The Detailed Hand [Practice/Training, Trade skill, {Self mod}]

[Dego Mernoff]

The 46th of Ioannes
Summer of Era I of the Celestine Mandate
Era XIII Post Fractum.
Paradigm: Isle of the Crown
Mid Afternoon

The weeks had been moving by rather quickly, Dego had found himself up to his neck in a variety of errands and chores to be done, not only for himself, but others as well. Today was no exception; He had run by Ty’raas that morning for a few rations and had enjoyed a lengthy stay in the bath house. Those were about the only things he would have the luxury of enjoying for himself today. Business at Nexus Gems was booming, and Viskyia had covered his makeshift table in various projects she needed done, but didn’t have the time for. Making his way down the streets weaving in and out of the various shoppers he made his way to the quote unquote job he currently retained.

There was only a brief nod to the katta watching the front door as he passed by, he didn’t say a word to the one on the inside as he let the door fall shut softly behind him, and worked his way around a couple starring at a set of rings, listening to Furlon tell them the intricacies of the pieces. Pulling his leather riding coat from his shoulders and hanging it from a nearby hook the half elf dove right into his work, rolling up the sleeves of his cotton shirt as he scooted and adjusted his work chair. His left hand absently unrolled his own engravers tool kit, and pulled a jar with various other tools closer while his right slowly turned a knob on a lamp adjusting the light up over his soft leather pad. In the center of it was a silver bracelet that he had been working on for two days now. It consisted of two interweaving bands, that the customer wanted crafted into particular designs. The first was to resemble a vine while the second was to look like a rope. Dego didn’t meet the customers, nor did he care too, but he assumed that this piece was most likely for an elven woman, who worked on a ship or around the docks. It was often the case that you could pick out the details of a persons life just by the things they wanted.

Pulling his gemstone scribe graver from the pouch he carefully scratched more of the details into the hard silver, laying out more of the lines he would be cutting. Already he had finished the first of the two strands. The vine had been easy, cuttings small earthly lines into the material and adding deeply channeled leaves here and there to give it a more three dimensional effect. The rope strand however was taking more time. The half elf was taking special care to cut the lines diagonally the same distance apart and at the same angle in relation to each other, these would be the deeper gouges, and from there he would use his files to softly smooth and round the edges giving it a knotted effect. It was going to take time but luckily he had enough of it.

[Dego Mernoff]

Fixing his work in a small table clap, dego had secured the silver bracelet to begin the process of cutting out his etched lines. He chose a thin V shaped graver that would put small 30 degree channels in his work. Carefully he positioned it over the previously scribed detail lines, and with his free hand, took up a small hammer and began tapping softly in a repetitive, repetition of constant and even strokes. The metal sang flatly as he slowly cut away at it, removing material to create the shallow, slightly arced grooves, all moving in perfect symmetry across the strand of silver. Each time he did a few lines, he would carefully loosen the clamp and rotate the bracelet before again securing the project and continuing with his taps.

After about a candlemark of slow steady taps, rotations, and reworks, he had finished the basic layout of the design, all that was left was for him to begin the tedious process of file work, and then he could move on to detailing. Putting his graver and hammer back into their positions, Dego selected a medium grit of file, and insured its cleanliness before continuing with the work. Carefully, he began the meticulous process of slowly working out the hard edges, softly rounding them to look like small oblong bubbles. He wasn’t trying to finish the piece with this file, but more obtain the basic shape. He went from knot to know, breaking the hard edges, and trying to round out the pieces, ignoring their centers and slowly trying to work down the edging from that point.

Dego was a perfectionist when it came to his craft. Making slow steady cuts, dusting away the excess and then returning to filing the tiniest bit more off, he made slow, but beautiful progress with the piece. It took him time to carefully round out the rope in comparing each knot to the last, and comparing the whole thing to a piece of real rope that he carefully positioned, and twisted to give him a better idea of what the details should look like to be real. File file, brush file. He repeated the steps over and over in his mind as his blue eyes watched it slowly begin to take shape, he smiled just a bit, rotating the piece as he went, and ignoring his surroundings, completely immersed in his craft.

[Dego Mernoff]

Wiping away the last of the water and oil from the bracelet Dego held the piece close to the lamp, slowly rotating it round and round to inspect the work. So far everything looked good, the next step was the final shaping of the metal with his fine files, and then from there polishing. The young man adjusted the lamp to shine a little brighter, and maneuvered a set of triple mirrors to reflect the glow over his work piece. He held it firmly in his left hand, while his right searched out a particular half round file and he began to slowly work down the edging trying to smooth out the harsh lines from the previous work.

Carefully he sanded and worked at each of the small orbs, trying to smooth them into flowing bubbles similar to drops of water sitting on a counter, however his drops of water were all interconnected and would be detailed to have thin lines resembling the strands of rope. It was all a very delicate process, sand to little and the whole thing looked un-proportionate or poorly detailed, while if you sanded to much it would make things uneven and destroy the whole design.

He rotated the piece as he went, working the lines and comparing each knot to the five before it to try and maintain consistency. Then after doing two or three in one direction he would shift the piece back to the opposite end and work on two or three in that direction, this way the work would not slowly taper into smaller and smaller knots as it rotated about. His eyes were beginning to burn as he watched the piece, letting the file move over it in slow fluid motions. He had been working for quite a few candle marks already, and as such, decided that when he completed this stage of the process, would retire for the day and come back to finish it tomorrow or the next.

[Dego Mernoff]

The 48th of Ioannes
Summer of Era I of the Celestine Mandate
Era XIII Post Fractum.
Paradigm: Isle of the Crown
Morning

It had taken him a couple brightenings to get back into the shop, but he arrived early that morning, the dew from the night before still fresh on the window seals and crisp in the air. He slipped back into the back room without a word much as he always did, taking a seat in his little corner and fired up the lamps that he preferred to use. Unrolling his tool kit Dego chose the gem tipped graver to work with and started etching the thin detail lines into the silver. He worked the pattern over and over, carefully tracing all the lines until they were deep enough to satisfy his eye. Patiently he etched in the tiny details to make the knots of rope look textured rather then a smooth representation of what rope might look like, it was this attention to detail that made his work worthwhile rather then a simple trinket.

After completing the details, Dego cleaned the piece off and wiped the heavy polishing oil over it, moving himself to the soft padded wheel meant for buffing. Softly he worked the piece in and out of the wheel, careful not to damage the details but rather put a high shine on the silver. Moving it slowly around, the young half elf put an even radiant gloss on the material, finally wiping it clean with a fresh piece of linen and inspecting his work.

The final product was quite lovely. It consisted of two strands of silver, the first a vine, carefully etched with leaves and shaped to seem as if it were curling about the wrist, the second was a rope that intertwined with the vine, as if someone had tried to tie it up. Everything was neatly polished and shimmered in the light, he was sure the customer would be quite happy. It had taken him the better part of the day to detail the work and clean it up, but it was ahead of schedule which would make Viskyia happy. Dego carefully tucked it into a bag and went up front to deliver it to the woman. He smiled, handing it to her for her approval and spoke softly.

“I was thinking that if you had time, you could show me how to set gems, I could save you some work that way since many of these pieces I have been doing require gem work as well. It’s up to you but the offer stands.”

[Viskyia Crow]

Viskyia was up front on her hands and knees in a heated debate with Furloin. It was one of her favorite things to do these days... and the gnome seemed to love it as well. They both had their heads in a case and were busy arguing over the arrangement of some of the stock. And, more importantly, they both looked happy about the squabble, enjoying each others company, and busy accusing each other of not having any taste at all in decorating.

Viskyia looked up and took the piece from Dego, breaking off the argument with Furloin immediately. She grinned a grin at the gnome that basically said 'Later.. we will finish this later.." and rose to examine the piece. She smiled, nodded, and turned it over in her ands. "That looks exquisite, Dego. You have a really good hand at this." She said, glad yet again the half-elf was working at the store doing some etching on the side. Then she heard his proposal and laughed.

"You make it sound like you'd be doing me a favor in getting some free training." She chuckled, then looked thoughtful. "It would help me out a great deal, but setting gems is a bit above basic work. You could only set certain types and inlays is definitely journeyman level or above." She said. "It's not that I don't think you could do it Dego, I'm sure you can. But I'm a Guildswoman and I have to follow Guild policy. In order to teach you, you'd have to join The Jeweler's Guild and learn basic jewelcrafting, then I could teach you to tack a stone or two on prongs. But to inlay like your talking about, you've got years of work ahead of you. And if I teach you out of order, I'm in violation of my Guild Oaths." Dego might not know it either, but Viskyia was big into protecting her craft and wanting to keep jewelcrafting in the hands of jewelers. She also was gunning for Titus Crow's position as Head of the Jewel Guild once he retired.

She let him digest that information, and leaned a hip against the counter as she offered him the piece back. "And really, it doesn't take much time to set gems. It takes more time to cut them. What did you have in mind for that piece?"

[Dego Mernoff]

Dego watched as her mood went from carefree and fun to strict business. He had made a mistake in offering her assistance, which was clear now. Sometimes he wondered why he even sat in this shop and put up with all of it. It wasn’t for the money, no doubt in his mind there, and the company was becoming less and less desirable. It most likely came down to the fact that when he worked here he could forget about everything else going on in the city and have a bit of piece. Letting out a soft sigh he spoke to her in a calm collected tone, devoid of all but the slightest emotion, thrown in occasionally just to accent certain points.

“I’m sorry I brought it up, I wasn’t trying to scheme in a bit of free training, just offer a bit of obviously unwanted assistance. I don’t want to cause trouble, and since it will be against the guild policies I will go by and talk to steakly sometime, he was about to teach me that before I left the city last time, so if he isn’t too busy I will see if he can show me in his spare time, and perhaps I can help him out a bit with some work.” He paused for a moment and continued briefly. “That bracelet is done; your helper knows who it goes too.”

Without another word he went back into the back room and threw his riding jacket over his shoulder, killed the oil lamps, collected and rolled his tools up and made his way out the front door, carefully sidestepping the two, and nodding to the guards signifying he was done until he decided to come back.

The 50th of Ioannes
Summer of Era I of the Celestine Mandate
Era XIII Post Fractum.
Paradigm: Isle of the Crown
Late afternoon

Dego had received a message that Viskyia had a new item that she wanted him to start on as soon as possible. Two days had passed since he had last been in the shop and as normal he calmly walked in ignoring the patrons and co-workers simply retiring to the back of the shop to his desk. Neatly placed upon his engravers pad was a small bag with something made of gold inside. It was a bracelet attached to a piece of parchment with a woman's name, and all the names of her children. Viskyia had plans to set their birthstones somewhere strategically in each child's name, and that of the mothers to create an artful work for an appreciative husband and father to give to his wife in approximately a month. She also asked that he finish it as soon as possible so that if changes needed to be made or if she should run into trouble there would be plenty of time for corrections. Taking a seat and adjusting his lamp he let off another such sigh, this was exactly what he had been talking about just days before. Oh well.

[Viskyia Crow]

ooc: Dego, if your char was told no about something, and then immediately left, Viskyia would assume it was in a pout, and would not have sent for you to do more work. If you came back by to see if there was more, that would be a whole different story, and she'd have told you about the bracelet.

She was afraid of that. Some people just liked to cut corners. Sure, she could have taught him, and then he'd have learned from a jeweler with all the delicate skills a jeweler possessed... but he wasn't willing to take the time for it, and learn the craft properly. He wanted to know right now, then and there, something that had taken her months and months of working on to actually perfect. It was no matter though. She would have taught him, and happily, had he been willing to take the proper steps.

Steakly could teach him, though it would be with a blacksmiths hand, something she considered a little less elegant than what a jeweler could do. Plus, she doubted Steakly could teach him to inlay the tiny stones like she needed to do on the things he engraved. The work the blacksmith did fell more towards large stones wrapped in flanges and set decoratively on hilts. They rarely had the call for detailed works jewelers did daily. "Yes, perhaps thats best. You two seemed to get along very well for your engravers training, though it seems to me that inlaying stones has little to do with that. But then again, I suppose my view is narrow and guild orientated, and not the way of the world at all. I just wish, Dego, that you wouldn't continuously take my words the wrong way. They aren't meant the way you seem to take them, not at all." She added, almost to his back, for he was on his way out already.. angry. And why, for one thing, couldn't he ever seem to remember Furloin's name?

She was growing used to Dego's sudden mood changes, his swift appearances and departures, and rarely commented on them anymore. The man was moody, seemed to be suffering from things he would not speak about, and was busy with his other life, whatever that was. More and more Viskyia was learning to keep her private things private around him, because at best his mood was usually uncertain, though his words were always polite, even if they did hold a bit of an edge to them. Viskyia wondered why. She might never know. Only time would tell.

[Dego Mernoff]

The task was a simple one; he had retrieved all of the final details from Viskyia about the piece and learned of what she needed in the planning process. Now as he sat turning the simple golden band in his hand, pondering what script to use, he contemplated his life in Nexus. Things were a mess right now, he had completed his inventory of the compound, and his meeting with the governor had been an interesting one. The only thing he really had going in the city was this job. The half elves mind slowly wandered back to the object in hand, a flowing elvish cursive would help beautify the piece and add subtle elegance to it he finally decided.

Securing the piece in a padded vice, the young man chose his favorite graver, one Steakly had given him as a gift and began to lightly etch the outlines of his script into the polished surface of the simple bracelet. He carefully scratched the curving lines on the surface, using just enough pressure to lay the pattern to be traced. Placing each of the four names on opposite sides of the bracelet, he carefully spaced each name out evenly, insuring that they flowed into one another, in order, without appearing jumbled or crowded on the piece.

After completing the etch he double checked to make sure each of the names were spelled correctly, and that all of the letters looked neat and even. Once satisfied, he cleaned his tools and packed up for the day. He had arrived late in the afternoon, and didn’t care to spend an entire evening staring at the piece.