Completed [The Ironworks] Buckling In

[Baelin Holt]

20, Winter of 514 AV

It was much too cold and Baelin had slept horribly. The cold ate at him and no matter how Baelin wrapped his limbs around himself he just couldn’t stave it off. He left his fire lit to try to keep him warm, and bundled his cloak over his blanket for better insulation. It helped. But he could still feel the cold air grazing him. And he hated it so very much.

Baelin had lay in his bed a good deal longer than he should have, refusing to move beyond his cocoon of warmth. But eventually a blasted bell told him that he better get his lazy self up and to work.

Work... He gritted his teeth at the thought. He loved smithing, he really did. Baelin’s dreams didn’t really extend beyond opening up his own smithy somewhere warm and close to the sea. Maybe with a close friend that he could share it with.

But even those dreams felt so far removed. Baelin blinked tiredly, gaze fixed on the dead fireplace. His limbs felt heavy. Getting up seemed so very, very difficult. Why did he even want to go into work? He was a lousy smith. He should have advanced so much farther than he had. Did he even do anything in Fall?

Get up. Heaving a sigh, Baelin rolled out of bed. Literally rolled. And landed in a heap of blanket and cloak on the stone floor. Baelin twisted to get an arm loose, then the next, and with a huff pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled over to his chest and pulled out his clothes. They were beginning to smell. Baelin wrinkled his nose in disgust and was tempted to just go to work naked. Washing clothes when the water was all so frigid was more than unpleasant for the half-Dhani.

With a sigh Baelin tugged on his shirt and pants. He had the same set of clothes when he left Black Rock and they were quite ready to be replaced. Baelin sniffed the shirt one more time and grimaced. He would definitely have to wash this after leaving the smithy today.

Baelin dragged himself through the corridors of Stormhold until he eventually reached the doors that led out into Winthrop Alley. At least Stormhold had the stale warmth of too many bodies housed in the same halls. Winthrop Alley was open to the sky and, while that was a blessed relief in the summer, was unpleasant in winter. Baelin sped up until he got to the Ironworks.

The heat of the Ironworks was, as always, wholeheartedly welcome. Someone was already using the anvil he had been on yesterday. That’s what he gets for being late, he supposed. He settled in at an anvil close to a forge that seemed to have been started some time ago, pumping forth warmth like a living thing. The waist on this anvil was a bit narrower than he preferred. It was going to ring up a storm on him as he worked on it.

[Baelin Holt]

For the past few days he had been working on buckles. Almost all pieces of armor needed to be buckled on, and the Ironworks went through a lot of buckles. It was never ending work. Perhaps one day Baelin could work on actual armor. But as of now, he still hadn’t earned Fredrick’s trust in his abilities. He was still just an apprentice.

Sighing, Baelin went over to the stock material and pulled out one long, iron rod. It had been cast to be very narrow rod already, but it still had to be cut and shaped. The apprentice brought the rod back to the anvil and pulled out a chisel from the workbelt wrapped around the anvil’s waist. He laid the rod on the anvil face, checked that no one would bump the length of rod hanging off the end, and positioned the chisel at the length he wanted.

After having done so many of these buckles, Baelin knew how long they needed to be: about the length of his ring finger. Checking once again to make sure he was happy with the length, Baelin tugged out a medium sized hammer from the anvil’s belt. He lined up the chisel vertically, then made some regular strength taps.

The iron molded relatively easily at the start and it didn’t take too long until the chisel went clean through. Baelin grabbed the excess before it fell off and slipped the chisel and hammer back into the anvil’s belt. He left the small piece of rod on the anvil as he made his way to the nearest workbench and left the rest of the stock material there.

Baelin pulled one of the straight stakes from the bucket that held them and headed back over to where he was working. Next to the anvil a round stake was mounted in a vise. Most smiths needed the round stakes for their projects and it was pretty normal to leave them mounted for whoever worked on it after you.

But buckles were small things that needed to be bent. Baelin was the odd man out with his straight stake. The apprentice set his straight stake down next to the small iron rod he just cut and grabbed the round stake with one hand. He spun the handle on the vise once, twice, and then felt the stake loosen slightly. Baelin pulled it through, set it on the anvil, checked to make sure it wouldn’t roll on him, then replaced it in the vise with the straight stake.

The apprentice spun it tight again. Baelin tried to wiggle the stake to check that it was in securely. Satisfied that it was good, he went to go put the round stake in the bucket with other stakes at the back of the room.

Baelin had seen other smiths use the hardy hole on the anvil for mounting their stakes, but Baelin never got the hang of it. He was sure there was a way to mount to stakes in there securely, but every time he tried it always wiggled a little on him while he was working. Very frustrating. So he always settled for fitting it in the vise. It worked fine.

[Baelin Holt]

The smith fetched a pair of tongs from the anvil’s belt and picked up the small iron rod with them. Annoyingly enough with a piece this small, he couldn’t loosen his grip on the tongs while it was in the charcoal or else he’d lose it. Baelin was sure there was a half-finished buckle laying somewhere with the charcoal waste.

Baelin tucked the small piece of metal in between some of the charcoal in the forge. With so many smiths working at the same time it wasn’t unusual to have to share space in the forge. And today was no different. A sword was laying under the coals and its associated weaponsmith was watching Baelin carefully.

The half-Dhani avoided eye contact and focused on the small piece of metal he was working on. It didn’t take long for it to start to glow red, the small piece heating up much more quickly than a larger one would. Baelin carefully pulled it out, careful not to jostle the coals close to the sword, and quickly brought it back to his stake.

Baelin lined up the rod against the stake and shifted his grip on the tongs so he could press it tightly against the stake. He eyeballed the placement, making sure it was just about center. The apprentice pulled out a small hammer and began to hit the metal, working to bend it around a corner of the stake.

By the time he got one corner finished the metal had already cooled. Baelin brought it back to the forge until it was once again red hot, and then held it back up against the stake. He lined up the corner of the stake with the bend and moved around so he was positioned in front of what would be the next corner of the buckle. He tapped the hammer against it, forcing it to bend around the adjacent corner until he had a U shape with corners.

Once again Baelin needed to go reheat the metal. The swordsmith was gone this time and Baelin was able to hold his piece in the forge without an audience. The half-Dhani breathed a sigh of relief. He knew it shouldn’t bother him, but he hated being watched while he was working.

With the metal red hot again, Baelin brought it back to the round stake and slid the piece down onto the stake. He made sure the joints were lined up well, and then began turning the third joint. He tried to hit close to the free end of the metal while still being sure to not actually hit the free end. Baelin had found that hitting closer to the joint messed things up. Made the buckle look like it had little bends and kinks where they shouldn’t be. Hitting the tip of the free end, however, would cause the metal to curl. And that wasn’t good either; he’d have to straighten it out later.

In the end, it was all about being careful. Well aimed hits with not too hard a hit were the way to go. It was actually doing that which was the hard part.

[Baelin Holt]

Third joint in place, Baelin brought it back to the forge and waited until it was once again malleable. With the metal still glowing, he brought it back to the stake and slid it down the top. The rod already was in a square shape. There was only one piece of metal still sticking out from the box. It was this piece that he bent over with several taps until it was resting against one of the buckle faces.

Baelin was now done looping the metal around the stake. He pulled it off and inspected it to see how his bends came out.

They looked decent and he couldn’t spot any unnecessary kinks in the metal. You could see where his hammer touched down, but he could clean that up later. For now, he had to work to get the excess off.

Baelin set the folded piece of metal down on the anvil face and picked a large chisel out of the anvil’s belt. He fixed it into the hardy hole on the back of the anvil and wiggled it a little to make sure it was settled in firmly.

Once he was confident that it was in as good as he could get it, Baelin took a pair of pliers and grabbed the side of the buckle adjacent of the side that had the metal overlapped. Baelin held the bent metal over the chisel with the overlapped side up against the chisel.

The apprentice picked up a large hammer and lined up his strike point with the buckle. Double checking that his hit was in-line, Baelin began striking the metal. The chisel slowly began to bite into the metal at the overlapping portion of the bent rod.

If Baelin could hear anything over the din of metal being hit against metal that always accompanied the Ironworks, he would probably be able to count the chimes that went by as he slowly forced the buckle against the chisel. Bit by bit, the chisel worked through the rod until it eventually broke through. Two pieces of metal separated from the rest of the rod and now the bent metal was truly starting to look like a buckle. Once the two ends were welded together, it would be a closed rectangle.

The smith brought the loop of metal back to the forge and waited for it to once again heat up. Once it was back to red, Baelin brought it back to the anvil and held it still with pliers. He could never really let go of the buckle throughout the whole process. He had tried before and the little thing jumps around on him way too much. Baelin was still a little sloppy at holding things still with pliers and he had to frequently readjust his grip, but it was better than chasing after the little thing every time it jumped off the anvil.

[Baelin Holt]

Confident that he had a good grip on the buckle, Baelin pulled out a medium sized hammer and began to hammer the adjacent ends of the loop onto each other. He couldn’t hit it hard or else the metal would deform in ways he didn’t want it to. Just hard enough to force the two ends onto each other. Baelin had to frequently take it back to the forge to heat it back up as he worked the ends together.

It took a while, as everything in the Ironworks tended to do, but eventually Baelin was satisfied that the two ends were more or less attached. There was a bit of a lip where the two weren’t lined up. Baelin would have to clean that up.

Filing was tedious, but Baelin tended to like tedious things. He fixed the buckle in the vise, picked a decent sized file, and began to go to work on weld’s lip. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Baelin began to drift in his own thoughts as the methodical work continued.

His thoughts, however, had not been a good place to dwell recently. He was just so very tired. The whole reason for getting a job at the Ironworks was to give his life a little bit of a purpose. To be something more than just some Blacksmith’s striker, drifting between different small smithies with no hope of advancing. But nothing’s really changed. If he dropped dead tonight no one would miss him. Fredrick might grate at the loss of a worker he had been training, but there would always be other workers.

Eventually he finished filing and pulled himself out of his thoughts. Baelin took the loop of metal back to the forge yet another time so it could once again be heated for a uniform color. Fredrick didn’t like the lop-sided color after filing.

Once it was looking uniformly heated up, Baelin pulled it back out and held it against an anvil’s face. Fredrick also didn’t like the round rod look on his buckles, he preferred a flat-faced buckle. So Baelin pulled up a small hammer and began to hammer down the buckle’s profile to be flat. And, for another decorative touch, Baelin took a small chisel against the side of the buckle and hit in small lines going around the buckle. Supposedly it helped people grip the buckle better.

Now that the main part of the buckle was done, he needed to make the tongue. For this he used a smaller iron rod than the buckle. Baelin held the tip of it in the forge for a little bit. Not too long, however, only long enough to make it a bit softer to work with.

He pulled it out and slipped the buckle onto the heated end. Using pliers, he wrapped the tip of the smaller rod around the buckle until it was a snug loop. He gripped it with the pliers and twisted it until the loop was a decent looking circle and was lined up with itself. Once he was satisfied that the tongue was attached to the buckle, he set it down on the anvil. Now that he had the tongue in place, he could hold the whole assembly by the tongue rather than gripping with tongs or pliers. Something which Baelin always took advantage of.

The smith flipped the rod over the body of the buckle and held it slightly above the buckle, then began to hammer a bend in the rod right at the end of the rod’s loop. Baelin pulled out a small chisel and hammered it in a bit away from the buckle, separating the tongue from the rest of its stock material. Then he laid it flat against the edge of the anvil with about a fingernail’s length on the anvil and hammered it flat.

With a sigh, Baelin set the buckle aside. That was one done. He headed back to the stock material and fetched the original rod to begin another one. Baelin would have to finish a whole batch of them before he could treat them in oil.

Tedious work, but Baelin did enjoy tedium.

[Sayana]

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request. If there's anything I may have missed, please PM me and I'll be happy to look into it.

 

Baelin

Skills

• Endurance: 1
• Planning: 1
• Observation: 5
• Land Navigation: 1
• Blacksmithing: 4
• Bodybuilding: 4
• Etching: 1
• Armoring: 1

Lores

• Enduring the cold
• Goal of opening a smithy by the sea
• Blacksmithing: Chiselling through iron
• Blacksmithing: Hitting a buckle around a straight stake
• Blacksmithing: Heating an iron rod in charcoal coals
• Blacksmithing: Importance of well aimed hits
• Blacksmithing: Filing to create a smooth surface
• Blacksmithing: Reheating to create a uniform color
• Armoring: Creating a buckle

Comments: Nice thread and very thorough. However, I mostly just awarded Blacksmithing skills because buckles can be used in all sorts of situations (belts, clothing, saddles, carriages, etc) and are not unique to armor nor a defining feature of armor. I did award one point in armoring because you did mention that armor requires a lot of buckles. Had you described Baelin attaching the buckles to already made pieces of armor, I probably would have awarded more points in armoring since it's more specific.


Your Grader,

Sayana

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