After a long hour of using my new technique to cut the metal sheet into the form of a sword I was exhausted and my head was starting to hurt a little. I had used a very complicated technique to cut the metal and that was why I had spent a huge amount of spiritual energy, but my elemental energy was still more than half capacity and it was recovering at a steady pace.

You have to remember that the more complicated the technique the more you had to concentrate and the more of your spiritual energy it used.

......

*whistle*

“Impressive! You cut the metal into your preferred shape in such a precise and fast manner that I really hadn’t thought before. In this way you have reduced the time it would take to shape the metal or otherwise the time and effort that would be required to cast the metal into individual sword shape moulds”

The one who spoke was the uncle of my new employee.

He was a man about 50 years old 180 cm tall and had a big burn scar to the left side of his face. It was quite a scar covering most of the left side of his face, but he seemed to have no problem with it going by his carefree nature. He had little hair in his head, a short but rough beard, sharp nose and square jaw. He was quite well built for his age but sported a huge beer belly.

“Thanks. It was just a moment of inspiration, nothing to brag about.”

“Heh.

 A moment of inspiration you say? You have to either be a genius or you have inherited this technique from a very good blacksmith.

Either way what you did saved us a lot of time in the forging process.”

“So, do we continue with our next step?”

He rolled his sleeves and took a pair of tongs.

“Yes, I see no problem with that.

Pas me one of the swords you cut.”

I did as he said. He took the unrefined, cut of sword and put it in the forge again. He started to heat up the sword again while I and Munnji were supplying the forge with more air. After some time the sword became red hot and the old smith took it out and put it on an anvil.

*clang* *clang* *clang* *clang* *clang*

He repeatedly hit the hot sword with a hammer shaping the sword some more to his desired shape before putting it in the forge again and repeating the process two more times.

All in all this took about 30 minutes.

After that he took it out and let the sword cool of slowly.

Next was an important process in the making of a good sword “NORMALISING”.

“NORMALISING” was an important process in sword making because during the shaping phase where you beat the metal with a hammer into your desired shape the metal was not properly distributed along the length of the sword. The “NORMALISING” process was heating the sword again so that when the metal was malleable enough it would fill the gaps that were formed in its interior when you beat that sword into shape.

He repeated this process three times heating the sword before letting it cool slowly.

We now had a well balanced sword that with a little bit of sharpening could kill a person easily but we were far from over. We had decided to not create half backed swords but quality swords that could be used for a long time.

 In this world where battles for survival happened everyday and cold weapons were king of this era (after magic of course), a better sword than your opponents  could save your life and you can’t put  a price on life could you?

He he, I was so going to milk this.

After that the next step was “QUENCHING”. As it was now the sword was able to kill humans but it was soft and prone to bending. The solution was” QUENCHING”.  The “QUENCHING” phase was where you heat up the sword to the desired point and then you rapidly cooled it down and that made the sword have the hardiness we desired.

In this stage I decided to use some of my knowledge from earth to make the process as good as possible. Before quenching the sword you had to heat it up to the right temperature before cooling it rapidly and seeing as there was no good way to gauge that temperature the quality of the sword was different each time.

The blacksmith had some kind of gem that shined red when the temperature rose up so the more red the gem was the higher the temperature. This was good but the gem was not a thermometer. After a certain point the gem couldn’t become redder so with the high amount of temperature that needed to introduce to the metal (our steel sword in this case) the gem couldn’t measure it, but I had a solution.

A magnet.

I knew that after steel a magnetic metal was heated to a certain degree it would lose its magnetic properties and I knew that the optimal temperature to heat the sword before quenching was slightly higher than that. So as planned I heat up the sword again and tried many times during the process bringing the magnet to the heated sword until it didn't attract anymore. After that I heat up the swords some more until it change shades two times more.

Then I immediately quenched the sword in a mixture of 1/10 salt and 9/10 water. I put the sword in slowly and moved it a little back and forth without taking it out. I let the sword cool completely in there before taking it out.

Now I had a sword that was hard enough to not bend easily, but for a sword being very hard was not good also. With the sword as it was now, if it hit something with a strong enough force that the hard steel could not withstand the sword would break into a million pieces and that was not good at all. So I here comes our next step “TEMPERING”. The “TEMPERING” made the sword not break when it reached that critical point where the steel could not hold out anymore, but instead bended. The “TEMPERING” also made the blade more flexible.

Immediately after quenching the sword the blacksmith took the red gem to measure the correct temperature for the tempering. From my knowledge the right temperature was slightly higher than 200°c. So with that in mind and knowing that water boils at 100°c we somewhat eyeballed the right brightens of the gem. He did these two times for one hour each time where he left the sword completely cool between these two times.

....

*schwing* *schwing* *schwing* *schwing*

The blacksmith finished sharpening the sword and took a look at it.

“This has to be one of the best swords I have ever made.

 *Sigh*

 If I knew before what I knew now I would have definitely become a renowned blacksmith but later is better than never I say.”

I was to the side staring at the now finished sword with gleaming eyes. I was no blacksmith but I could feel that the sword in front of me was definitely better than the other steel swords I saw at the blacksmiths shop.