Completed Warming up for maintenance

Ornea works at Lucis and Lucis

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The Diamond of Kalea is located on Kalea's extreme west coast and called as such because its completely made of a crystalline substance called Skyglass. Home of the Alvina of the Stars, cultural mecca of knowledge seekers, and rife with Ethaefal, this remote city shimmers with its own unique light.

Warming up for maintenance

Postby Ornea on October 13th, 2014, 12:40 pm

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Warming up for maintenance
Timestamp: Day 7 of Fall 514 AV, before noon break
Location: Lucis and Lucis, the pump, big machinery projects and laboring building

The first in a series of job threads in Fall 514 AV. Ornea is working at Lucis and Lucis. She and Edward are going to replace a metal part on one of Lhavit's water pumps. They start the metalsmith work by heating up the furnace, plan the production, and discuss preemptive maintenance, metal alloys, furnaces and fuels.

It was in the foundry laboring area with the blast furnace at Lucis and Lucis in Lhavit. Edward Luci his new metalsmith Ornea was working and Edward was explaining how he thought about the firm’s metalsmithing. The old man was a man of many words, but as Ornea found him immensely interesting she listened with full attention and didn’t feel bored in the least. The contrary. To her this new job at Lucis with all its intricate development and products was the best thing that had happened to her in a long time.

“Some metalsmiths are specializing narrowly on a single metal, but here in Lucis and Lucis we need to be at a somewhat higher degree of knowledge than the average smiths. That’s the reason we have a smithy and a foundry of our own; to ensure that we always can get complicated metal components of high quality. We do cooperate with Touch of Fire sometimes, but we can’t make Lucis totally dependent on suppliers outside our firm. And our needs are also very variable and sometimes a bit rare and special. So I want to build up as much knowledge as possible in house.”

Edward was expert at metalsmithing, very expert and nearly a master of metalsmithing even. So Ornea would be able to learn a great deal from him about the smithing, but not only this. His real mastery was gadgeteering, and he had told her that the understanding of this complex craft was often essential for the more advanced smithing jobs at Lucis. “You will learn eventually. For now it’s good enough that you are competent at metalsmithing, even if your previous job has been in Wind Reach and not exactly with the things we create here. Metal is metal and the basics are the same.”

Some people might think metalsmithing was the easy task to just pour some molten metal into a mold. But the metalsmithing process was actually long and complicated, in particular in Lucis. It was true that Ornea was competent and had the basics in place. But it was already clear to her that her new job would be a challenge despite this. Right now, Edward Luci was opening a huge parchment scroll of the biggest size and spreading it out on a work table nearby. He picked a few discarded cogs that hadn’t passed the quality control and put them on the corners of the parchment to keep it in place. Ornea assisted him by holding the parchment until it was pinned to the table.
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Last edited by Ornea on December 7th, 2014, 8:05 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Ornea
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Warming up for maintenance

Postby Ornea on November 28th, 2014, 11:04 am

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“This is a drawing of details for the water pumps of Lhavit, details that will need to be replaced soon” Edward explained. Ornea listened attentively to every word he said. “Nothing is broken, but we aren’t going to wait for things to be worn out and break, because the pumps need to work all the time or else the city will be in big trouble. The pumps provides the water for the city, and they also regulates the hot water for the baths. Can you even imagine what would happen if they broke? Water for the whole city would need to be transported all the way from the river and up here ...”

Ornea looked at the drawing as he pointed out things to her.
Edward Luci shook his head. It would be a disaster if the pumps didn’t work properly, he said. But it would maybe be possible to get water to drink, so people would get by, though the water would likely be rationed. It was an unsure thing if there would be enough water for such things as washing o crafting, or what would happen to the baths. “It mustn’t happen. But luckily Lucis are in charge of the pumps and this firm is reliable. Safety and high quality is our motto. And so we are going to replace these metal details as preemptive maintenance.”

At this point Edward Lucy decided to test her knowledge by asking her to suggest an approach to the metalsmithing job.

Ornea studied the drawing with avid interest. The items they were going to craft where fairly big parts of machinery and of somewhat complicated shape. It wasn’t so easy to see exactly what they would be used for or know what they were named, but she could see that the job would demand her to work at the top of her current skill. This didn’t deter her.

She started to discuss the drawings with Edward Luci and told him about how she was thinking. “The first step is that we will need the foundry to be hot enough for the metal we are going to use” she said. “This takes time. So the very first step now is to lit the fire and get the heat up. We will need to watch over it and feed it with more fuel while we are working at the molds. So first of all I would like to know which metals or alloys we are going to use and which heat we need.“

This, the planning of the job, the investigation of the metals and the required heat was actually the first part of the metalsmithing process and an important part of the metalsmiths job. Metalsmithing did certainly not consist of only the pouring of molten metal into molds. The preparation work could be extensive.
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Ornea
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Warming up for maintenance

Postby Ornea on November 28th, 2014, 11:06 am

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Edward nodded in agreement. “That’s right. Now, let me tell that here at Lucis we have a lot of metalsmithing going on and this means we keep fired in the foundries all the time. We are keeping them at what I call preparation heat, in order to reduce the time from start of a new job to when we are ready to start melting metal.” He sounded proud of this clever way of working. He was overall an utterly clever man and Lucis was organized with amazing efficiency.

“In Wind Reach we used natural occurring magma forges” Ornea said. “So I’m not too familiar with using wood and coal fuelled furnaces. And I must admit I thought it would take several days to heat up a furnace here. It’s what I have been told...but your solution is splendid.”

Edward agreed. “It works well. But tell me, these magma forges is something I have heard about although I haven’t really had reason to get one at all cost, but do you think it would be possible to install one of them here at Lucis?”

Ornea thought of it a bit. “I’m not sure. I must admit is seems hard. It requires master reimancers and critical planning to open up a vein of magma to constantly use as a blasting furnace/forge. And as you already have a good and working solution it’s possible that the only difference in practice would be that you don’t need to fuel it. But this is hard for me to answer. I’m still new here.”

Truth was, Ornea had sometimes used her reimancy to speed up the melting of metal a little bit when she was working in Wind Reach and not patient enough to wait. But this was in the past now. To her it seemed good that the furnaces in Lucis weren’t heated by magma and no reimancers were involved. She was going to work at the speed the equipment here made it possible to work at. It seemed blissfully free from magic. She wanted it to stay that way.
...
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Ornea
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Warming up for maintenance

Postby Ornea on November 28th, 2014, 11:09 am

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As Edward Luci didn’t ask any more questions about the magma, Ornea went on with the planning discussion about metals. She wanted to show Edward that she really knew the basics so she started from the beginning. “If we use wood, the fire is assumed to be blazing red hot and consuming wood at a large rate. Only aluminum, tin, zinc, and lead can be melted on a fire that you could use to cook with. silver, copper and gold are just at upper range of heat for wood, if I recall it right. I haven’t used wood as we had magma at Wind Reach. But I learnt about it. They said a wood fire that could melt copper from nothing requires about five hours of feeding the fire to get the furnace hot enough.”

It was however obvious that these metal wouldn’t be the right material for the metal parts for the pumps. She told Edward that she realized this, and they would likely need an alloy, perhaps even iron to make steel. In that case they would need a coal fire and higher temperature. But she wasn’t able to guess the material out of the blue so she asked Edward to tell her what material they would use. It turned out to be steel. Edward told her this and waited for her to go on.

“Steel is an alloy that mostly consists of iron” Ornea said. “The other ingredient isn’t a metal but coal, or rather, a form of coal named coke. The correct proportions are nine and a half bars worth of iron and half a bars worth of weight in choke. So we will need to use coal to up the temperature of the furnace enough for this job. But tell me, us there already bars of iron and readymade coke in store, or do we need to start with making the bars and the coke ?“

Edward said he would check this up and be right back. While she waited for him Ornea started the work with getting the furnaces form preparative heat to the higher heat they would need. It was best to start this part of the work as early as possible. She put on an apron and a pair of the work gloves that were kept among the equipment around the furnace and used a shovel to add generously with coal to the already hot fires, from the side of the furnaces.

She moved carefully, the intense heat serving as a constant warning that made her keep up her attention in order to avoid accidents and burns. This was soon done. But despite the quite short time she had spent shoveling coal into the fires it had lasted long enough for her to discover something interesting : the heat and the physical work had kept her focused and she had actually felt were stable and present, and the so often present feeling of her mind slightly drifting away had been gone. It was the first time she had been working after the accident and the overgiving. The work seemed to help her somehow. Awed by this insight, she looked silently at the shovel she still was holding in her hands.
...
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Ornea
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Warming up for maintenance

Postby Ornea on November 28th, 2014, 11:17 am

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Edward came back. “There’s coke enough” he said. “But we’ve got to make new iron bars. Petch, this means the schedule doesn’t work out. I don’t know if we’ll be able to go on to the next steps as planned ... we’ll see, some things may need to be postponed ... but for now let’s focus on getting some iron bars done. ”

He thought a bit about this. “Yes, we will heat up the furnace, well I can see that you have started this already. We will get everything in order here today, but it’s not time to go on until tomorrow when the furnace is hot enough. So once we are done with the preparations I’ll send you to Touch of Fire and you can investigate if they have iron bars we could buy from them in order to speed this up. In best case that could save us some time so we can go directly for the steel. Otherwise we’ll proceed to making iron bars tomorrow.”

They went with the work as Edward had planned. Even more fuel was added to the fire and then they looked through a big collection of stone molds Lucis used for the pump details, until they found the right one.

This took it’s time, as Edward had many good stories to tell about the original development of the pumps and all the patient work with ideas, protottypes, and testing this had required. “We used clay forms in the start, as the testing often resulted in changes of the design, so we had to make new molds, melt the metal again and cast it again. It was a time consuming job. But once it was done and we were sure everything worked exactly as intended, I invested in stone molds we can use over and over again.”

There wasn’t anything more they could do yet, so after the noon break Ornea was sent to Touch of Fire in order to buy iron bars, if they had any for sale.

Continues in Checking The Touch
...
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Warming up for maintenance

Postby Brandon Blackwing on December 5th, 2014, 9:13 pm

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ORNEA

XP:

  • Socialization +2
  • Planning +2
  • Teaching +1
  • Metalsmithing +1



Lore:
  • Lhavit: Lucis and Lucis
  • Edward Luci: Boss and passionate gadgeteer
  • Lhavit's water pumps: Need preemptive maintenance
  • Wind Reach uses magma forges
  • Metalsmithing: What to feed to the flames to reach the right heat to melt the desired metals
  • Metalsmithing: The steel alloy
  • Metalsmithing: heating up the furnace


Notes:
Like you requested, I gave you as much lores as I could find. Wasn't much xp to award, but I figured you wouldn't mind. Enjoy.

Please remove or edit your post in the request thread.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding your grade, please do not hesitate to send me a PM..



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