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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2015 10:21:06 GMT
 | Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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Jacoben slid into his workshop in the early morning with slightly unfocused eyes as he yawned widely, rubbing at the sleep which had accumulated at the corners of his eyes. It was another day where he had little on his schedule and therefore it was the perfect time to continue working on his crafting. Today there were a few things he wanted to work on, so he was going to be very busy and unfortunately also going to have to pay for some materials that he didn't have in stock. But still, it meant he'd be able to advance his Artisan level and that was what was most important at this point, as it would allow him to make more impressive items.
Wrapping his bandannas over his head and face the Foxtail picked up a small piece of stone that he was going to work with first. Around ten centimeters long with one rounded face and one flat face the stone itself was the dark brown of the hornfels stone, a stone well known for its use as whetstones in England but also used in the Musical Stones of Skiddaw due to the acoustic properties of the stone, a property he hoped would be useful in his construction of a stone whistle.
Taking up one of his smaller drill bits and inserting it into the hand drill the Artisan clamped the piece of stone to his workbench, making sure it wouldn't shift as he began to work on it. If it moved he could break either the stone or the tool, neither of which he would appreciate.
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Word Count: 267
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2015 11:53:25 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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It only took him a few moments to identify the best spot to place his drill and begin to work. Having never worked with stone in the old world where electric tools were available he couldn't exactly miss being able to use a power drill, and it wasn't like his Adventurer body got as tired as his old body either. Still, having to drill by hand was a relatively tedious process, especially as he needed to drill additional holes in the mouthpiece region in order to ensure that he could carve out the proper tip for the whistle.
Drilling in at angles the Artisan soon had the main chamber hollowed and it would only be a matter of using a small chisel to clear out the mouthpiece and then a sanding swab to form the primary cavity. Slowly but surely he worked, a flat file smoothing out the inner portion of the mouthpiece and the drill returning to use in order to open out the resevoir chamber three centimetres from the mouthpiece. Below that he drilled four equidistant holes into the body of the whistle on the flat face of the stone, forming finger holes so that the whistle could play some basic notes for variation.
With this done the main body of the whistle was complete, and all it would take was some refining to ensure that it was appealing aesthetically. Using varying grains of stone he smoothed out and polished the whistle until it practically glistened in the light of his workshop. Bringing the whistle up to his lips he blew softly, causing a high pitched sound to echo off the walls of the empty workshop, his fingers tunelessly covering and uncovering the finger holes to make sure that they properly changed the tone of the whistle.
It seemed that the rather simple instrument worked quite well all things considered.
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Word Count: 312
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2015 22:55:52 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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Glancing through the windows in his workshop Jacoben realised that he hadn't spent all that much time on the whistle after all, it seemed that he had been working much faster than he had anticipated and thus he had plenty of time to make some other items. There were only a few more standard recipes for the Artisan primary recipes that he had left to experiment with which meant he would soon be going into the recipes that were more closely associated with a Woodcrafter, the two classes being similar enough that they shared recipe lists. Something that would really help him was a quick and easy way to draw up plans with minimal waste of materials, and that was why he decided to work on a new recipe that would help him in this endeavour. Creating chalk.
The first step would be to make the mould for the chalk, a reasonably easy task for Jac as he was quite familiar with working with clay. The first thing he did was find a small piece of wood, not too thick or thin, from the remnants of the various wood he had worked with and slice off a portion of the branch at the approximate right size for a decent stick of chalk. It would be this and other pieces like it that he used to form the mould around, and so he spent the next half an hour preparing a number of sticks for use, cutting them to size and shape, smoothing them out, and then splitting them in half lengthwise.
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Word Count: 261
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2015 2:58:01 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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That completed, he realised that most forms of mould he wanted to create would not work easily with what he was trying to make. Clay was too brittle when heated and would take too long to allow the heat to solidify the chalk mixture, not to mention it would break after repeated use and would take a lengthy period to actually prepare. As with much of his knowledge of Artisan skills that were beyond his previous world experience, the thought came to him from out of nowhere, as though it was something he had always known but never thought about. He would have to make a sand mould for this particular project.
The first step for that then was to build a Cope and a Drag to hold the sand in the right form for moulding. It was at this point that Jac realised one small problem he was going to face with this particular form of mould, as usually a Cope and Drag were made out of wood and thus completely unsuited to being put in an oven and heated. He didn't have the materials or skills to make them out of metal just yet, but perhaps... it was a long shot, but he could make them out of stone for now until he had time to get some specially made by a blacksmith.
Wandering over to his collection of stones Jacoben pondered the various properties until he picked out the pieces he wanted. The young Foxtail chose slate due to the thin layers it naturally formed and the fact that it was a volcanic rock and thus likely to withstand high temperatures better than most stone. It would take him some time to shape and join the stone but eventually he would have two stone frames that could fit together snugly and wouldn't cause him too many issues when he was baking the chalk.
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Word Count: 316
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2015 6:51:20 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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Jacoben placed the first set of halved sticks onto his work bench, keeping them within the frame of the Cope that he had put together. Taking a bag full of crushed chalk (the stone) he covered the inner surface of the Cope with the powder to ensure that nothing would stick. Once there was a decent coating of the white powder the Foxtail Artisan gathered a sieve and the sand he was going to use to make the mould. A little oil and clay in the sand would ensure it stuck together and didn't fall apart when it was moved, and it was ready to be sifted into the Cope before being pressed down to make the first half of the mould.
Flipping it over he placed the remaining halved sticks on top of their counterparts and placed the Drag on top of the Cope. More powdered chalk was applied as a mould release before he repeated the process of applying and pressing sand down until it was tightly packed. Lifting the Drag the Artisan used a small drill bit to lift the sticks out of the mould without disturbing the sand before digging out the pouring and overflow shafts and adding the correct channels and air holes to ensure the mould didn't seal itself shut.
Once he had realigned the Cope and Drag with each other and carved a pouring trough out of the top of the sand the only thing that remained was actually making the chalk mix and pouring it into the mould to bake into a stick. Checking to make sure the fire of his kiln was burning at an acceptable level, Jacoben begin gathering the ingredients he needed for the final stage of his chalk making.
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Word Count: 291
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2015 11:23:41 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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Despite the name, the item Chalk did not simply require the mineral chalk as its primary ingredient. In fact, it wasn't necessarily part of the mixture at all, but he did have some chalk to spare from his painting pigments so he intended to ensure a solid white colour of his Chalk. Taking up a mortar and pestle the Artisan began to grind a portion of dried eggshells into a fine powder, adding more eggshells as the material broke down beneath his grinding action. Soon enough the eggs were ground fine enough to form the basis of the chalk sticks.
With that complete the Foxtail took the flour that he had obtained for just this purpose, measuring out a portion of the fine powder to be mixed with the eggshells to help them hold their form properly as well as stretch the mixture enough to produce a decent number of chalk sticks. Adding water piece by piece until it formed a thick paste, Jac also added a measure of natural chalk pigment to the slurry-like mixture to increase the solidity of the colour. Making sure there was enough fluid in there for the mix to pour into the mould properly the Artisan brought it over to his mould and began to pour, watching as it slid down the spout and into the depths of the sand mould.
Only once the mixture began to rise up the overflow shaft did he stop pouring, bringing the mould over to his kiln and sliding it in with a sigh as he completed the work on the chalk sticks. From now on he'd be able to speed craft them so that was a positive. It was an awful lot of work for a few sticks of chalk, and he was likely to need a lot of it when all was said and done. Still, it had been an interesting experiment and now he knew how to make a sand mould which would help him when he went into metalwork.
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Word Count: 335
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2015 12:02:45 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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Now that he was making chalk he needed a Blackboard to use it on, and he had time to do so while the chalk itself was drying in the kiln. It was only just after midday so he had plenty of time to work, even if he had been working since before the sun had come up. It was good, he was experimenting with new things and he would be able to increase his skill and capabilities as an Artisan. Wiping the sweat from his brow the young Foxtail moved over to his pile of green wood, checking for three large-ish chunks of the same size to form the basis of his Blackboard.
Once that was decided he took the pieces of timber over to the woodcrafting station and clamped the first piece into place. With a drag knife he began smoothing the wood out, shaping it so that he would be able to craft a solid plank of timber. It didn't take him too long to carve out the rough planks of wood, far faster than a human craftsman of the same skill due to his rather unfair status as a member of the functionally immortal Adventurers. The next part of the process was most certainly the trickier part.
Making use of carving tools he needed to form a tongue and groove join, shaving away a thin strip on one side of the plank and creating an equal sized groove on the other. When locked together the tongue in the groove would eventually shrink and lock together as all good green wood products are meant to do.
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Word Count: 268
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2015 11:49:49 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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It was a matter of a thin chisel and some files to sand down the tongue and groove joints before Jacoben was able to slide them together. Carefully crafted for the smallest margin of error it required him to use a padded mallet to gently knock the three boards together in as close a join as he could make it. In time they would shrink and lock together further, but for the moment the boards were gripped so tightly by their peers that it would require breaking them to split them once more. Now that he had the main portion of the board he needed to prepare a frame and paint the board portion of it a nice black so that the chalk would show up well on it.
Returning to his drag knife and bench Jacoben began carving up the wooden lengths of the frame. He hadn't any desire for the frame to be ornate, just enough that it would hold the planks of wood neatly and prevent any of them from warping. Because of this it didn't take him long to carve out some simple pieces of wood to the right length. A short time with a chisel and scrapers followed by a 'sandpaper' made of dried fish skin and the frame was ready to be put together.
This was the hardest part of the construction, as the young Foxtail had to carve out grooves to fit the main body of the blackboard and then fit together the four portions of the frame with mortise and tenon joints. It took him the better part of the afternoon to finish preparing the last of the materials for the frame, now he simply had to paint the body of the board and then put it all together.
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Word Count: 327 (297+30 [10% Luna Bonus])
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2015 12:39:53 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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Staring out the windows of the workshop, Jacoben was surprised to note that the day was almost over, it seemed that he had been so caught up in what he was doing that he hadn't noticed the long hours. The blackboard it seemed would be his last project, and the chalk would likely have set by the time that it was completed. Nodding to himself the Artisan reached for the dried fishskin sanding paper, rubbing it vigourously but roughly over one side of the board, trying to make a surface which would be conducive to using chalk on its surface. It wouldn't be enough, but it served as a basis for the rest of the rough surface that would abrade the writing chalk enough to leave a mark.
The second layer to this ability was the paint itself, something in his mind guiding him to take up a pot of tar-like black paint and mix it with a fine grain sand. Nose wrinkled at the smell of the paint, Jacoben mixed in a sufficient level of sand and began to apply it to the main board of the Blackboard with a large rough bristled brush. It wasn't a pleasant experience, the paint was messy and smelly but eventually he managed to apply a sufficient amount to be satisfied with the end result.
With that complete he gathered up the pieces of the frame, waiting until the board was dry before setting it into the frame. Once again resorting to a mallet to ensure that the pieces fit together the Foxtail artisan stepped back to ensure that everything looked right, only turning to clean up once he was sure that he had completed the project.
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Word Count: 312 (284+28 [10% Luna Bonus])
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2015 8:29:10 GMT
| Jacoben HP: 100% MP: 100% |
"Any treasure you obtain without ever having to work for it is no treasure at all."
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With the workshop cleaned Jacoben made his way over to the kiln and pulled out the mould within, tapping at the material gathered in the overflow chamber to test the solidity of it. Once he was certain that it had dried properly he broke open the mould with care, aware that the whole thing was still very hot from its time in the kiln and the last thing he wanted to do in this situation was ruin all the hard work that had gone into making the items.
The Foxtail waited until the mould had cooled enough that he could break it apart, pulling out the large lump of chalk that he had created. It only took a few moments to break apart the many sticks that had been formed by the process, and even the overflow and pouring mix could be used for writing or drawing on the blackboard even though they were far less ergonomic than the actual sticks. Still, it was definitely something that he could count as a success.
Cleaning up the remainder of his mess, Jacoben took off his apron and scarves, wiping his sweaty forehead as he deactivated the kiln and went about the routine to shut down his rented workshop. Maybe tomorrow he would work on something else to practice his craft, but it was almost night time now and he needed to go and find something to eat before he headed back home to rest, perhaps with a good book to seal the deal.
-EXIT-
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Word Count: 277 (252+25 [10% Luna Bonus])
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