![[Work in Progress]](.//images/icons/cs_wip.png "[Work in Progress]"){kind=icon}
13th of Zi’da, 722
Working blue glass
This thread continues from here ...
"Well it's glass." Joe remarked, not entirely trying to be helpful, but not invested in being mean either. "It's a bit cloudy though. It's it supposed to be cloudy?"
Winston was pretty sure it was not, but he'd never made glass before, so perhaps some glass WAS cloudy? "Me don't know. Et's nat dat simpal. Me cannat just hit et wid a hamma an' ets nat comin' out clear." Winston stared at the cloudy blob of glass he had produced. Making glass had not been too challenging, as heating things to extreme temperatures to melt them was something he did a lot.
The trouble was that the end result, while glass, was not very clear and he was not sure how to fix this. Joe floated around, trying to be supportive so that the ferret would stop looking all pouty and perhaps not hit things with hammers just to let off steam. "What would you do if your metal ore came out bad?" He asked thoughtfully, trying top trigger a line of enquiry that might lead to something in his ferrety companion's mind. "Me usually wud either change the temperature me smelted et at ar hamma out de impurities 'till et rang like a bell."
It took him two trials of trial and error to begin to get the glass clear. He sieved out the heavier impurities, including rocks, other types of sand and dirt and other detritus. He poured the sand into a large pot of water and progressively, one batch at a time, drained off the floating impurities, leaving only the heavier matter.
He eventually managed to end up with a perfectly even blue pile of sand, dried again at the side of the forge, ready to smelt. It took a few attempts to get the final result just as he needed it, but having created several poorly formed liquid glass blobs, he finally found an optimum temperature to smelt and poor the glass at to produce a clear and beautiful blue glass.
He held it up to the light. It gave everything a blue sheen and things looked distorted through the lens it created. "Dat's maw like et Joe." He said with delight. "Now me just gat tuh get it to be a horseshoe, den we es done." His tone suggested that he knew all to well that this was certainly NOT going to be the simplest part, but Joe gave him a reassuring smile. "If I had fingers, they would be crossed." He was still drawing on his experience with working Metal and casting seemed like the way to go. He prepared the cast and poured the glass ... This time, quenching was not going to be needed, not unless he wanted to shatter the glass.
Several trials later ... Failure in glass
There was a pile of broken and malformed glass horseshoes sitting in his workshop. He could not bare staring at them any longer. He had cast countless horseshoe-shaped glass ornaments, with a wide range of failure and success. The ones that had succeeded, brought limited joy because while they worked well in so much as the glass made of the blue sand, did indeed continue to enrich the sounds it was exposed to, there was a pretty good reason that instruments that you STRIKE were not made of glass. Joe had rather unhelpfully, though truthfully, observed "It makes a nice shattering sound when you hit it like that ... But it's a bit of a 'one-time deal' isn't it?"
Joe didn't mean to be irritating, however stating the obvious again, was about the last thing he could stand, having finally succeeded at something only to find it was not what he wanted in the first place.
He had spent an entire day trying to make the glass more workable. He had even tried to work some of the glass into metal to create an alloy that he could then smith, but this too was a failure. The only things he managed to create were veined and brittle, shattering or warping during shaping.
At this point, Winston sought a break from the attempts and lay on his back, staring at the sky as the clouds passed by.
He picked out shapes in the clouds ... Horse ... Shoe ... Hoursesh ... Hurumpf ... He sat up. "Forget this!" He exclaimed at his defeated melancholy. "Me need to succeed at something, an' get larst in et far a bit ... Et's time tuh cook!"
He made his way to the main campfire. It' was approaching late afternoon and a couple of the residents were milling around and the children were playing. Winston always cooked when he was ... well ... anything. Stressed, happy, sad, excited, however he felt, cooking let him process and express his feelings and doing it for OTHERS gave him rewards he'd never known could exist. As such, he set up a cooking pot over the fire and began to prepare a meal for everyone to enjoy.
The weather was still not wintery yet and so he chose to prepare a light broth, with some fresh bread. Adding herbs from his kitchen and ingredients that arrived from the people around the campfire, he put together a beautifully fresh and zingy dish. He separated a small batch from the based broth, before flavouring to allow him to make a milder variety for the children and anyone that didn't fancy the sharper flavours being added for taste.
The smell of cooking very quickly turned the quiet campfire into a bustling centre of activity. Each family or individual that arrived, came with an offering of drink or food to add to the meal and Winston joyfully incorporated each element into the broth or some other supporting appetiser.
He stirred, chopped and seasoned. The busier he got and the more he cooked, the less stressed he felt as the more relaxed he became.
The afternoon turned to evening and evening to song, with drums, flutes and singing, including the
Ferret Quartet
. Winston had come to know very well that the settlement was called Sweetsong for good reason.Winston told of his efforts to create the horseshoe and those around the campfire were delighted by the stories of the faries and their shenanigans. When he mentioned the blue sand instruments, there was much dreaming of wind chimes and soothing tinkling sounds around the whole of Sweetsong. "Me wud be 'appy tuh make some chimes far Sweetsang, ar anyone in Sweetsang dat wanted dem." He offered gladly. There was a general uprising of requests and Winston decided that it would be a good thing to do and before he started making the more complex shoe, it would be no bad thing to produce some tuneful chimes first to get a handle on how it sounded.
It was late now though and the evening was coming to a close. Everyone was packing away the remnants of the meal and the night's frivolity as Winston finished cleaning the cauldron-sized cooking pot. It was bigger than he was by a very significant degree. While Winston collected bits together into the pot for carrying, others cleared the campfire area.
The Devil on My Shoulder
Curiosity: You are thinking about the horseshoe again, aren't you?
Winston: Nope. Nat doin' dat. I'm cleaning dis 'ere pot. Look, cleany-cleany-clean ...
Curiosity: Uhu.
Winston: Me just wish et was like metal. Me cun work metal. An ef it don't behave itself, yuh just hit et until it's all betta.
Curiosity: Well why can't glass be like metal?
Winston: Because ... It's NOT. It's glass and glass is GLASS. Yuh cun hit et a BIT when it's warm, but nat a lat.
Curiosity: Well, can you not mix them together? Like a little bit of musical glass, with a little bit of workable metal. PRESTO! Horseshoe!
Winston: Nuh, man, yuh cannat mix glass wid metal. Me tried dat. Dem just nat the same 'stuff'.
Curiosity: Why? You melt rock and get lava and when lava solidifies you get obsidian which is WAY more like glass then it is rock. AND you can melt metal and glass and ... sooooo ... Rock/Sand/Glass then Rock/Ore/Metal ...
Winston: Cus dem different tings! Like water an oil![/skill]
Curiosity: But you mix water and oil ALL the time.
Winston: Yeah, but dat's cus yuh add a little ...[/skill]
Curiosity: You are thinking about the horseshoe again, aren't you?
Winston: Nope. Nat doin' dat. I'm cleaning dis 'ere pot. Look, cleany-cleany-clean ...
Curiosity: Uhu.
Winston: Me just wish et was like metal. Me cun work metal. An ef it don't behave itself, yuh just hit et until it's all betta.
Curiosity: Well why can't glass be like metal?
Winston: Because ... It's NOT. It's glass and glass is GLASS. Yuh cun hit et a BIT when it's warm, but nat a lat.
Curiosity: Well, can you not mix them together? Like a little bit of musical glass, with a little bit of workable metal. PRESTO! Horseshoe!
Winston: Nuh, man, yuh cannat mix glass wid metal. Me tried dat. Dem just nat the same 'stuff'.
Curiosity: Why? You melt rock and get lava and when lava solidifies you get obsidian which is WAY more like glass then it is rock. AND you can melt metal and glass and ... sooooo ... Rock/Sand/Glass then Rock/Ore/Metal ...
Winston: Cus dem different tings! Like water an oil![/skill]
Curiosity: But you mix water and oil ALL the time.
Winston: Yeah, but dat's cus yuh add a little ...[/skill]
"... FLOUR! I just need to add some FLOUR!" Several of his fellow campfire companions jump half out of their skin as Winston's internal monologue exploded into the exterior. "Sarry! Sarry. Me just 'ave gat to try somting." He said, stumbling to pick up his pots and pans as others from the fire-circle pitifully helped grab the bits he could not carry. "Me need tuh get tuh de market tomorrow Joe. Me gonna need yuh 'elp carrying some bits, so yuh fancy comin' wid me Chest?" His mind was ablaze as he went down into Chest to research some mixing agents and make a plan before bed and then shopping.
As Winston disappeared, Tovan slurped the last of his broth and remarked playfully with a little, almost maniacal, chuckle. "That is one odd ferret and his singing voice leaves much to be desired. He-he. But by the Immortals, he can cook." He used his finger to finish off the remnants of his meal from his bowl.
Continued here ...
