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Having worked out a time that fits both her schedule and Sigrún's, Ianthe is more than ready for her first proper lesson in forge usage. She's dressed for it, too; sturdy clothing, nothing that'll melt or catch fire easily.
The Direct Action home is on a secluded hillside road in the north side of the city, along the Wissahickon. It's a stone colonial three story affair, probably over 200 years old, and well maintained despite all of that. Out back, where Sigrun's workshop is located, there's a large flagstone patio and Sigrun's polebarn style work shed. The forge is lit, and she's preparing a cannister to start making some damascus. A finished suit of miniature sized plate armor rests on a rack, complete with darted domes for ears and tail armor. Its red black and white enamel work suggest it's for a certain red panda. She offers Ianthe a wave when she appears around back of the house. "Welcome!"
"Thanks for having me," Ianthe replies, returning the wave as she glances at the miniature plate. "That's for June, I assume? How's she?" Approaching the forge, she's careful to stay far enough back that she's not in Sigrún's way but can still see what the other Fairest is doing.
"So. The first trick you'll probably need to learn is how to work a billet. I'm going to be forging a blade for myself soon, and I wanted to forge it out of pattern welded modern damascus. So do that, we layer several sorts of steel together with varying grades of carbon content, a little mixture of tungsten and vanadium and such, heat it to a high temperature, and press them together. You do this in a cannister that you then remove, and proceed to fold the billet over and over again until you've layered the metal a bunch of times. I'm shooting for 300 layers. We're starting with a high strength steel for the edge, a more maleable steel for the meat of the blade-- a better tensile strength --and a spring steel core. Which makes for five initial layers. We fold it repeatedly, doubling that over and over again. It's pretty good work to start learning how to bang a hammer and such." Sigrun grabs the tongs and hoists the cannister up so that Ianthe can get a gander inside, shaking it a bit so that the contents shake and rattle around. Then she stuffs it into the heat of the forge to begin the work. "What was it that you might be interested in making for yourself?"
"Mostly just being able to repair and replace bits of my chain, to start with," Ianthe says. "Probably moving into general purpose weapon and armour smithing, after that. I know the Freehold has two smiths already, but the more the better, right?"
"Absolutely," Sigrun agrees readily, "I get a real kick out of this sort of work, but the more able to produce this sort of stuff and maintain our armories, the better. It's a pretty essential skill for our kind, honestly." While the cannister is heating, Sigrun steps over to her barrel of drinking water and spoons herself out a cup, gulping it down. "Is your chainmail just steel rings, or are they actually riveted rings like the old school mail used to be? Cos there are several cheap workarounds for patching mail, if it's just rings and not riveted."
"Just steel rings, sadly. I'd been saving up for a proper riveted hauberk and coif, but never got the chance to commission either of the smiths in LA before I moved here, so."
"Riveted mail, the real deal, is a chore and a half. I'd rather make a full suit of plate, honestly, than form all those rings, flatten the heads, punch, and rivet them all. So in a sense, you're lucky. We'd just need to measure the gauge of the wire used to make the mail, the circumference of the rings, and then fashion a dowel with the right circumference, place it in a drill, and curl ourselves a coil of the metal. You can then snip off rings and use pliers to work them into place in the mail again. Did you bring it with you, by chance?" Sigrun steps back to the forge to check the color of the billet. Not good enough yet. "A few more minutes yet."
"It's in the trunk of my car, one sec," Ianthe goes and retrieves the mail in question, returning a few moments with it draped over one arm. "I've never fought in plate, what's that like?"
"I've done it a few times. In a manner of speaking, my brigandine is plate armor. Leather layered over lammels with rivets through it all. Some kevlar in the mix for sake of my inner organs. The armor moves with you, so it's a lot different from mail. No slapping, or anything. But in my experience, it tends to slow you down. So it's a trade off. You can definitely take harder hits in it, but if it turns into a foot chase, you're going to probably lose. The armor I use works for my style, at least. Your mileage may vary." She fetches her calipers to measure the wire of the mail, and then measures the inner circumference of the rings, and goes searching for a dowel that will work.
Ianthe nods. "All my time Over There was pseudo-Ancient Greek, so anything beyond lammellar was out, even for those in the shield wall." She watches Sigrún inspect her dowels patiently, not wanting to rush the other woman. They're not under attack and this is something she'll benefit from, after all.
"This will do." Sigrun holds up a dowel from her collection and then finds her Mikita. Dowel goes in to the mouth of the drill, which is tightened back up. Then she finds the right gauge of wire and slides the first half inch of the wire through a hole drilled through the dowel. Like so. A bit of pressure is applied to the drill switch, and the wire begins to wrap around the dowel, coiling up slowly. All done so that Ianthe can observe. After about an inch of coiling, she leaves off and sets the contraption down. "Now you try." She steps back to the forge to check on her billet again, "Yeah. We were all in chain mail and round shields and pointed helmets and such. They put me in plate armor for shows now and again."
"Norse had those helmets that look like the eye-guards are glasses, right?" Ianthe asks, taking the drill and carefully coiling some wire. "What shows did you work on?"
"A few different styles, but all along those lines. Conical with a nasal, sometimes with an eye guard, yeah. The horns, that was a modern thing." She pries the cannister out of the fire and rushes it over to the press, laying it out on the horizontal and depressing the foot control to cause the pneumatic hammer to lower gradually, pressing the billet in an effort to weld the layers together in the midst of all that heat. She lets up on the pedal repeatedly to walk the billet forward into the press, continuing to squish it all together. "Lots of stage productions. My most recent was a staging of the Illiad down in Miami. I trained the Myrmidons. Did some work on Last Kingdom on Netflix. Shannara. I was offered a job on the Lord of the Rings series for Amazon but turned it down. Too much travel and for too long a commitment."
"The horns thing was just Wagner, yeah? They sound really impractical, but I guess they could be impressive if you don't know what you're doing." She pauses in her coiling to glance at Sigrún. "Was that the one they're filming in New Zealand?"
"Yeah. A lot of fantasy stuff shoots in New Zealand. They wanted too long of a commitment for my present lifestyle. But. That's sort of what I do for a living. Advise sets, stages, and the like. On period weaponry and fighting styles and such. When they're interested in showing a little authenticity. Which isn't altogether often." She asides with a wry grin, "I enjoyed Last Kingdom. Norsemen beating on Anglo Saxons is my jam." With the billet squished, she carries it back to the fire to heat it back up again, returning to Ianthe and the coil of wire. "Okay. Grab a set of wire snips. We're going to snip off some rings from our coil, here."
"I can't imagine why," Ianthe grins before nodding, darting over to the tool rack and quickly returning, wire snips in hand.
"Now you just want to snip the wire from the loose end to the posted end. Once you've got a pile of the rings collected, we'll hand up your hauberk and have a look at the damage and where it needs patching, and emulate the weave. I need to stretch my billet so that we can do our first fold. I'll call you over when it's time to help." She heads back to the fire and grabs the tongs, pulling out the cannister. She drops it into a vise and wheels it closed to begin peeling off the cannister to get at the billet inside.
"Sounds good," Ianthe replies, getting to work snipping wire. It's tedious work, but then so is fletching. If you don't do the tedious stuff, the fun stuff becomes much more dangerous, and Ianthe has no desire to end up food for a briarwolf pack - or worse - because she got sloppy.
She has to get a chisel involved. But eventually the cannister peels away, and Sigrun is left with a glowing ingot of compressed steel and composite. It's pulled out with the tongs again, leaving the cannister in the vise. She rushes over to the autohammer to begin stretching the billet out for eventual folding. "Okay. Once I get this stretched, I need to notch the middle and hammer it back over again to squish it all back together. Feel up to trying your first whack?"
"Sure thing," Ianthe nods. "Do you need me to fetch any tools for that, or?"
"There's a tool there by the anvil, it looks almost like a wide chisel, but has a blunt tip. And there should be a rack of hammers, there. When I carry this over, I need you to mark the center with the chisel head, and give it a good solid whack. Be standing on the side, though, because the metal will bend up, and I don't want it catching you. Let me know when you're ready."
Ianthe nods again, retrieving the relevant tools and moving into position. "Ready."
Sigrun grabs the billet firmly with the pliers and hauls it over to the notched anvil, with a groove set into its surface for precisely this sort of work. She lays it flat over the face of the anvil and nods down to where the stretched billet rests over the notch in the anvil. "Right there. Give her a good solid whack."
Ianthe promptly hammers the billet in the indicated spot, giving it a solid whack as requested.
The wedge works. It puts a good 45 degree bend into the billet, which Sigrun is quick to act upon. Still holding the tongs, she takes up her own hammer and uses it to hook the metal further over, bending it back over itself and proceeds to begin whacking it hard and fast to try and force the metal back into a single billet. "Alright. Step back. Going to bring it back to the press." And once Ianthe is clear, she hauls it back to the press to squish it all back together again with a lot less sweat and muscle strain involved. And then she carries it back to the fire to shove it back in for the next round. That done, she shakes out of her gloves and heads back to the collection of snipped rings. "Okay. Where do you want to start patching first?"
"The shoulder area, a briarwolf managed to clip me there a few patrols back." Ianthe gestures to where some of the rings are bent out of shape. They're still connected firmly enough that there's no gaping hole in the hauberk, but it's still not as protective as it could be.
"Bad luck," she comments of the blow, "probably the best thing to do would be to snip out the deformed rings and just rebuild the weave once that's done. So. Use your best judgement. Take the snips and prune back the damaged rings until you're back to only solid, uniformly round rings."
Ianthe nods, getting to work pruning away, making sure to not remove any of the undamaged rings.
Sigrun checks on the billet's color while Ianthe does the pruning back. She returns once Ianthe has a good sized hole created in the weave. "So. Obviously, you can see the weave that's been used, here. The pattern employed. You just need to take your time and copy it." She takes one of the rings that Ianthe clipped, slips it through a pair of rings in the weave, and then clamps it down with the pliers. Not as strong as a riveted weave, but it'll do. "You can also create a patch of the shape needed, and then just link it into place once it's done. Sometimes that's easier. Sometimes building off the existing weave is easiest. Generally the more uniform the patch being replaced, the easier building it separately first will be."
Another nod, as Ianthe imitates Sigrún, inserting new rings one at a time. "How easy is this, compared to repairing the riveted stuff, or plate?"
"Depends on the damage. If something has cleaved through a plate of armor, you need to just replace that plate. I wouldn't feel comfortable about patching it. You can, I just wouldn't. And with that, you basically have to heat the patch plate and the existing armor hot enough to anneal the two. And that usually ruins the tempering of the existing metal. Making it more prone to future damage. So. I replace." A pause. "With the riveted bits, you need to punch each ring through. Which usually involves heating them, tacking the ends flat, and using a punch awl like tool. Then you have to heat each little rivet, clamp them shut-- it's a real chore. You can buy casted ones, which cuts down on the labor. But casted steel tends to be weaker than forged steel. Your mileage may vary." While Ianthe works, Sigrun steps back to check on the billet. "Almost ready for another fold."
"Makes sense," Ianthe says, glancing over at Sigrún as she checks on the billet. "You need me to help with that again?"
"Please," Sigrun answers with a nod of the head, pulling the billet out of the fire to take it back to the autohammer to begin stretching it out again. "Gimme a bit to stretch the billet out once more, though." She sets to work doing just that. "How's the armor coming?"
"Good. Just needs a few more new rings replaced, then I'll give it a once-over, make sure there aren't any damaged bits I haven't spotted yet." Ianthe answers. "You still good with archery lessons as trade for this?"
"More than! I teach what I know for the good of the community. I'm happy to trade that for learning more things to teach." Sigrun finishes stretching out the billet and carries it back over to the notched anvil. "Second verse same as the first, please!"
Second verse same as the first it is, as Ianthe gives the billet another hard whack above the notch in the anvil.
And it once more bends. Sigrun hooks it over the rest of the way, gives it some cursory whacks to compress the two pieces together enough for transport to the press, and then shouts for Ianthe to clear out before lifting the billet up and carrying it back to the press.
Since this process needs to be repeated five more times at least, it's safe to say a montage can happen. Sigrun works on her own project with Ianthe's assistance while giving her advice on patching armor, and even offering her the use of one of Sigrun's books on chain mail crafting from her shelf. Once the billet has been folded a full seven times, Sigrun finishes pressing it back into form and sets it to cool. "That's all I had planned to get done today, so if you want to try moving some steel around, you can totally do that."
"Sounds good," Ianthe nods, doing some more forge work under Sigrún's expert tutelage.
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