Chapter 286: The Good Clay
Pops barely looked up as Dominic walked into the forge, and simply nodded toward the other side of the space.
"The jigs for rifles and the clay mould for the pistols are already set up."
"Thanks. I want to get the pistols for the full-time guards finished tonight so that I can be sure that they’re equipped for real threats. The others I’ll get to over the next week." Dominic offered.
Pops smiled. "It will be good to have my apprentice back in the forge. How is the married life treating you?"
"Like I should have planned to make more time for it. It’s going to be a long time before I can make it to that ’idle Noble’ stereotype and lay about with my wife all day." Dominic replied with a dramatic sigh.
Pops laughter was nearly as loud as the ringing of his hammer as he replied. "Son, I hate to tell you, but that stereotype was only ever true of the worthless sorts. You’ve seen it yourself, what happens to an idle Noble in the hard times.
Hell, half the army was made up of them when they got conscripted."
Dominic winked at him as he started wetting clay to fill the pistol forms.
"Can’t blame a fellow for wanting a bit more time for a honeymoon. Maybe I should take her over to the river for a picnic at the shore." He added.
"Just far enough from any of the houses that nobody will bother you? You can try, but you’ll have the witches out gathering herbs and John Mackay’s sheep to contend with."
Dominic chuckled as he pressed the first pistol, and then cast the [Clay to Steel] spell to make the first rough weapon blank.
The barrel still needed to be milled to get perfect rifling, and the rest needed to be cleaned up, but the quality was noticeably better than it had been before, and when Dominic took a hammer to the cylinder, it didn’t deform.
He still ran the honing rod through to make sure that there wasn’t some small deformation, but it only confirmed what his eyes were telling him.
This might not be as good as what Pops called tool steel, but it was certainly good enough to be called steel, and it would be durable enough for general use.
The old Dwarf came over to inspect the weapon with a critical eye, then sighed.
"Well, it’s close. The impurities in it are still far too high, and it’s a low carbon alloy. But it will do well enough for the purpose. Once you enchant it, it should be properly durable.
What sort of enchantment are you going to give it?" He asked.
"I was going to give it a swiftness rune, then give it a dunk in some Level Five core imbued oil. A level five uncommon grade pistol of swiftness should be plenty for the town guards." Dominic suggested.
Pops nodded. "And that’s not so expensive that it will encourage the bravest of bandits to try to ambush them to steal it."
It would also be enough to take out Goblins, Hobgoblins, Feral Monstrous Boars, and other common threats with a single well-placed shot.
Dominic quickly pressed a dozen of the weapons, making the most of the perfect clay that Pops had provided.
"Remind me to have someone get more of that for you. It’s nice, no inclusions or anything. Or did you get it from the merchants’ guild?" Dominic asked.
Pops shook his head. "No, it’s from the pit up river a distance. It looks like it was well worked in the past, and it’s set up so that the spring floods deposit more clay and sediment every year."
With twelve blanks to work, Dominic got to work shaping them and removing the casting imperfections so that they could be used with the conventional ammunition as well as strictly as magical weapons.
Then, he carved the Dwarven Forge Rune of Swiftness into the first, and poured mana into his oil bucket as the weapon heated.
The pistol came out as the expected dull gunblue colour, but with a slight silver shimmer to it from the enchantment.
{Uncommon Grade} level 5 Mana Pistol of Swiftness. Increases firing speed, reloads for one mana per shot.
Dominic smiled happily as he tested the weight of the weapon with the hollow metal grips. Nearly perfect, but still a bit grip heavy. But that would make them fairly stable to handle.
One after another, Dominic finished the pistols for the full-time guardsmen, and then carefully cut a jagged spearhead blank from clay.
If he pressed a dozen of them into a clay mould, he could turn out spears in under a minute. He would just need to give them a quick sharpening, and then hammer them onto a spear pole.
However, once he had the mould made, he realized that they didn’t actually have any spear handles.
Pops shrugged. "There is a tubing press over there. I made a couple of them for the architects and the Techno Wizards. Just pick a good-sized die, and you can convert the clay to metal as it leaves the press."
Fully metal spears? Now that was fancy. Perhaps he would get lucky, and they would look fancy when they were enchanted. It was the same spearheads that made [Brutality] bonuses at the Royal Forge, the metal handles shouldn’t make them any different in use.
Creating tubing turned out to be much easier than Dominic had expected, though it was mana intensive, constantly activating the spell as he worked the lever to push more clay through the opening.
If they kept up at this rate, good clay was going to become as valuable as silver in the duchy. Fortunately, they had more than enough of it for their short term needs.
Even if they pulled tonnes of it every month out of the pit, the next wet season would flood it again, and leave another half metre of clay from the riverbed.