Evren was standing on the wall by the northern gate chewing on some jerky. Most of the snow had melted, with only the shady areas still showing signs that winter was passed. The trees had started to bud and within a week or two would sprout into leaves. He still wasn’t finished with the sword. The pommel and guard had been finished, but the blade still needed to be hardened, tempered, sharpened, the inlay set, and the sword polished.
The sword was something he didn’t want to do again, and he was hoping that nothing would happen to the sword for him to need to make another. That was probably the reason why he was spending so much effort in making it. The guard had been engraved with a simple pattern, similar to what was on the scabbard and the quiver. The quillons swept forward in the shape of a fang. He used the cougar fang as a reference in the shaping. The pommel had his unit insignia on it. A sword facing the bottom left engulfed in flames. The magic stones had been set into the pommels of the swords.
The sword had the circle engraved into the shoulder, and “War Dog” engraved in the fuller on both sides in his native language. All the engravings had been inlaid with gold, and the contrast between blue and gold was stunning. The scabbard had been crafted, and he could adjust the belt strap so he could wear the sword on his waist or over his shoulder, attached to his quiver. He wasn’t sure if that was a novel way of doing things, but he thought it was cool, so that was all that mattered to him.
He would be preparing to head into the forest soon, so after his laps around the town in the morning were over, he would come up here and probe the forest for anything lurking within. His plan for the spring is to slowly work his way deeper into the forest without taking his wagon with him. He would remain by the cleared path but would only venture a half a day’s travel at first. Then he would travel out a day, stay a night and return. While he was out there, he would be actively hunting anything that might be a threat.
When he gets to the point where he’s taking his wagon along, it’ll make noise, and draw attention to himself. Therefore, he wanted to get some practice in with fighting the various monsters out there. He had gone hunting a few times during the winter and had found goblins and orcs occasionally. He learned from fighting with a sword made from an actual smith that the one he had made previously was not very good at all. But a starving man doesn’t complain about the food he’s given.
Inside the forest was a group of goblins. He focused in on them to set them on edge and then climbed down from the wall. He jogged back to his base where he would follow his daily routine of working on the sword. He had finished carving the handle and just needed to glue it and wrap it in leather and sew it closed. He had used a glue he learned the recipe from in Von’s journal. It would need to be applied, allowed to dry a little, then placed together. It would take a day or so for it to set properly, then it could be cleaned up if needed.
It needed to be heated up to become viscous, so he used the ‘heat’ spell until it got to the right consistency. Once it was ready, he glued the edges of the handle and set it aside as he attached two needles to a line of leather, he would be using to sew the grip closed with. When he finished, he mated the two sides of the grip, heated the glue again and applied it to the outside of the grip, and the inside of the leather. This time he cleaned up a bit before moving on to the next step.
He wrapped the leather around the grip with the leather seam being along the back side of the blade. Using the needles and the leather thread, he sewed the leather grip shut. He used a method from the journal where he would weave the leather thread as he sewed, going back occasionally to tighten as he went. When he finished, he cut the remainder off and examined the handle. There was a little glue on the inside, but he left it as is because he would use a scraper to clean it out before final assembly.
The blade had been in the furnace since before he had gone out running. He was now going to quench it. It would be too hot for water. If he used water, it would vaporize too quickly and leave steam pockets that would result in an uneven cooling of the blade and could lead to cracks. Fortunately, he had found a few barrels of oil in a gate house that he suspected was to be used during a siege. He couldn’t open the end of the barrel, so he created a trough in the forge out of clay and heated it until hardened.
He cast ‘dust devil’ and watched the color of the blade to make sure it was heating evenly. The color he was looking for would be a dark orange with just a little bit of red still in it. Once it got to that color, he would quench it in the oil. He watched and waited at the door of the furnace. Once he was done with this part, he would have one more step to use this furnace for and he’d be able to stop using it for a while. He had burned through a majority of the coal in the warehouse, and he doubted he would be able to make it through another winter without more coal.
He pulled out the sword and moved over to the oil trough, setting it in with his head leaned away. The oil caught on fire as it cooled the super-hot sword. Evren used the ‘chill’ spell to cool the temperature of the oil, hoping to offset the temperature of the blade. When he finished, he pulled the blade out and checked to make sure it was still straight, and there were no visible cracks. Satisfied, he put the blade back into the furnace, the oil burning off of it for the next and final step.
While he was waiting, he cleaned up the shop and prepared the items that would need to be done before final assembling. He had several stones of varying textures he would be using to sharpen and polish the blade. He would also need to set the gold inlay into the engravings, which would then need to be ground down and polished.
When he got back to the furnace, the color of the sword was a deep red, which is what he was looking for. He pulled the sword out and set it on a flat part of the cool forge and let it cool down. He closed the door to the furnace and closed the door to the shop. It was afternoon now and he would start with the final grinding, sharpening and polishing, but it would probably take a few days to finish everything before the sword was finally assembled.
