The First Request I (Job Thread)

[Kelski]

Timestamp: 2nd of Winter, 517 AV.

Kelski truly didn’t know what to expect when it came to Jaren Joander and her new situation. He’d muttered something about setting up a jewelry forge for her and a place to work. The Kelvic had immediately gotten hopeful that he would indeed present her with somewhere decent to work with the proper tools to augment out her Jewelcrafting kit that she had with her. Truthfully, she should have known better.

One thing Jaren Joander was, she learned immediately, was clueless. He immediately moved her into his spare room which he used like some sort of treasure vault with valuables thrown everywhere. She’d had to clean out one corner of the room – one whole wall – in order for them to make room for the brick layer to come in and lay the foundations for a jewelry forge to be vented outside. Thankfully Jaren’s rooms were on an outer wall.

Next she’d had to give one of his flunkies, a drunk bruiser named Darvin, a list of the equipment she’d need while the brick layer put in the forge. Including the supplies to run the forge itself, like the bellows, tongs and crucibles, there’d been a number of things such as a work table, storage for fuel for the forge, vices, presses, an anvil, and a wire press. She needed things to work, especially on the caliber of the work Jaren said he needed. She also needed oil sand, wax, and things to set up both in it. An annealing oven would be nice, but she could mimic the effects of one on the forge if she didn’t sleep a lot. Finally, raw materials were required. She needed gold, silver, copper, and a whole host of raw material like huge uncut agates.

They even got her lapidary wheels and a stone cutter as well. She was surprised they had, though in truth she couldn’t work without them. The Kelvic was shocked at the constant stream of thugs and what looked like fallen knights wandering by dropping equipment off from Gods knew where. She even got some ring molds and a wire puller blank that didn’t look like they were in bad shape.

Slowly, bit by bit, the gear came in as the forge was worked on. Most of it was second hand, and she wondered how much of it was stolen like her ‘raw materials’ were. The Jewelcrafter found herself taking most of it apart, checking its inner workings, and oiling the gears, especially on the wire maker and some of the other more complex tools.

They even delivered her materials to work with. Those raw materials where made up of rings, necklaces, earrings, even buttons off coats that were all piled in a large ceramic tub that Kelski had to go through. Most of the silver was tin. Most of the gold was painted or enabled cheap metal. She’d finally talked Darvin into actually buying ingots of already worked material, but she had no idea where he’d gone to get them. So once she’d gotten her work space ready, taking up most of Jaren’s extra room – with his gear stacked in the back – and only a small cubby under what appeared to be an odd wall due to a stairway that she could sleep in - Kelski got to work.

[Kelski]

First, she sorted the filched gems and jewels from the ceramic tub, removing everything from its setting and carefully examining each and every stone under her lens to grade and classify it. Most were junk. The glass she dumped all in one container so she could save in case one day she had to replace real gems with glass on something for Jaren’s wishes. That reminded her to tell Darvin that she would need a thick sheet of glass, broken was fine, to cut and color if Jaren ever needed glass instead of real gems.


The real stuff, which there were some, needed some repair work because most wasn’t in the best condition. Jewelers could improve the quality of gemstones by re-cutting, filling inclusions, or even coloring the gems. Some of the repair work would need extra supplies but some of it she had. Jaren, thankfully, had given her access to Darvin to place her requests with. He had a strict budget and a yes or no attitude. Working with him on the very first day, Kelski found that if he was drunk enough or his eyes glazed enough that he’d be amiable to going into the city and fetching her whatever she needed just as an excuse to get whatever more of what he needed. Sometimes he brought back the right stuff, sometimes it was a complete miss. Kelski just counted herself lucky that Jaren wasn’t hitting her and was actually keeping her to work rather than for other things. The cleaning she didn’t mind, since she was naturally neat. It was just packing all of Jaren’s junk away and sorting it so that she could have room enough to work without setting The Barracks on fire.

Finally, when she was ready, she fired up the forge for the first time and took the miscellanies gold and dumped it into a little crucible. Letting it melt, she oiled down her ingot molds and laid them out so when the gold was fully melted together, she poured it out into small ingots that she could then use in making wire and other items. Kelski was quick about it. Heating up gold repeatedly dropped its quality significantly unless one was quick about it. She didn’t want to downgrade the already questionable quality of the metal any further. She did the silver next, and finally smaller batches of other metals, popping the ingots out of the molds when they were cool enough and lining the supplies up and down the workbench. She sorted the gemstones and began repairing them as well. One couldn’t make silk out of a sows ear, but she could certainly take diamonds that weren’t that shiny due to overly large inclusions.


Kelski melted some of the glass Darvin had procured her, the high lead content stuff, and melted it into a crucible as well. Lining up the diamonds on the bench, The Kelvic selected the first one, shifted her vision down to the minute detail, and held the diamond in tongs where the inclusion was pointed up facing her. She set the melted the glass down on the edge of the forge where it would stay liquid the longest and took a dobber from her kit and began dobbing the liquid glass with a bamboo stick onto diamond where the inclusion was. It was like magic how the capillary action sucked up the glass, drawing the air out of the diamond and the substitute filler material in. Since it was clear glass, one couldn’t tell the inclusion was back-filled, making the diamond look more solid and its brilliance kick up several notches. She repeated this process multiple times, adding the filler to the lower quality diamonds to up their appearance and value until she had all of them done. Then, some of the darker stones, a topaz, several rubies, and a sapphire… she was able to fill as well nodding In satisfaction that she’d made the stones look better. Then she dumped the remaining melted glass into a straight ingot mold and let it cool so she could set it aside to use again later.

[Kelski]

Next, Kelski cleaned all the gemstones thoroughly and decided to polish them. She went looking for the kitchens, borrowing some grease from the cook, then added sand to it she’d went outside to get with a very disgruntled Darvin on her heels. She’d cleaned and cleaned the sand, sifting it for impurities and then mixing it with the grease and a few other tiny components she had from her jewelers kit to help with the polish. Then she’d carefully coated the gems with the polish and adding them to her drop stick, set her polishing wheel into motion with a few pumps on the foot pump. Carefully she worked the scratches and chips out of all the gemstones she’d salvaged from the loot the raiders had left her until she had a neat tray of potential new items to set for Jaren at his request. She was always careful when cleaning and polishing, doing all the side work first with the gems attached by glue to the drop stick, then dissolving the glue in warm water and holding the gem in carefully padded tweezers to polish the top and carefully make sure all the glue was taken off.

She was just about ready to perhaps take a break and go for a walk when Jaren came in. She was sitting at her bench carefully rubbing the last of the diamonds she’d treated and cleaned with a cloth when he walked up. Placing his hands on her shoulder, the man bent forward and looked over her shoulder at the tray before her laden with gems. “I see you’ve been busy.” He said thoughtfully, and then began to gather up her hair which was falling around her torso in a loose cascade. He drew it to the top of her head and instead of fastening it with a leather thong or a ribbon, he simply tied the mass in a knot. The kelvic sat frozen, not sure what he was doing or what he wanted.

Rough hands caressed her neck, then lower on her torso, completely cupping the contours of her upper body. “You are a pretty little thing, Kelski. But such beauty needs something more. His hands dragged upward across her breasts to grip at her neck. He squeezed lightly, cutting off her air as he bent his head around to one side to watch her expression in profile. “You are MY pretty little thing and I want everyone to know it.” The hands retreated and with their departure, the Kelvic was able to take a deep breath. The scent of leather filled her nose for a moment as a heavy leather collar was buckled around her neck. He cinched it down tightly, at first, cutting off her breath, until he backed it off two notches to where she could breath but not slip a finger beneath the leather.

“I want this visible at all times. I want it embellished to the full extent of your ability. And I want a tag hanging from this loop in the center with a Sun’s Birth emblem on it. Do it right the first time, Kelski, or I will make sure you it goes on tight not loose. I want you to come to me wearing nothing but it for final approval, okay? Have it done by tomorrow too. I don’t want to be kept waiting.” He said, unbuckling the collar once more and tossing it on her work bench. The gems in the little tray she’d carefully polished scattered everywhere, even as the Kelvic started to tremble.

He was gone before she got the courage to turn around and look at him. Slowly, ever so slowly, she picked up the gemstones that had been scattered… one at a time… and set them aside. She picked up the collar, a big heavy ugly thing, and stared at it, not sure how she was going to make it look lovely, or like it was anything but a slave’s collar.

[Kelski]

The collar lay like an ugly reminder on her workbench. Kelski stared at it in disdain, unsure what to do with it. He wanted it to be beautiful, to stand out, to show she was owned. The jeweler didn’t exactly know how to set gems in soft or make leather shine. She’d have to line it with something metal first. That meant hauling in more wood, getting the fire stoked up in the forge, and melting some silver into a lengthy strip that she could line the collar with using rivets.

Taking her big snips, Kelski cut down one of the silver ingots, chopping it into smaller pieces and adding it to a crucible. Next she put it on the fire in its special holder over the heat, and began working the bellows to stoke up the temperature. While she was waiting for the silver to liquify, the Kelvic looked through her molds to see what she had. Luckily there was a bracelet blank that would work. It was eight inches, not long enough to cover the entire collar, but if she ran two if them, she could solder the two together and fit the collar nicely.

Kelski added more silver to the crucible, deciding she’d need more, and waited. While she was letting the silver liquify, she took out her tray of gemstones, rejected almost all of them, then started going through her precious stones. She found a huge fist sized agate that looked about perfect. She wiped it down, checked its color in the light, and then oiled the bracelet molds. Grabbing the liquified silver in its crucible, she poured out the molds, setting the empty crucible aside. She tapped the bracelet mold to get the air pockets out. Then let them set up, moving back to the agate.

One of the things Jaren had come through with was a nice rock saw. It worked on the same principle as a large saw mill, yet its blade was finer and the energy came from a human foot pump that worked the gears that turned the saw and got things cut. Kelski draped the saw with a cloth to keep down the agate dust, and set the agate up to be thin sliced by the saw. It took ages, cutting thin slices of the agate. She wanted them no thicker than a few millimeters. Then once she had the slices cut, she’d cut off all the round edges so all she had was sharp edges so she could fit the stones together like a mosaic across the collar. It would make it heavier by about twice its current weight, but it would be an example of her craftsmanship and hopefully Jaren would like it.

The agate was lovely, and chopped it was even better. Made of greys and whites with darker grey bands, it was interesting without being overbearing. It could fit together moasic style in a silver channel on each side. Kelski didn't want it to be fancy. She wanted it to be understated elegance except for where the Sun's Birth tag hung down. All of it would take time, but before she could get started, she needed to get the silver lining done.

[Kelski]

She started by popping the silver bracelet molds out of their iron confines. The bracelets acted as templates… just a long flat length of silver approximately two inches wide by eight inches long. She got out her flux and lit her solder spirit torch. Laying the two silver pieces flat, Kelski made sure they fit together tightly. They didn’t so she had to get out a rasp and take a bit of material off one corner. She fit them together, pulled them apart, adjusted the edge with a few strokes from her rasp, and tried again. Much better.

Next she fashioned a slim hidden silver hinge all the way across that she could solder both sides too. Kelski coated the ends with flux, took a tiny sliver of silver and added it to the seam where the hidden hinge was, and hit it with the spirit torch off and on again until the silver liquefied and filled the seam in. Kelski then hit it a few more times with the hot flame, spreading out the liquid metal and causing the seam to vanish and the two lengths of eight inches to become one long silver length.

Without the hidden hinge, Kelski wouldn't have been able to open the collar to buckle it around her neck.

Next she picked up the collar, opened it up, and tried to flatten it along the length of the silver. The silver was longer by far, but Kelski didn’t want to cut it off with her silver nips before she had it bent into a circle. She picked up the length of silver, her leather covered mallet, and then went to the anvil and laid it on the round end. Using a series of even rhythmic strokes of her leather covered hammer, Kelski began to pound the length into a gentle circle that she closed ever tighter and tighter until it mimicked the circumference and bend of the collar. Then she retrieved the collar, slipped it around her neck to find out which holes were the most comfortable to have the buckles in, and marked the holes with chalk. Then she took it off, slipped it inside the silver circle, and checked the fit. It was nice… she’d gotten close to the bend as well, just having to make some minor adjustments. But again the length of silver was too long. That wasn’t a problem. Kelski would trim it later, after she got the mosaic on.

For the next step, she took the collar, opened it slightly where she wanted the rivets to go, and marked it clearly on the leather. Then she took a awl and punched through with her hammer until the sharp metal tip of the awl struck the metal of the anvil. She didn’t want it just affixed once. She wanted two rivets in each end so she moved the awl over, carefully measured, and made another hole with the awl. Setting the collar aside, she lined up the right end of the silver strip and marked two exactly measured spots where the holes would also go through. Using a metal punch this time, Kelski punched out the rivet holes, readying the silver to be lined onto the leather. She was going to leave a bit of a gap so that the silver was edged with leather making it comfortable to wear. But she’d definitely shave down the edge of the silver and buff it well so it wouldn’t mark up the leather and would hold neat. If the band sagged on the leather, she might need another rivet up front, but she didn’t want to ruin the aesthetic of the overall look by putting one there to begin with. If she could get away without one she would or else she’d put a tiny one in and inlay over it to make it invisible.

Continued In: The First Request II

[Kelski]

Kelski

Experience: Jewelcrafting +5, Organization +1, Planning +2, Metalsmithing +3
Lores: JC: Setting Up A Workshop, JC: Sorting And Valuing Stolen Jewelry, JC: Improving Gem Quality By Filling, JC: Smelting Various Metals Into Ingots, JC: Embellishing Slave Collars, JC: Lining Leather, JC: Agate Overlays, JC: Soldering, JC: Using Bracelet Molds, JC: Hinging Overlays

Note: I gave a bit of metalsmithing for where she was working with the actual metal materials. There was one post with no JC in it, but the rest of the posts were all solid JC so I gave her the full 5 pts per thread.