Completed Metallurgy & Metalcraft; Copper

[Ornea]

Metallurgy & Metalcraft; Copper
Timestamp: Spring 515 AV
Location: Lucis and Lucis in Lhavit

It was in Edward Lucis office at Lucis and Lucis. Edward looked up from the project list he had been pondering. “I believe it’s best to put the telescope development on hold. We need a lot more knowledge before we can continue. The Observatory will need to wait. We just can’t do everything at the same time, Ornea.”

The Inarta nodded in agreement. Of course. Edward was the boss, and she didn’t question his decisions. She found the Observatory and the astronomy interesting, but there were so many things at Lucis that were interesting to her and she had no problems with the changed plans.

“We are going to focus on getting the metallurgy research done. It will include research work and practical crafting alike. In addition I think it’s time for you to start to learn more about gadgeteering.”

Ornea nodded again.

“I liked the report you made about tin. So you can go on and sort out the notes for more metals and alloys. Keep me updated. I’ll give you work tasks continuously.”

Ornea confirmed that she had understood and with the enthusiasm of a true Inarta facing hard work she went down to the firm’s technical library. The disorder in this room never ceased to surprise her. Edward was always so clear in his thoughts, but keeping the library of notes in order wasn’t his forte. Ornea tried to improve the order there at the times she visited, but as she was mostly occupied in the workshop and Edward was constantly adding new materials at higher pace than she tidied up, her efforts didn’t make much difference.

She started by finding her previous reportabout the metallurgy project. She hadn’t seen it for a while and needed to refresh her memory about how she had gone about the job. To her own standards it was a fat report, but obviously it wasn’t enough for Edward. This time she would also need take her findings to the workshop and use them in practice. There was no end to the requirements and the work here at Lucis and Lucis, and Ornea appreciated it. She didn’t like to idle.

Besides, there was nothing like a long day’s hard work to dampen the cravings of the reimancy that was still alive in her and silence the sweet whisper that urged her to use it. The magic she had once been so eager to acquire, and spent years on qualifying for, had become a curse on her life. She had found that the work at Lucis was an excellent way to keep it under control though. Nowadays she was even thinking she might be able to visit Wind Reach without falling back into harmful tendencies. Not yet though ; in the spring of 515 AV she still felt it was safer to stay in Lhavit, work hard and try to find a meditation trainer. But perhaps she would go on a trip to Mount SkyInarta in the end of the summer, if work allowed.

At the moment work didn’t allow her to slack and think of other things though. Ornea focused on what she had to do. She put her report about tin on the work table where she intended to get the research part of the assignment done, and went to dig through the piles of notes on the shelves that lined the walls of the small library. After a while she found a parchment folder marked “Copper”. Ornea remembered that tin and copper were used together in alloys so copper seemed like a good next step. She brought the folder with her to the work table, opened it and started to read the content.

...

[Ornea]

The handwriting on the mix of paper slips was the same as last time, when Ornea had worked with the notes about tin.

Ornea sighed. Whoever had written this had been a scholar who was used to write fast and for their own needs. Ornea's own handwriting wasn't advanced, but she did her best to keep it neat and orderly, and easy to read; she couldn't understand how the person who had written all these notes had been thinking ! What was the use of writing down all this knowledge, if it wasn't readable and useful?

Bracing herself for the deciphering of the notes, she picked them up and started by organizing them as best she could. She tried to put them in what seemed to be a logical order, in the hopes that this would make it easier for her to sort out the content once she would delve into the details. When she was done with her first attempt at creating order in the chaos of paper and parchment slips, she looked through the pile of notes again and moved a few papers, until she felt the sequence was good enough and there was little to win by working more at it.

She took the first note and started to read it. It was written on plain paper of bad quality, and it had obviously been stored for a long time as the ink had paled. The handwriting was such that it made her feel it was pure cryptography to interpret it. After studying it for a while she settled for how to identify the letters. The reading wasn’t easy, but by the persistent effort of an Inarta doing her job, she worked on until she had figured out the content.

It was time to transfer the facts to her own report. Ornea took the quill and dipped it in ink. She put the tip to the paper, and tried her best to avoid making blotches as she moved the quill over the paper and formed the letters.

Copper, she wrote, is a beautiful and shiny metal the orange color of glowing embers. It's nearly the only metal that isn't looking grey or silvery; the only other colored metal is gold. It can be used for many different things; jewellery, decorative items and details, kitchenware, and even in architectural construction, where copper is sometimes used to make roofs.

But copper isn't always orange. It can darken to a deeper red color, and it can also, mysteriously turn green, when it's used outdoors for a longer period of time. The copper doesn't react to water like iron does, but it seems like it's the outdoors air that makes it turn green.

As a competent metalsmith Ornea wasn't knew to copper, but she still found it fascinating to delve in to the details about metals. It was her specialty after all, and she had chosen it because she found it endlessly interesting. There was always something new to learn about metals; in particular about alloys. Even the thought of melting metals and merging them to alloys with new and totally other properties inspired her!

...

[Ornea]

She put the notes about the appearance and general uses of Copper on an empty space on the desk, and proceeed to the next batch of notes. These were more detailed and dealt with the properties of the metal. Ornea dipped the quill in ink and started to write again, moving the tip carefully and without hurry as she formed the text.

You can find lumps of copper in nature. You can also melt ore to extract copper, but the ore’s content of copper is fairly low.

Copper has been used for ages and it lasts for ages. There’s a lot of things copper is good for. It’s malleable metal, and this means it can be shaped in many forms and stretched into thin wire and different surfaces without the metal breaking.
For this reason copper can be used for example for making musical instruments, furniture, tubes, practical everyday details like doorknobs and hinges, and many other items, both useful and decorative.

Cooks are known to like to use pots and pans of copper, and it’s sometimes good to use tools made of copper because they don’t cause sparks and there’s no risk for accidentally putting things at fire.

Copper is an important metal in clockwork and other small mechanical gadgets, like locks. The copper isn’t magnetic. It doesn’t affect how the gadgets work, so there’s a lot of gears and pins of copper in those small devices.

At this point she came to a small slip of paper with torn edges. The not in it was short: One way to deal with it would be to secretly replace the gears and pins of copper with details of a copper colored alloy; details which would looks just like copper, but aren’t. In best case it could send the project into a quagmire of fabricated gadgeteering mysteries we could use to delay this horror. Sabotage. Just a thought. Destroy this message when you have ...

It ended there. Obviously somebody had followed the recommendation and tried to destroy the message, but not succeed totally. Ornea looked at the small text in disbelief. She had seen the handwriting before and recognized it: it was Edward Lucis’s who had written it. The Inarta felt intrigued, but not in a pleasant way. It was totally unnatural for Edward Lucis to want gadgets to not function. His whole life was about making gadgets work, with high accuracy and high quality. She could hardly believe that he had suggested sabotage of one of Lucis’s projects in the past.

She didn’t include the message in the report she was writing. Edward was her boss, and she was a dutiful worker who didn’t confront those above her without valid reason. She could hardly go to Edward and demand an explanation. This would need to be handled some better way, though she wasn’t sure of how. Perhaps she would eventually be able raise the question in a natural way during a work discussion?

She gripped the quill again, dipped it in new ink, put the pen’s tip to the paper and started write slowly. She didn’t write like a skills scribe, but her skill as crafter helped her somewhat, and if the letters she formed weren’t so elegant, she didn’t at least have a steady hand and her result was tidy and readable.

Copper, she wrote. Copper is often used in alloys. It can be mixed with tin in order to create bronze. When it’s mixed with zinc we get another alloy, named brass. Even gold does in fact always contains some small amount of copper, even the finest gold. The reason for this is that gold in it’s pure form is so soft that it’s possible to mold it with no other tools than your hands. Adding a bit of copper makes the gold hard enough to be useful for crafting.

She browsed the rest of the notes, but found that there wasn’t much to add, so she let her report end there and went to speak with Edward, show him the information and discuss the practical part of the task he had given her.

...

[Ornea]

When she was done with the smaller bowls she proceeded to a big copper bowl, which was a bigger challenge, as it's easier to shape a small bowl than a big one. The bowl, she thought, was actually a bent, thin metal surface, and the bigger the metal surface was, the more chances there were at making mistakes and end up with a skewed and misshapen product. Fortunately, she was competent, and not a novice, but it was still a challenge.

The Inarta started in the same way she had started with the smaller bowl but this time the circular plate she prepared was much bigger. Once she had the plate, she drew a smaller circle inside it's perimeter, not with ink as it would work on metal, but by carving in the copper with the sharp tip of a nail. The reason for this step in the work process was that Ornea wanted the bowl's bottom to be flat, so it would sit stably on a table or bench. Bow's with round bottoms weren't practical. So the bottom needed to be flat and she also wanted it to be thicker than the sides; this way the weight of the bottom would also contribute to the stability. In addition a thicker bottom would be good in case somebody would want to use it as cooking pot. Ornea reasoned that she couldn't know what people would do with the bowl, so it was best to make it useful for many purposes.

She spent a quite long time slowly hammering the plate into an elegant curve that rose from the bottom and then widened. When after much hammering and many inspections and small corrections, the bowl reached what looked like a good height, she finished by hammering the outermost part of the perimeter somewhat thinner and bending it outwards to make a soft rounded edge. It was beautiful, but her purpose was more than beauty. The rounded edge would make it easier to life and handle the bowl, and it would also be possible use it to fasten handles or chains on the bowl, if needed.

Ornea thought like an artisan when she crafted s. Beauty and utility went hand in hand. Even if she suspected that the bowl would become a kitchen utensile in the monastery, she wanted it to look nice. There was no reason to make ugly things. A beautiful bowl woul make somebody feel happy when they poured water in it. The small good things of daily life were important ...

She must have spent more than she had been aware of on the crafting, becaucse Edward Lucis turned up to ask how the work was going. Ornea showed him the results, and Edward said he thought the bowls were good enough ... the Inarta promptly nodded, and cancelled the extra round of hammering she had been tempted to start at, just in case ... instead she proceed to polishing the items she had crafted, in order to clean the metal and make it shine. She quite liked this part of the work, and didn't stop until Edward Lucis told her to not put in more time and effort.

He smiled. "Good job. We'll close for today now. See you tomorrow. "

Ornea smiled back. Edward was an exellent person! And one day, she would find a reason to ask him about the odd old notes she used to find in Lucis and Lucis technical library. But not now. She put the copperware on a shelf, and helped Edward tidy up in the workshop, and then they closed and went to their homes, tired but satisfied with their day at work.

...

[Estrellir Konrath]

Ornea

Research +1
Writing +3
Metalsmithing +2










Lucis: Metallurgy project
Copper: Orange or red metal
Copper: Turns green from long exposure
Copper: Malleable & long-lasting metal
Copper: Not magnetic
Edward’s note: To sabotage his own gadget?
Copper: Often used in alloys
Metalsmithing: Crafting copper bowls
Metalsmithing: Striving for beauty & utility

Notes

A solid job thread! Just a little short, I think? The transition between her research and crafting the copper bowls was somewhat abrupt too. PM me with any questions or concerns!