Solo [The Ironworks] A Bag Full of Nails

[Ethan Ironhorse]

80th of Fall 513 AV Ironworks Ethan awoke from a dream about Hadyn. In part it was a dream of her flesh and tenderness, but somehow he remembered talking about baby clothes and about their general day. It was a dream that held no clear meaning or particular sequence of time, and so Ethan laid in bed trying to will himself back to sleep under his nice warm blankets. Instead his nagging bladder and his body told him it was time to get up and move. Moaning softly, he pulled the blankets tighter and wished that he could get a few more bells of sleep. Instead, he coughed and scratch all the itchy parts of himself to finally give up on his wish to go back to bed. Ethan moved through a foggy haze as he went about eating his meal, dressing and cleaning himself. By the time he became aware of his surroundings he was a block away from the Ironworks. Ethan felt the chill in the air and his breath came out in a white steam. Ethan headed in and realized that though he normally was early to his job to listen to the shift change meeting. Today it seemed like he was a full bell early. Ethan went through the forge and foundry taking mental notes of the current projects in progress and the inventory that was on hand. Then feeling a bit nosy because he had nothing better to do, he went in and reviewed the upcoming orders. It seemed that Knights had several standing orders for weapons and armor, while the shipwrights would began stock piling materials for the spring thaw. No just like farmers, ship builders, and the rest of the town, winter was a time for staying inside, and few things needed to be made by a blacksmith during the winter. So Ethan reviewed the inventory for nails, arrow heads, and carving tools. The stock barrel showed perhaps half full of nails, while the arrow heads were down to perhaps a few hundred. Good steel craving tools and had three or four sets. Ethan talked to Ros about the inventory and showed him that the previous year they had stood nearly three barrles of nails and that the fetchers actually increased their orders for arrow heads. Finally Ros relented and told Ethan to get the molds out for arrow heads and the long bar stock molds for nails. Ethan was beyond excited at the idea of actually doing some work for a change instead of cleaning or working the bellows. Even though the senior apprentice had slowly began to trust him more and more to take on small tasks that only require minimal supervision. Ethan wanted to something a little more important to do. Of course, he had to laugh at himself, before this season, Ethan was making a name for himself as a smith. Now he was happy to be doing first year smithing work. It was the first time Ros has shown up at the shift change meeting that Ethan was aware of. The few senior apprentices knew that it only happened when Ros wanted to change the project priorities and that only occurred once in a great while. He started off by telling every the upcoming priorities for bar stock, weapons, horseshoes, and armor. As was always the case, the knighthood took top priority of the Ironworks. Armor and weapons always fell to dayshift to handle, as the weaponsmiths and armorsmiths only worked days. Horses and barstock could to be done at any time since Ros kept multiple molds for them both. It was the next thing that surprised Ethan. Ros congratulated Ethan on coming in and doing an inventory count against what sold popular last winter. He needed the night shift crew to dedicate several people to creating nail bar stock and to go ahead and have the few blacksmiths on the shift to start roughing out the nails. Additionally, he looked at the senior nights apprentice and told him to break out the arrow molds and start creating more tonight due to the increase in orders over the next season. It took a few chimes to sort out the details as projects were bumped to make room for the changes, finally Ros relented and only wanted the nails to be done tonight since they took the most time for a smith to make. In truth it hardly took Ethan more than two chimes to make a nail, the problem was that he needed to make thousands of them. In fact to make a barrel of nails, it took a blacksmith an entire fortnight to forge them all. So after his announcement, Ros took off and left the senior smith’s to work out the details.

[Ethan Ironhorse]

Nails. It wasn’t a dream come true but Ethan at least was happy to be back behind the forge again, well at least for tonight. The senior apprentice looked slightly relieved and anger at the adjustment to plans and Ethan’s sudden show of initiative. After all it was the complaint of everyone who worked on nights that day shift never had to deal with the mess that they made. While those on dayshift complained of being overworked consistently and that not shift could handle a little more work. It was a vicious cycle of thinking that the other half never did any work, when since Ethan started working nights, he realized that both sides did the same amount of work just different jobs. As Ethan started to walk away, the senior night apprentice came over to him. “Well, Ethan, I hope your proud of yourself. With your forward thinking it means that we now have to reschedule forges, which will impact our current orders.” The man looked at him as if he wished Ethan would swallow a bug and die a horrible death. Ethan stared back at the man and said, ”Sure we have a few orders that are being pushed back for seven or ten days, but that small delay now means we can spread out the work for longer. Think about it, the last few winters it seems like we have a dead spot for business the first ten days or we get busy building inventory and then towards the middle of the season do nothing. Instead we can keep a consistent order log for thirty to forty days before we start sending people home. Winter always seemed like a dead time for work, but if we can come up with a plan on orders for Spring when we are the busiest we might be able to get ahead this year instead of always being behind.” Ethan seemed excited the idea of a spring not running around working long days to finish projects and orders, instead having the inventory ready to be sold and just worrying about the normal everyday ware and breakage on tools. The senior apprentice merely grimaced and ordered Ethan to get the thin bar stock stone molds. Iron and steel mold were not often used on similar materials. True molds needed to be made of harder material then the metal one was processing. So instead most steel molds were used on lower temperature melting metals like tin or brass. Stone made sense for iron because off how heavy it was and that it could metal or deform without a great deal of heat. The problem with stone however, as the fact that the mold that Ethan was getting weighed nearly twice as much as he did. Three other apprentices came over to help Ethan with the molds. They worked at a team against the heavy mold, Ethan’s arms straining his foot lifting and moving merely a step at a time. Ethan felt the weight go back and forth as the team of men adjusted the weight back and forth while walking. It took the time a total of five chimes to move the mold to the furnace that he called Big Kate, and then gentle place it in line with the bar molds. The blast furnace, Big Kate, was working on iron ore at the moment, so Ethan and the other apprentices brought over the large mold to the furnace and set it in line with the rest of the molds for bars. The senior apprenticed looked at the placement of the mold and nodded. Slowly, he began to take the time to point out the parts of the mold and how it acted to keep the metal from forming holes. Since the mold was open ended he asked several of the apprentices including Ethan to pick up several thin iron rods to move and mix the molted metal with. Apprentices moved about for several candles as the iron melt slowly came out of the furnace into a cleaned smelting pot. The metal splashed briefly spilling small little iron beads on the ground. Two more experience apprentices used long rods with hooks to grab hold of the pot and wait as it filled up. The senior apprentice kept watching the stream of metal, using a scoop long rod to pick up ash or rock particulate from the stream. When the smelting pot became three fourths full, the senior apprentice stopped the flow or iron briefly by closing a gate near the furnace doors, everyone held their breaths as the dark orange iron flowed into the pot till it became a drip every few heart beats. It was then that an explosion of activity began, the two senior apprentices began pour metal into the bar molds. Since the cavities of the bars were large enough and they had open faces so the smiths were able to accomplish the task by slowly pouring in the metal as soon as they were done them moved off to the next cavity. Quickly afterwards young inexperience apprentices started mixing the metal with a rod. Every now and then a bubble would come up and bust sending a small spray of iron outward. The smart ones kept as much distance between them and the mold to avoid the splatter while the others had heavy leather aprons that were burnt from the hot metal. Shortly the metal in the pot ran out, and the experience apprentices moved out of the way to put another pot underneath to catch the new stream of liquid Iron. As the bars cooled, the apprentices waited till the metal inside the bars turned sluggish and then they drew the rod out. Those that had learned to do it every few breathes to cool it off by waving it were in better shape the others. By the time the smelting pot was ready to pour more of it molten drink, the junior apprentices had cleared the molds that had been filled to allow for cooling. Back and forth the pot began to fill molds and apprentices worked the cooling metal making sure air pockets didn’t form in the mold. At time Ethan stood at the ready to either help with lifting the molds, or stir the bars. When it came to the great stone mold, Ethan and two other smiths were ready began stirring as the iron was poured in the stone cup which fed the channels. Ethan watched them fill the cup up to a mark and then go back to filling bar molds. The liquid metal began to slowly spread outward and Ethan took the initiative to use his stirring bar to move the metal down the channels into their final resting place. As he did so, the resistance that seemed to keep the metal from flowing began to decrease and quickly the channels and cavities became full as on a small layer of metal was left in the cup. To Ethan it felt like a great long finger running down grooves as he stirred the metal. Slowly as the metal cooled Ethan could feel the resistance that his stir rod was pulling against, and he lighten up against the drag. Happy with the look of the bars that were forming, him and the other apprentices waited for five chimes to let the outside harden enough before the moved the great mold out of the way. Back and forth the team of apprentices ran to get a new mold, for the furnace name Big Kate didn’t care how long a man took to do their job, she was eating the iron ore and allowing it to flow back out. For almost a bell Ethan and the others worked solid till inner reservoir was empty and they could began tapping out the bars onto the sand floor. Ethan took the chance for a small break and splashed some cold water onto himself. By the time he got back to the furnace he was ready to join the fun in popping out the iron castings.

[Ethan Ironhorse]

Ethan had spent several bells working with the molds to break apart bars. Taking a steel chisel, Ethan picked up the newly made bar stock and went over to the forge. He began to heat up the bar stock in order to break it apart. Ethan brought along the other apprentices showing them how he heated up the metal to an almost dull red. Talking the chisel Ethan broke up the flash around the bar stock and then set it aside to be repurposed. Placing the bar stock in the forge, Ethan began to heat up the iron so that he could lay the larger bar against the edge of the anvil and use it as a cutting plain. Ethan took out the bar and began creating small pieces from the stock. Each piece he began to forge a nail from. As he did so, Ethan explained to the others that the small piece he cut off was thin and small enough to forge cold. Ethan placed the small piece of iron so that it lay flat on the head of the anvil with just a small bit of it over the side. It was there that Ethan began to strike the piece with full force working quickly to give the metal a small lip for a head. He used the horn to shape the spike and in the end it had taken Ethan no longer than twenty strokes of the hammer and two chimes. Looking up, Ethan saw the look of wonder on the young apprentice faces. It reminded him of the first time he saw his dad fit a horse shoe to a horse in less than three chimes. The speed came with skill, and in the end with but a few quick strokes everything was made in a flash. Ethan had a young man come over and slowly helped him forge his first nail. The others laughed and pointed at the man as he wasn’t able to complete the nail within a few chimes like Ethan. However, Ethan didn’t give up on the man, he never yelled or commented about a bad strike but waited till the man finished. He took time to give the man praises over the good things he did and then helped him by giving him helpful hints on some of the things he did wrong. Picking up the bar Ethan asked the apprentice to do it again. Slowly the man had better strikes, but took more time. Yet, with realization that the shape was taking place with few strikes he grew confident and shortly after making his fifth nail, Ethan sent him off with his own bar stock to learn. Picking the ring leader next to so the others how it was done, Ethan acted just as patiently as he did with his first student letting the man fail and succeed on his one. It took Ethan the rest of the night to go through the rest of the apprentices and teach them how to make nails. By the end he gathered all the nails he could and it made about a single bag of them. It was sad since he could have done the same thing by himself, but the next night maybe there would be two bags instead of one and who knew where it would go after that.

[Orion Michaels]

Ethan
+2 Planning
+1 Socialization
+2 Metalsmithing
+1 Bodybuilding
+1 Teaching
+1 Blacksmithing

Lore :

Ironworks Popular Sales, Winter 512 AV
Benefits of a Stone Mold
Working as a team to smelt
How to Chisel and Cold Forge an Iron Nail

Final Notes
Very informative thread, Ethan. I don’t know much about smithing so it’s always an interesting read. I wanted to give you some leadership for that last post, but I need you to show actually doing the actions, rather than just glossing over it. Devil’s in the details, right? Keep it up. Please edit your grade request to show it’s been completed and don’t be afraid to PM me if you have any questions.