It has been a few weeks since Ashtir brought me into the smith. After that, he has been in and out of the smith, sometimes he does not even go home for a few days. They apparently found a hidden room within the smith storage that piqued their interest. Ashtir is busy working with the aftermath of the ingot that we made and the new "treasure" that was discovered. From the looks of it, the treasure that they were talking about is around 800 to 1000 years old. Basically, older than the 500 years of history that was recorded throughout the village. Ashtir mentioned that the forge is more than 1000 years old, maybe even 2000 years, so everything before 500 years is a mystery to them. Now that they found a "treasure" from the past, they are trying to solve the mystery of how it was made and how to use it.
The treasure that they are talking about is a silver-like steel ingot. The color is similar to the alloy that we discovered when adding 6 spoons of ground charcoal to the liquid iron that we experimented on. Well, I call it alloy, but that metal is far from being an alloy. Iron and charcoal are not enough to make an alloy itself. So maybe the treasure that they found is basically a full-fledged alloy? Is the current dwarf technology too degraded from what it was back then? What happened to this village anyway? It's three—no, four—mountains big, and they call it a village. I never left this mountain ever since I woke up in this world, but the current mountain is big enough to be called a city. Something big might have happened 500 years ago. Come to think of it, there were barely any visitors that came in for the past 500 years. Was the village sealed off or something? Something is really weird within this village. Well, I am still currently an outsider in this village. I still need some information, that is why I bury myself in books as much as I can. According to Ashvir, the dwarves are currently in a stagnant state. I might have an answer for that. White salt, yellow salt, and charcoal. "That" might be a decent answer to revive the dwarves from being stagnant.
Anyways, I have a few ideas in mind, but I need to find the material equivalent for them. We need copper, zinc, tin, and silver. Since this is the mountains, there should be copper and silver. Well, I am hoping so, but zinc and tin will be a problem, those are pretty rare. Well, let's save that for later since we do not have those. Let's focus on making "that" with the three materials that are available.
“Ashvir!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Papa is finally home! I am going to have a day off tomorrow, so! I have a special something for you! HAHAHAHA! Look at this, this is a steel ingot that I got from the forge right now! I have been too intrigued by the new ingots that we found and the ingot that we made that I finally got an itch to make something big! I am thinking of making a sword right now. What do you think?”
“Sword? Even though there is barely anything to use it on?”
“HAHAHAHA! You are really bright, Ashvir! But you know, making weapons is what you call dwarves’ romance, you know! HAHAHA.”
“But, you know, there are goblins and wolves around the mountains too, they are outside though. Even big trolls and ogres! Weapons are really useful. That reminds me, you’ve never been outside the mountain, huh? HAHAHAHA! That makes sense! I’ll take you out of the mountain once you’re old enough, there are a lot of kids there too. Make sure to have friends!”
“Anyways, let’s eat and get to the forge after! Better to have a full stomach when crafting something. Especially once you get too absorbed in the hammer, sometimes you forget to eat and sleep!”
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We entered the forge that we have at home. Well, we call it a forge, but it looks more like a workshop with a furnace and an anvil in it. There are no melting cauldrons or anything like the calf forge. Just a big oven-like furnace to heat metals and an anvil to hammer out ingots and craft metals that we are using at home. Like the living room, there are a bunch of hammers on the walls. Some with weird markings like in the books that I read and the markings at the Ox forge. From what I hear, those hammers were passed down through generations and have not been used for the last 500 years. Ashtir says that their function was suddenly lost and they are being used as family heirlooms and decorations.
“Let me start the forge first, Ashvir. Since we are using a small furnace like this, we are not going to need to use the yellow and white salt for now. We are going to do it the old-fashioned way. First, let’s work on the kindling. We are going to put a small bark in the furnace and use dry wood to make the fire. Put the bark under, then we are going to make a small triangle using this dry wood above the bark.”
As Ashtir puts the wood in, he makes a small triangle tower of wood. The triangle was put in like how people make campfires back in scouts. Yeah, I was in a scout group back in the old days, but only for a bit.
“Ashvir, once the wood is structured like this, we can now start lighting the kindling.”
As Ashtir lights the kindling, the room starts to have a faint orange glow, which slowly turns brighter as the wood sets fire from the kindling.
“Ashvir, at this point, we want to wait for the wood to be fully lit, and we will add some coal into it. Remember, just add a few at a time so that the fire will not be overwhelmed and be extinguished.”
“Now, we want to adjust the heat in order for the coal to start burning. Ashvir, try to jump on this.”
He pointed me to a slightly large bellows that is pointed at the furnace.
“Once you jump on this, a strong air will pump out from its tip and will enrage the flame, which accelerates the burning of the coal. We will do this steadily in a way that we will not overblow or underflow air, and we will control the heat that way.”
I jumped on the bellows once, and Ashtir asked me to move to the side for a bit as he controls the airflow manually at a pace where he can control the heat. The room started to get hot, and hotter as he worked on the bellows and added pieces of coal bit by bit. The furnace started to turn dark red as the coal starts burning in. The room turns from orange into yellow, and the coal into dull red, and as Ashtir controls the bellows, it turns into red, to bright red, and starts turning into orange.
“Ashvir, once the coal turns orange, this is when we usually put in the ingot. We are going to use a steel ingot for this small project of mine. Remember, Ashvir, if we are going to do something big, we have to use multiple ingots and one single core for the blade. This time, we are going to make a great sword. I have brought in around 10 ingots. To make it into one single core, we have to stack them up like this.”
Ashtir made two stacks of ingots, each having 5 ingots on each stack, then he placed both stacks of ingots in the middle of the furnace, making sure that it is engulfed by the coal.
“With this much ingot, we can make a blade around 40 inches long, around two to three inches wide, and half an inch thick. Well, this is too much for a regular sword, but this project of mine is special.”
Ashtir’s tone is slowly getting serious. At this point, he is starting to get absorbed by the smithing, and the tone of his voice shifts from a very audible dwarf into a silent, serious dwarf focusing on his smith. Ashtir started to work on his bellows again to make sure that the temperature rises, and as he pumps up air, the coal started to turn from bright orange into yellow.
“Ashvir, we are getting to one of the important parts. Remember this correctly. Once we heat up a metal, it will turn into different colors like the coal. Each metal has its own forging color. For example, this steel. What color is it now?”
“It was gray, now it turns into red.”
“Right, but remember, if it is in the red stage, that means that it is too cold to be crafted or hammered. We have to wait for it to turn into orange before we can hammer it. But not just orange—bright orange close to yellow. Yeah, like this. Remember this color.”
“But if it is already bright orange, why are you not taking the steel out?”
“Good question, Ashvir. Remember, we are going to make a sword that is bigger than you. In order to do that, we have to combine all of the ingots into one big piece. As I said before, we call it the core of the blade. In order to do that, we have to wait for it to turn into yellow. Like this! Yes! Yes, like this.”
Ashtir carefully moved the stack from the furnace to the anvil.
“Ashvir, this is what we call a billet stack. It is basically when we want to stack and combine metal into one single lump, and what we are going to do next is to hammer it so we can make it into that lump that we are aiming for.”
Ashtir lightly hammers the middle part of the stacked ingot.
“The reason why we want it to be yellow is so that the metal can be softer and easier to combine. So just tapping the metal like this lightly combines it in one go. Now, we just want to shape it the way that we want it to be.”
Ding!
He strikes the side of the ingot.
Ding!
He strikes the other side.
As he started striking the ingot, Ashtir started to get even more absorbed in smithing and became quieter and quieter.
“Remember, Ashvir, this is where we dwarves excel in smithing—precise techniques and patience.”
Ding! Ding! Ding!
“If you strike it the wrong way, the metal will expand in the way that you do not want it to. Control your strength! Aim your hammer! Be one with the hammer.”
“Now, flip the stack, repeat what we did. Start from the center.”
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
“To the edges!”
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
The stacked ingot transformed from a fat stack of metal into a thin long slab of metal.
Ashtir took the other stack of ingots to the anvil and stacked it on top of the thin long slab that he made from the first stack.
“While it is in the yellow state, we can still use the other stack to extend the core. Remember, center of the stack.”
Ding! Ding! Ding!
“To the edges.”
Ding! Ding! Ding!
“Flip, and repeat!”
From two stacks of ingots, it turns into one single long lump of metal, which turns into the core.
“Patience, precision, control, technique, repetition, and burning passion. This is smithing, Ashvir.”
Ashtir stared at me with a very serious face as he finished the first part of the project.