by R. A. Mejia
He pointed to a five- or six-inch-deep half-box that was cut into the forge. “This is called a firepot. It’s where we heat our metals by sticking them into a pile of hot coke.” He points to a pile of dirty looking rocks in a barrel near the forge. “Coal is the stuff that is dug out of the ground. It’s hard, dirty, and has a kinda black shine. It doesn’t get hot enough and it has a bunch of stuff in it, impurities, that will make a mess of your forge work. To be useful you have to burn out all those impurities, which makes coke.” He pauses and scratches his beard. “It’s the same way you burn wood to make charcoal.” Deanly takes an L shaped poker and lightly strikes a dark dull looking rock in the center of the firepot which crumbles apart. “This is coke. See how he easy it breaks up? All the impurities have been burned out and it not only burns hotter, but makes less smoke. This is the stuff we burn to heat the metal we forge,” Deanly said. He took a hand full of shiny black pea-sized pieces of coal from the coal barrel and poured it along the edges of the firepot and tamped it down with a long piece of metal with an L-shaped end that he called a fire rake. The smoke from the burning coal was drawn up the chimney attached to the forge, and he used the fire rake on the coals to keep the fire going and consistent.
“A fundamental part of smithing fuel management. You burn raw coal along the outside edge of the firepot to make coke. Then rake the hotter burning coke into the center of the pot when you’re ready to heat your metal. So, you’re constantly needing to make the fuel you're using to forge with as you’re making something. If you don’t pay attention to it, you’ll burn through your coke before your done with your days work and lose a lot of time trying to make more instead of working.”
In addition to the lecture on how to turn coal into coke, he also showed me the proper way to keep the firepot free of ‘clinker’, the impurities from coal that drip down the sides of the firepot and pool at the bottom. It blocked the airflow from the bellows that helped heat up the coke. After he showed me how to place metal into the coke so that the metal would get the most heat.
From there, it was all practical explanations as he and his apprentices got on with their work. Each thing to be made had particular tools, methods of heating metal, and an order of tasks.
For example, Deanly and his apprentices made shears using wrought iron for the blades and spring steel for the worked ‘leaf spring’, the part that gave the shears their ability to bounce back after being forced together to cut. They worked in concert, starting the work by heating an iron bar in the center of the firepot until it glowed yellow. Then one apprentice pulled the metal out with a set of tongs and held it and a cutting chisel to the glowing hot iron. The other apprentice hammered the top of the chisel until it started to cut off a section of the long bar of iron against the anvil.
They repeated the process on the spring steel, only a much smaller piece was cut off. Each was heated again and hammered at their ends to an angle, which Deanly explained was for the weld between bars. The two types of metal were then heated again until they were bright yellow and then flux--a mixture of borax, sand, and iron filings that allowed a weld to take hold--was layered between the metals. They were heated again and then hammered together until the heat fused the metals together in a weld. It was then put back into the forge until it was white hot and then hammered and lengthened until one metal could no longer be distinguished from the other.
The spring center was defined by the darker color of the metal and the iron ends were heated and drawn out as blades. The hammers rang as they hit the metal again and again, forming the blades and bending them so that the bladed edges were facing each other. From there, the shears, now a rough-but-functional product, were hardened by heating it up and then dunking it in a barrel of water. There was a good bit of steam as the glowing metal rapidly cooled, but once taken out of the water, it was the color of dark iron. They were brushed and filed until the shears had a bright smooth finish on the inside and they came together smoothly.
The process was fascinating, and I was eager to try my hand at the same technique. But when I asked if I could try, the apprentices both laughed openly at me.
Deanly growled as he said, “Atulg! Gujek! If you two have so much free time that you can laugh at an honest question, then perhaps you both should clean out the furnace?” The two apprentices stopped laughing, nodded respectfully, and walked away toward the furnace. But as they passed, they gave me dirty looks. As if it was my fault they were getting punished.
Deanly’s expression softened as he turned his attention back to me and guided me to a small anvil in the back of the room. He said, “Sorry about my nephews. They are young and have not yet learned that they don’t have to compete to learn. But they are right that making shears is a bit too advanced for you. I just wanted to show you a few techniques while we fulfilled an order. You will start your journey as a Blacksmith by making nails.”
“Making nails?” I asked aloud. I knew that I could make him hundreds of the little copper things. I’d been doing it for weeks at night while earning little bits of XP.
“Yes, everyone has to start with the simple things to get a feel for drawing out and shaping the metals. You will start by making copper nails.”
He then proceeded to show me just how to forge a nail. Heating a thin bar of until it was bright yellow, he laid it on the anvil then used a two-pound hammer to hit an end until it formed a wedge. Then after reheating the metal, he hit it with the hammer, not with enough force to bend it, but enough to lengthened the wedge until it was long, thin, and pointed at the end. Then using a hardy, a kind of cutting wedge placed in a hole in the anvil, he cut off the end of metal, leaving a two-inch flat-sided bit of metal with one thick flat side and a pointed end. Not quite a nail, but on its way. Using tongs, he heated the metal again and then threaded it through a special tool form, which was really just a flat bit of metal with a square hold in it on a handle. The thicker flat end of the metal stuck up and was then hammered and flattened to become the nail head.
His hands became a blur as I watched him do the process again and again. In the end, he was producing a single nail in less than a minute by only putting the metal in the forge once each time. I was impressed at how efficiently, and generally how uniformly, he made the nails. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that each nail, though the same length, were slightly different widths and had slightly different heads. Some were a little thinner, and some of their heads were a little flatter or rounder.
I couldn’t help but think of other ways of making uniform nails and the factories that mass-produced them in my old world. I asked, “Couldn’t you just make a mold for the nails and then pour molten metal into them to make them that way? Or make a thin wire and then just snip off the amount you needed and sharpen the end and flatten the head? They’d be more uniform.”
He nodded and agreed, smiling. “Yes, that is true for the mold,” He raised an eyebrow and continued, “but I don’t think there’s any metal wire that thin. The point of this exercise is to show you how to heat and forge metal.”
I nodded and took the hammer and thin metal bar. I gripped the hammer and raised and lowered it a few times. I found that I liked the feeling of the hammer. It wasn’t too heavy, and although I’d used a rod to beat monsters, it was a different feeling knowing that I’d be using it to create and not destroy. I reviewed what Deanly did step by step, my mind seeing what needed to be done before my metal hands performed the task. Even though I knew the steps to take from watching Master Deanly, it was another thing to do it myself.
Though I had no fear of being burnt with my iron plating, I could feel the warmth from the forge as I heated the metal bar. The tongs didn’t have a perfect grip, and I had to adjust how I held them as I took the glowing bar of copper out of the forge. The hammer in my right hand hit the metal a bit too hard with the first strike and flattened the bar and sent sparks up, which would have burned me if I’d been made of flesh. I turned the metal and with less force, hammered and drew it o
ut. Unlike the orc smith, if I took too long, the metal cooled and I had to reheat it to be able to work it again. A curious feeling came over me as I worked. A kind of peaceful focus as the hammer reverberated as it struck the hot metal bar and anvil, and I felt like I could almost will the metal to conform to the shape I desired.
It took me much longer than Master Deanly, but soon I was holding the special tool and hammering the excess material at the end into a nail head. The moment I stopped hammering; notifications appeared.
You receive 1 XP.
You've learned the skill Metalworking.
Metalworking increases to level 1.
I was unduly happy seeing the notification and dropped the hammer and nail to give myself two thumbs up, my version of a smile. The hammer hit my feet, and while it didn’t even hurt since they were metal, the sound of the hammer and nail hitting the floor made Deanly the smith wince, and I apologized, quickly picking them up off the brick floor.
“I assume you got your Metalworking skill?” I nodded, and he continued, “Then I congratulate you. Now, you need to make me 100 more nails of the same length.”
Nailed It
You’ve been tasked with making 100 nails of equal length by your blacksmithing teacher.
Reward: 10 XP and more training.
The quest notification faded after a moment, and I thanked Deanly for his instruction and got to work. He walked away, and I was left with the hammer, metal stock, and other tools. I knew that I could scan the nail I’d made, or even the one Deanly had created, and then fabricate perfect copies of them. I could have a hundred perfectly uniform nails done in a fraction of the time it took me to make them at the forge. But, while I’d get the XP for it and finish the quest, I wouldn’t gain skill in Metalworking.
So, I put my mind to the task and put the metal stock into the forge fire heating it. I repeated the nail making process again and again, constantly getting better and more efficient with each iteration. I was surprised at how easy it was to swing the hammer and noted that my arms tended to hit with almost the exact same force each time I struck. I wasn’t sure if this was a consequence of my own desire or a quality of the Metalman frame that uniform movement was so easy. Since I didn’t have any muscles or lungs to get tired, I never had to take a break, and I finished the task in two hours.
You’ve completed the quest Nailed It
You receive 10 XP.
Metalworking increases to level 2.
Not only did I complete the quest, but I also earned 100 XP for making all of the iron nails and the skill increase I’d wanted. When I told Deanly that I’d finished his quest, he stared at me for a moment and then asked, “You’re done already? I expected you to take a few more hours. Didn’t you take a break?”
“No, I don’t get tired, so I got it all done and completed the quest.” I pointed to the pile of nails that I’d left on the bench nearest the anvil I’d been using. The hammer and special nail head tool were beside them.
He gave Atulg and Gujek instructions on how to continue the project they were working on, and as he did, I noticed the similarities between them and Master Deanly. They were all orcs, though my blacksmithing teacher’s skin tone was a darker shade of green than the two nephews. Additionally, Master Deanly was much broader in the shoulders than the two, though in a few years they’d likely catch up. However, the biggest difference was that the two young orcs did not have their uncle’s long braided beard, though you could see the beginnings of patchy growths on the two.
After Master Deanly finished with his nephews, he proceeded to examine my work. He carefully looked through the pile, holding several nails up to the light. “These are pretty good for a first day. The width of the nails is almost the same, though the heads have more variation.” He turned to me, put one beefy hand on my shoulder and said, “Good work, apprentice. Now for some S-hooks.”
I spent the next few hours making S-hooks, simple pieces of iron that were heated and then hammered and twisted to make an S-shaped hook. It was an exercise in twisting, straightening, and bending the metal. A hundred more of those, and I got my Metalworking skill to level 3 and another 100 XP. Then, finally, I made a metal chisel. It wasn’t complex and only involved heating and hammering out the edges of a rod to a wedge, but I quenched it in warmed oil to harden it, which was supposed to teach me that technique on a practical level.
In truth, I’d learned in college in a material engineering class that heat treating the metal by heating it up and then letting it cool either by air, in water, or in oil would either soften or harden the crystalline structures in the metal. It all depended on how long you left the metal heated, what heat the metal was raised to, and how quickly it was cooled. In the case of the chisel, it was meant to harden the metal so that it would be able to be used to cut hot metal pieces when hammered against it.
I gained 25 XP and another level in Metalworking for crafting the chisel, but more importantly, I learned how to make another tool I’d use as a blacksmith.
The day flew by with the instructions and practice, and by the end of the day, I’d reached level 4 in Metalworking and earned 225 XP from smithing. Deanly was surprised when I told him my skill level and chalked it up to me being a quick learner. I remembered that my new specialization of Inventor gave me a bonus to making items and that my character sheet said something about Metalmen being quick learners too. I figured that some combination of the two was responsible for the rapid progress.
I thanked Master Deanly for his time and instruction and promised to return the next day for more work. I said goodbye to him, Atulg, and Gujek and walked back to the center of town to meet with Greebo. I felt proud of myself and was confident that I was well on my way to accomplishing my goals.
Chapter 15 - Competition
Surprisingly, it only took 5 hours and 16 minutes to deconstruct the 220 pounds of copper ore. It was more of a hassle to find space in my small room for the copper and stone cubes I had to dump out of my inventory every half hour so that it wouldn’t go over my carry limit. In the end, I ended up with 132 pounds of stone and 88 pounds of copper.
Greebo wasn’t showing up for another 6 hours, and I was determined to use that time to get some XP. I knew that crafting could cost us long term if I continued to use the copper we’d been mining, so I ran through the math in my head, surprised at how easy it was to keep the numbers straight now that I was a Metalman. With the increased speed of crafting from investing in dexterity and those class abilities, I should be able to make about 446 copper nails while burning through about 8 pounds of copper between fabrication and deconstruction losses which meant that I’d be losing 4 silver worth of material that I could otherwise sell each day. That didn’t sound like much, but over the course of a month, that added up to 1.2 gold that I’d be losing. That was a significant amount of money.
The remaining week was a whirlwind of activity. Greebo and the miners worked at their tasks daily with the miner’s extracting ore while Greebo guarded them, and then the goblins muled it all to me each night. During the day, I learned about and practiced blacksmithing, and then at night, I deconstructed the ore that was brought by the miners.
With hard work and diligent practice, I raised my Metalworking skill to 12. I increasingly produced Fine quality items and not Poor quality ones as my skill in Metalworking went up, and Master Deanly explained to me that the chance of an increase in quality would go up as my crafting skill went up. The levels of quality were: Poor, Fine, Good, Great, Excellent, Superior, Rare, Legendary, Sage, and Godly. From levels 1-10, I’d gain an increased chance to make Fine quality items by 10% per level until I hit 10, at which point I had a 100% chance to create Fine quality items. Levels 10-20 increased my chances to make Good quality, and it repeated for each quality level.
In addition, after hitting level 10 in Metalworking, I was able to get my first blacksmith ability. I had to pay 5 silver for it, but I had several choices.
Burn Notice I - Increase heat resistance
by 5%.
Strength of the Forge I - Increase strength by 1.
Iron Man - Increase stamina by 15%.
Thunderer - Power of next hammer attack or blow is increased by 15%. Cost 5 mana.
Need for Speed - Increase crafting speed by 10%. Cost: 1 mana per minute
As much as I would have enjoyed the increase in strength or a more powerful hammer blow, I’d already seen the benefits of increasing my crafting speed. The faster I could make something, the faster I could crank out the XP. Over time, the increase would really add up. So, I chose Need for Speed. It was an active ability, which meant that I’d have to remember to activate it, but an extra 10% speed on top of my other bonuses really would help. The increase in speed let me earn 3500 XP by the end of the week just from my daily blacksmithing and nightly XP crafting. It was one of the gains that I’d so long sought to meet the challenge set by the gnome council.
When I mentioned my reluctance not to choose the ability that permanently increased my strength, I confused Master Deanly and his nephews.
“Why would you be conflicted about gaining a single point of strength? Haven’t you gained any points in strength from your blacksmithing?” my teacher asked.
“Uh, no should I have?” I asked.
The two apprentices looked at each other with confusion until Atulg asked, “You haven’t gained a stat point at all?” Then a grin crept up his and Gujek's faces and the two of them laughed.
