The blacksmithing school
{{ | date=06/21/2018 | cast=
| place_name=A forge in a shed in the Osborn neighborhood | place_desc=From its humble beginnings as a metal table, the forge has come a long way. It's mostly housed in a shed now, albeit one that opens a wall at a time, with a bit of metal dryer duct for a flue. A hair dryer has been repurposed to provide a constant flow of air. The dryer has been hooked up to a variable resistor with a large turn-knob. He's marked out various places on it, and the motor revs higher or lower as the knob is twisted. This lets Zach run it hard for a hot fire, or scale it back when he doesn't actively need direct heat. It's a convenience, for sure. He still has a hand-crank blower handy. | log=When Alma arrives, he's still in the process of nurturing a small flame in the firepit into a lit bed of coals. Large baskets full of charcoal are stored under the roof itself, and from time to time he'll fish more coals in. Charcoal burns fairly quickly and so the fire needs to be refueled regularly. For now, however, he's got some time to kill as he works on this, and so just before she arrived she got a text reply to her query about schools. "Depends on the school," he'd sent.
A crunching of bike wheels on gravel alerts anyone to Alma's presense--though she's not particularly quiet when she doesn't want to be. She's dressed properly for being around a source of heat and burns. She doesn't have all of her birding gear, but can't help keeping some binoculars with her because she's never been able to explore this area much. Maybe she'll get a chance before she heads back out. She's got a small bag with them strapped to her bike. Note's probably around her somewhere. Sometimes Note likes to goof off and skim Alma while she's on her bike, but that doesn't seem to be in the game plan today. "Hey." She says as she dismounts. She walks over to see him working on the charcoal. "I was wondering why you don't use coke?"
"Coke's expensive," Zach answers with a shrug as he looks to the firepit to check on it's progress. There's a bit of newspaper tinder still burning in there, very aggressively even under the gentle breeze of the blower at low power. "Charcoal's free if you've got dirt, time, and wood laying around. This stuff used to be factory pallets." He picks up a pointy metal handtool, a crude-looking thing, but it serves well to poke at the fire and lift some of the as yet unburnt charcoal. "This stuff will turn to coke as the fire gets hotter, anyway. At least for a moment. But I don't feel like springing for proper smithing coal. Not for something that's basically a hobby." There's glances her way mixed in there, and a smile for her arrival too.
Alma walks over staying out of the way of sharp pointy things (except for wit or prickly attitudes) and comes up to Zach with a side half-hug half something. She looks up at his face, "Did you learn this stuff by trial and error?". She's really curious about what he's learned over time... and how.
Zach returns the hug happily, leaning his head over to rest it atop hers in that moment. "A lot of it," he says, nodding. "Especially the mechanics. Fair bit from reading books, some from YouTube. But then applying the shit is all practice and fucking up for a bit." He jams the poker into the fire now, and collapses the burnt-out husk of the tinder. There's a few particles of unburnt paper that lift up on the hot air currents and enter the duct. These are paid no mind. He jabs and scrapes with the poker to restructure the fire and fill the void that the collapse of the tinder created.
"Oh, YouTube. I hadn't thought of that." She nods. She follows the current that lifts the paper. And sense the convection currents and changes in radiant heat reaching her skin. She turns her face to feel it on her cheek, eyes closed for a brief moment. Her attention wanders back eventually to enjoy teh scrape and collapse of the fuel and tending of the fire. She is there enjoying the process and the feel of it.
"The heat treating stuff, some of the more niche things I've learned by taking classes here and there, when I find them," Zach continues, "but for the most part it's just been me fucking around." He grabs a small shovel and scoops out another dose of fuel, piling it directly atop the existing fuel. There's a crackling as the new fuel, which still retains some moisture, begins finishing its drying out.
"I've learned some things from reading and watching people. You get told how to ring a bird," Now it sounds like she's using the voice of someone who is explaining how to do something. Pieces of lessons from here and there. She holds out her left and and curls it in to a bird ringer position. "Hold firmly, but not too firmly. Gently. Put its back and closed wings against the palm." She points at her index and middle finger. "the head goes here." Then she moves her thumb against her index finger. "You can extend the wing to take measurements, like so." And she bring her right hand over to pretend like she's holding calipers. "You have to watch for signs of distress." An earnest expression crosses her face even though she's not actually lecturing. "Like gasping." Her hand relaxes back in to a normal pose. "Anyway, it's okay to read about, but you don't know what gently but firmly is until you try and it, and it's better to have a partner there to guide at first..." She pauses and nods, "well, also rqeuired for larger birds. Kind of hard to study larger animals solo." She nods toward Zach, "You might have a problem if you wanted to study albatrosses or other large birds."
"I'll be thankful, then, that they haven't piqued my interest." Still, he does pay rapt attention to the demonstration - never know when something like that could be handy. "Probably could've picked all this up much faster if I'd had someone watching my technique," he admits. "But that wasn't super compatible with my lifestyle."
"Huh, that reminds me of that guy Ezekiel, I told you about him." She looks at Zach's face to see if he remembers, but keeps talking, "I haven't seen him in a while. Anyway, it sounded like he was lecturing me telling me how he didn't follow his calling when he was younger and how he ended up learning things hte hard way instead. Like maybe he regretted, and by extension, that I would regret not accepting things and learning them sooner." She looks like someone who is annoyed and has tasted something too bitter. "Kind of patronizing and arrogant." She shrugs, "but I know I get defensive so I just listen. Whatever, though. It's a big deal." Whatever 'it' is, she doesn't think to explain since it seems obvious to her. "So I'm not just oging to half ass it. and he wouldn't be the person he is without learning things the way he did. anyway. life choices." She looks a little puzzled, "oh, maybe it isn't the same as lifestyle." Shrugs again.
"I don't believe in callings," Zach says, shrugging. "Time will tell if I'm right or not, but I like my chances, if I'm honest. It is as you say, though. If he'd done differently he'd be someone else." Now its time to poke at the fire and turn the blower down. "So," he says, "what'd you want me to make?"
She babbles a little at the calling bit. "Yeah, I dunno. I had
weird dreams and stuff. and something like... maybe an extension of joy of
the universe? and I don't think it's necessarily real, but on the other
hand, it's love? so it's like this thing where I feel like I'm called to
help people, but I don't beleive it. But it seems the right thing to do.
like that." she looks bemused. "I mean, how would time tell you if you are
right about me? Maybe if you had delusion about thinking you had a calling
time would help you out with your phenomo..whatever of it. But not mine? I
dunno." She's doesn't seem particularly comfortable trying to explain it.
At his question, she startles. "Oh, I thought you had jobs." She cocks her head off to the distance, hmmming. "Well, I was thinking of a sound sculpture. with stacatic motions too. I don't know if I can get it to sound cool or not... that comes later. So, not perfect spheroids, but a reasonable enough aproximation that I can roll them off things."
Zach smirks, "Nah, I cleared my queue before I took down my last forge. Set that one up for Japanese bladesmithing. It was a fun project, but it's waaaay too much time per piece and I don't particularly care to make weapons." As she describes her desire however, he nods, "like marble sized? Softball sized?"
"I think for this set up you'd make large marble on up sized things? I'm not sure it's the right equipment for making things smaller than this." She holds her thumb and index finger apart to demonstrate. "For smaller than that probably I'd need to use, I dunno, casting? or found things made out of metal that I chip up? for when I want metallic sounds." She's still ruminating, and not just about art. "Ok, so you mentioned wanting to set up a school? It's a good idea." She allows Zach to see her look of concentrated healthy skepticism at the idea of, "I'd like to do that, but would I help? I don't know. I want something like that place, you know? but with more academic subjects too. there's where you need more participatory stuff." eyebrows. "and curriculum. like, I didn't invent R."
"Casting's easy," he agrees, "but takes way more heat. Doable though. I can build you a propane smelter that'd do the trick for pretty cheap. But cast stuff, especially iron, is brittle. Not that you care, I bet, but forged stuff, even mild steel, will stand up to the punishment of being rolled around and banged into things, which... I guess is what you want to do with the things?" All the same, it's time for him to heat stuff up. An old railroad spike goes into the fire and he turns up the heat. Talk of the school sets him back a little bit. He holds up hands to dismiss the allegations. "That's kind of pipe dream territory stuff. I guess I think of it less like a school and more like a hangout kind of place? When I was a kid there was this comic shop in the middle of town next to the post office. It's where you'd go to meet people with a common interest, play games, nerd out and whatnot. I can't open a dojo, my paperwork's long since been lost."
"Hmm," She's thinking through things on the fly, "no casting right
now. keep it simple. Learn this method first." Like maybe she's thinking
through advice for herself. Alma doesn't get a few things, like, "Why is
it a pipe dream? I mean, that makerspace exists. That's like what I
want... And the comic shop!" She waves her arm enthusiastically. "Yeah
like that. You'd have the other stuff, and people doing things," She's
excited and pats Zach enthusiastically on the arm, "But! But, they could
play games... and learn about probability and statistics if they want. Or
how to gather data. That's the academic part I mean."
She sets a hand against her sternum and confesses, "I had to have classes for those things. And we could find good people," She nods like she knows so many friendly people, "You know people go around teaching reliable and clean ways to handle data? I mean... people my age, not all established professors. Because the system is a mess" she pauses because it's a mess, "in many ways.... but still really good." It is a mess. "It just takes work and collaboration... which is happening. with some professors. and lots of young academics. I have no fucking clue how to write this stuff, so I get help. I don't understand why that's a pipe dream when people already do it." then she looks really puzzled. "Why do you need paperwork to open a dojo?" Maybe she doesn't even know what a dojo is. "It's a place where you teach people aikido?"
"Exactly," he says in the middle of that, "other people got that stuff covered. I want a place where people don't have to worry about a bunch of black helicopters crashing the party. That kind of security takes a lot of work, shit I don't even know how to do." He shrugs as he goes through the available tools selecting tongs properly sized for the piece of iron in the fire and also for the smaller pieces he's looking to work. A sharp wedge tool with a square back end comes up, the square end inserted into the hardy hole of his anvil so that it presents the blade up. Not safe, but probably useful. "In order to teach martial arts you need a certification. Same reason they don't just let anyone claim to be a school teacher and start having parents drop their kids off every morning. When you reach dan rank there's paperwork about it. I passed my Godan test five years ago - no real records of the fact exist anymore, and I doubt Ricardo-sensei would recognize me at this point."
"No," She says in a tone of disaggreement. "They don't have the stuff covered. Like, I didn't know someone could know exactly where they are or where things are until I watched you work and talk. Or that everything maybe is a process of ...refinement? No." She shakes her head, "expertise? No..." Shakes her head again. "Some things. anyway. I did not learn that everywhere. Only by meeting people. You meet people at places." and a big afterthought, "like, I am not going to meet Note at another place. seriously. It didn't happen. There needs to be a place where people talk about stuff. Right now it's Detroit. We just don't have a building." For the terminology she things, "You could make your own school style... no I don't think I'd want to be, like you say, some rando teacher. Can you reintroduce yourself to the guy? Can I get pictures of your records? Like, if I went to where you last saw them? I could look." She puts her fingers to her forhead, blinks her eyes slowly.
Zach sighs, smiling with a bit of melancholy the whole while. He brings a metal plate up with a number of of half-spherical depressions. "Pick some sizes," he instructs. While giving her the time to mull that over, he continues on the vein of teaching. "I could put out my own shingle with 'self defense training' on it, perhaps." What follows is a different point entirely, "But any static location is going to be a problem to have truly safe conversations in. Keeping that kind of place both secure enough that people can let their guard down and actually have meaningful discussions with... whoever happens to show up, but also accessible enough that people can come and go and know about it is an impossible balance."
"Oh..." some enligthenment dawns. "I see you." She nods. "Yeah, I wanted to talk about that at some point. I know a little about making it harder to eavesdrop... through time. I don't know how it all works but I can do that. a litle. I told you about it the other day, remember." She thinks he remembers or that he even had a fucking clue and interpretted whatever idiosyncratic thing she said to be anything fuckall to do with Time? maybe? "So I was going to ask my mentor about how to make a really kickass shielded place with what I know ... and what I'd need to learn. But I showed up and they'd aged... maybe decades? half a century? I don't know really. It was FUCKING WEIRD." She looks pretty upset about it, but quickly pulls her shit back together. "So I'm gonna maybe take longer to learn that stuff. Have I talked to you about how the nervous system... like it's not just MIND dude." OMG she's magesplaining to someone with Life infinity compared to her.
Zach is happy to play along, if it weren't for 'splaining, he wouldn't know half of what he does, after all. "Warding a place is fine and great, but you still need to control who knows about the place for it to stay safe. There isn't a wall that can be built that can't also be knocked down." He gestures for her to continue, however, while he turns the piece in the fire and adds more fuel.
"Warding a person, I was thinking at first. Like, when we met you were talking about..." There's a lot of stuff they were talking about and it's hard to sum up and categorizes things differently. "Privacy. Autonomy? Uh.. Manipulation." That might have been the genesis of a train of thought... "And it sounded like you'd been possessed but that it was subtle, you said, when describing the experience." She watches Zach to see if he gets uncomfortable with the way the conversation proceeds. She'll drop it if it looks like it's taking him to some place he doesn't want to go.
Discomfort? You betcha. Does it stop him? Not a chance. Just a sigh. "Yeah, warding people's a thing you can do. It helps. It's not bulletproof or anything, though." There are a series of tools that also have half-sphere depressions in them, by the by, and he's begun matching those to the ones in the large plate.
Alma slows down enough to pick some sizes. "Yeah... but maybe you can. See? Remember the dark triad? So you have psychopathic behaviors that happen but maybe someone is not psychopathic whatever that's a derailment..." she waves that off with her hands. "You have an action. A person just murdered someone. Why? Because of a perceived slight. And why murder? Because their first immediate impulse was something they followed through on. Now... how do people regulate emotion? Wait don't... I don't know how all but there are things... Like people get prescriptions, beta blockers, to help maintain calmness. It helps... anxiety. it's an off label. So, someone who can do that to you without the prescription? That's not in your mind. It's in your body which becomes in your mind. Calm... or lack of perspective."
"That's your basic brainhack, yep," Zach says, nodding. "With the right nudge, you can get people to do whatever you want." There's a tonal difference here compared to the basic affirmation that the content would otherwise be. This thing she's describing? There might be little else Zach hates more. "Hardening yourself against that shit," he goes on, "takes effort, and is never a hundred percent."
"I imagine not," Alma sighs. "I think it sounds fucking exhausting. When you think of all the different ways... like someone can," She doesn't know how to explain it with words so she just digs out some crap from her pockets and throws it over there. vigourously. Like she's a bit angry, "that, and then know stuff and use it to push someone. or... Like Maya freakout when she sees everything, like I tried to explain to that Aaron guy that *everyone* has to learn ettiquette. Not just stupid fucking idiots who can see inside someone's head... because he talked about that... basic rules, that don't even amount to something magical. Like maintain etiquette..." She realizes she's gone way off in the weeds. "Anyway, the way you put it doesn't sound healthy. I think I'm going off in the wrong direction. There are healthy ways to do things." As an aside, "What a freaking headache." .oO( Ungh, just when you thought you figured out how hard something is to learn it turns out to be even harder ) "...so much work".
"Yeah, it's a different story entirely if there's informed consent," Zach says, nodding along. It cools his loathing a little bit. The rail spike is pulled out of the fire, only half of it's glowing hot, and laid over that sharp wedge. Out comes a 3lb hammer, and he starts swinging away, pushing the hot metal down onto the wedge until a small piece of it, maybe three quarters of an inch long, pops off. He repeats this one more time and then returns the spike to the heat, adjusts the coals, and puts the small pieces that fell onto the ground into the fire as well. They won't stay long, and he's got a pair of very small, long handled tongs he's working with to manipulate those.
"Conversations are meaningful. I've talked to everyone I've met." It's a lie, she hasn't really talked to Alexandra, Aaron, or any number of other people on a meaningful level yet. She suddently realizes it. "...I guess. Ok not exactly." I don't know if she'd blush at finding herself in a not-quiet-a-lie but if she doesn't she certainly looks fucking embarassed. "Anyway, people can meet without wards. I've been. I've learned stuff. That jerk made a meeting place... I mean, it's not what /I'd/ do if I had the money; but I did go, and I met sometong there. She's an astrophysicist." Alma bounces, "She works in my building!" a few beats. "Kai knows her!" squirrel. but then a big long pause. "People should learn kindness."
Zach enjoys the string plot twist and grins to show it as he pulls the first of the hot pieces of metal out of the fire and squashes it on the anvil beneath a hammer that barely needs to be swung to produce the desired effect. "These will have cold shuts in them," he warns. "But I figure you're not going to use them to hold up weight or anything so who cares." But also, "And yeah, conversations are meaningful."
"No. and what is a cold shut?"
"When you bring metal together by folding or squishing like this?" Zach says as he squishes the other piece down into something shorter and thicker, "those folds trap the oxide that naturally forms on the surface. That's an impurity and it's a structural weakness in the metal. I could do this far stronger with a proper forge weld, scatter some borax over the surface of it, but since it doesn't matter, this is much faster." The first piece he squished (things are happening very quickly now) is now being pulled out of the fire and laid into one of the half-spheres on the plate, the matching half-sphere indented tool is placed atop it, the tongs come away, he switches hands, grabs the hammer and delivers two solid blows with real force behind it. That part is loud. When he pulls the top part away, there is a mostly cooled, vaguely sphere-ish shape resting in the plate, with some extra material pinched between the two tools forming a small belt along the side. Not satisfied, he puts that bit back in the fire and repeats the process on the other.
WHAM. awesome. okay. Conversation happens inbetween the kickass sounds, "So, when you dislike the" she searches for the word and remembers the one he used, "violence," If law of drama is in effect there is a WHAM here "that hermetics do... with dogma? How do you feel about the concept of curricula in general? I think it's," WHAM, "necessary. I wouldn't be able to analyse data without a proper understanding of the math behind it. But someone wrote the cirriculum. People judge and evaluate it, grant you. But it's flawed." also, she is enjoying everything, woa, if she can get a hug in she does. "So cool!"
The hug has to wait, but it won't wait long. The small pieces of metal heat up /fast/ and cool down faster, so there's a flurry of action, but once the swedge is in use the forms come together very rapidly. "The problem is in deciding what someone needs to know, and how they should learn it, without consulting them." The final product is two small balls with a bit of metal sticking out the side. If he'd gone for it, he might've made little models of Saturn this way. "If someone comes to you and says, 'hey, I want to learn to work with data like you' that's one thing. But to then say, 'okay, now you need to also learn how to speak this language I speak, because that's how data works for me,' is problematic. Let people ask questions, don't try and corral them neatly into boxes for your convenience." One more heat and he swaps the 3lb hammer for a very small ball-peen. That belt of metal gets a swift series of very light rappings as he allows it to roll along the anvil. Bit by bit the belt is merged back into the rough sphere shape. He can do that in one pass. After a dip and shake in the water of the quenching tank, he offers her the first piece to inspect.
Alma takes the piece and holds it in the palm of her hand and rolls it around a little. She's giving it a visual inspection as well. She rolls it around on her cheek too. "Hold a sec" She takes it outside to see how it looks in the light. Why? I don't know. She does. Ok, she's back. "That'll do." She looks satisfied. But they better not all come out exactly the same. "Oh wait," She drops it to see if it obeys Newton's law. no, psych, she doesn't do it for that reason. She's curious at how things look when it hits the ground is all. Nod. "Ok". Big grin.
Zach watches the inspection with a smirk. When she went outside, he started rapping away at the second one. NOW she can have a hug, now that he won't burn either of these. "Okiedokie," he says. "How many of these you want?" }}
