straighten everything which was a good deal easier to achieve on the anvil than in the forge, though he had come as close as he could there.

Then it came to the most tedious phase, one not even being an Isur could exempt him from, for the excess metal needed to be removed along with the hammer marks. The piece needed to be brought into closer tolerance than it currently was and so he started with the blade. Already the roughest of taper had been created, now he needed to judge how and where the adjustments needed to be made. That he couldn’t decide until he had made the initial filing and bringing the whole into round. He double checked the measurements and marked where the end of the blade would be then cut it cleanly with a little room for the finishing.

The guards were next and took more care because they were more delicate and also because they needed to be balanced exactly, which in large part was why they still pointed directly out with no curve to them. Again he measured them and cut them as he needed this for the initial balancing.

The handle was simpler as it would need less polishing and indeed he normally left it with file marks to assist in getting a good grip with the handle. The intersection of handle, blade and guards was roughed out with round files and then he had the first opportunity to test how well the sai was able to move around his thumbs.

Still there was the pommel and he made the first rough shaping, ensuring that plenty of metal was left. This part, the most overlooked on any weapon was absolutely key to the way that it would handle but it was much harder to add weight back on than to remove it, so for the time being Eanos left it heavier than it needed to be. He did however bring it back to heat and punch a pilot hole to mark where that needed to be.

Soon the weapon would be ready for the first fitting. It would still be rough and unpolished at that point, the latter making a huge difference to how the weapon looked and functioned. Again this was an area vastly unrated in the smiths opinion, but thinking on it he realised that he had probably undercharged for the work involved for he had not fully thought through every stage. It was a lesson learnt, and he counted that useful enough to counter the deficit, to remember to be more careful with quoting on weapons that were not ones he made frequently.

The customer would not be able to test the weapon in its current state as only a smiths hands would not be abraded by the rough metal. He set to work on the blade, bringing it to a more perfectly even shape and rounding the tip, though only after double checking the length. The process was repeated with the guards and a finer finish applied around the area of handle and guards. Not perfect yet for the weapon still needed to be reheated.

He checked the balance and then worked on the pommel to bring it close, finalising the shape. A final heating allowed him to bend the guards into shape, a job done more delicately and without dents by his left hand than would have been easy any other way.

He cleaned the weapon again, applied a light polish where it would be handled, bound the handle with leather and made the final adjustments to the pommel, final that was for this stage. It meant that the balance was still a little handle heavy but otherwise it was now ready for the first test.

[Eanos]

With the sai put aside whilst he waited for the customer to return, Eanos moved on to the next stage of the project. The finish that he had in mind for the sai was very different to what he normally used with blades. With blades it was normally important that they were not touched by hands or fluids and if they were then they needed to be cleaned and lightly oiled and so to avoid the risk that they might rust.

The sai however were made to have the blades handled and could not be oiled in any way. He was however familiar with a technique of hardening steel which also resolved the problem. For that reason the sai were not made with a high carbon steel, the carbon which would toughen the outer shell of the steel would also provide a finish which was resistant to sweat and similar corrosives.

He wasn’t sure how much most smiths knew of this sort of thing, how they were trained here in Syrila he had never bothered to look into, but he did know that anyone trained in Auristics very quickly learnt the reasons why some processes worked and then employed them with a high degree of success. In this case though Eanos wasn’t sure how the process would affect the different thicknesses of steel in body and guards, and he didn’t want the guards to become too hard but only testing would prove that one way or another.

Setting steel to heat he quickly repeated the process to create a new sai. This one though was left very crude and rough for the most part since it’s only function was to see the effects of the process. It wasn’t to say that it was completely unfinished though since he also wanted to test the effects of the process on the surface finish and how much it could be polished after. He polished parts of the blade in differing amounts, some hardly polished and some done through to finished mirror polish.

Then it was time to take the heavy earthenware pot and add charcoal into the base. He added the test piece and filled the pot with charcoal, careful to keep the piece central. The top was stoppered and sealed tight with wire and placed in the forge to heat.

Now he concentrated and withdrew a strand of djed from his personal supply, blending and transforming it into a form which gave him auristic vision and he rested his left hand on the pot as a focus point.

Within the pot he could see the steel and looking within he could see the low carbon steel. He checked the forge and worked the bellows to bring the heat up. The pot grew warm and he moved it around, turning it to ensure that it heated evenly. It was a slow process but simple enough and he watched as slowly the now hot steel in its bed of charcoal started to change. At first he wasn’t sure there was anything, but then it seemed as though as skin formed, darkening, becoming closer in form to the charcoal that surrounded it. He shifted the pot again to keep the change even, though it mainly needed to alter the handle and guards. Slowly it crept deeper but also the pace slowed and Eanos smiled in satisfaction, for as he recalled from his teaching, the temperature in part drove how deep the change went. He ran his auristic eye over the sai and then pulled the pot from the fire.

Extracted from its bed of charcoal the piece was a dull blue black that shifted colour in the light, but now it was hard on the surface, soft still in the core, the mix of hardness and flexibility that he wanted. All it needed now was to test the polishing.

[Eanos]

Approval had been given and Eanos knew where changes needed to be made so he made the gross ones, bringing the balance of the weapon in to where it had been agreed, slimming down the weight of the handle by the simple process of altering the pommel and increasing the size of the hole within.

Then it was time to put it aside and to create it’s pair. The process was familiar now for it was the third he had made in a very short space of time. This one though brought with it the challenges of needing to be exactly the same as the other. Inevitably this meant that the process meant changing both especially in the finer details such as around the guards.

He spent a fair amount of time on the comparison and then in rechecking the point of balance. With that done it was time to concentrate on the finishing, that which visually at least would mark them as very different to what might be found elsewhere, for few smiths were as obsessive about the detail as Eanos. It was his experience that the pleasure that a user got from one of his weapons was in very large part down the the look and feel of it, and the simple fact was that most of that came from the finishing, as it turned an average weapon into an outstanding one.

His test piece had also proven that it was possible to finish the piece as he wanted, and that the mirror polish process did not remove the finish which had concerned him. He had discovered that he needed to retemper the guards but not greatly enough to mar the finish either which pleased him as well.

The mirror finish also imparted an additional hardness to the steel surface, another factor he suspected that some smiths with no auristic training were not aware of. Combined with the case hardening he was confident that it provided what he needed. The final stage before he proceeded with the hardening was to take the chisel and to carve the Isurian rune for his name into the handle where it would be covered up by the handle wrappings. It marked them as his, and that was both good and bad for it they proved below standard then all eyes would be upon him. Fortunately he did not intend to ever supply shoddy goods so he thought that the risk was low.

The pot was reloaded with charcoal, though this time there were a pair of sai within. He did not use his auristic vision this time as he now knew what he needed to know with this pot and this forge. He worked carefully, turning the pot and then when he judged right taking it off the heat and removing the sai.

Then it was simply a process of polishing, which though simple was also very time consuming, reminding him that he needed to ensure that his prices properly matched the goods supplied as he simply wasn’t prepared to give his work to customers unless it was the best that he could create.

Polished to a black mirror glow and with the handles wrapped in leather, the sai were put into a cloth bag and put aside until it was time for them to be collected.

[Radiant]

Eanos :

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	+2 XP
Weaponsmithing	+3 XP
Blacksmithing	+3 XP
Auristics	+1 XP

Lores

Lore Earned

Weaponsmithing: Crafting Sai

Challenge: Creating Twin Weapons

Loots

Notes :

Descriptive and detailed smithing solo, as always, Eanos. I love it.

My radiance is not bright enough?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, beam me a PM and we can work it out.