"When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back.”
Steve Jobs
Uncle Karl was a little bit of a perfectionist. When we went to visit his store, workshop and home to try our hands at carpentry he did not leave it up to his children to take us through it. Instead, he insisted that if we were going to have a go we would follow his instructions to the letter. He even sent his children Joyner, Sayer and Tesi, out to fell and trim a tree to keep them out from underfoot.
“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself. You will learn better and quicker if I teach you myself. Besides, I’ll know what you do and don’t know.” These were the words he said when we arrived in the morning asking to have a more active role in his family business than our earlier visit. “It is safer for you as well if I know what you can do and what is beyond you yet.”
He was happy enough to oblige but the criticisms of our efforts at his brothers continued to flow. “My brother should be in charge of training at the Smithy. Not that Fahroni isn’t a fine blacksmith mind.” He hastened to add lest his criticism of his nephew was repeated.
“Right, what do you want to know?” He finally asked us once his children had departed.
“What do you do and what are the first skills we could learn?”
“Well, I’m a carpenter but we are a small town so we do everything.” He gestured around his yard at the various piles of lumber. “We cut the trees, season the wood, turn it into beams or planks for housing, boats, barrels, doors, cabinets and chests.” Around the yard were tree-sized logs, beams, and planks, all stored under cover. “We have a selection of wood we are seasoning but most of what the town needs is made to order. There are things they are going to need again and we make one or two of those when not working on specific orders.”
“That’s quite a range of products,” Aleera said.
“Well in a larger town or city you would get specialization in each area, cooper, framer, joiner, cabinet maker, shipwright, wheelwright. Here however there isn’t the quantity required to provide enough work for that specialization so they have to make do with me trying my hand at everything.”
“How do you keep up with everything?” I asked
“Well, how often do you need a new boat or cart? We don’t have anywhere to go here on Wester so there isn’t too much wear and tear. As for the larger stuff like beams for housing, I insist they bring me the trees to work with. Joyner and Sayer can go and pick out the trees they need and then once they have chopped them down to replace the wood I’m going to use I give them some of my prepared beams from my stock. It shortens down the time they have to wait for it while means we don’t have to do everything ourselves.” He explained.
“So what are we going to do first.”
“First I’m going to introduce you to the tools we use, then you are going to learn how to measure, mark and cut.” Having shown us his yard and the lumber he had built up he took us inside his workshop.
“These here are the following, Adze, Augur, Brace, Gouge and Groping Irens, Riving Knife, Twybill, Wymbylle and Gimlet. But what you need to worry about today are the rule, your marker and this saw.” He showed us all the tools he had around his workshop before placing what looked like a ruler, an awl and a saw in front of us.
I looked at the rule and freaked out a little. I don’t know why I was expecting metric but this looked worse than imperial.
“Can you explain the rule?” I asked a little concerned.
“Right it goes up in nails.”
“In nails?”
“Yes, two nails make a thumb, two thumbs make a finger, two fingers make a palm, two palms make a hand, and three hands make an arm. Simple enough.” He demonstrated with his fingers and hands showing how it all added up. “The rule is marked in nails and thumbs.”
I looked in despair at the rule. “Are there any other forms of measurement?” I asked hopefully.
“No. Don’t it make sense, seems simple enough to me.” He answered. “If you don't have a rule you can pretty much eyeball it using your thumbs, fingers, hands and arms. Of course, I never would but you could mind if you had to.”
“So an arm is 3 hands, 6 palms, 12 fingers, 24 thumbs or 48 nails?” I asked despairingly
“There you go not so hard at all is it.” He smiled happily not reading the pure fear hidden behind my blank face. “Sometimes when I’m feeling crazy I’ll only measure once, but that is because I have a measurement levelled to 100 so I don’t ever get it wrong. You two on the other hand need to measure twice and cut once.” He lectured Aleera andmeI. I was so inventing the metric system. How had I never noticed the measurement system on the island before? How we had created the tunnels for our palace had been so organic magic bringing our thoughts to reality we had never really discussed or drawn out plans. We had just got on with it. That was going to have to change. But for now, I would try to get my head around the most convoluted and random measuring system I had ever heard of.
“Right so here’s your first project a wooden door mat.”
“A wooden door mat?” Aleera asked a little unimpressed.
“Aye a door mat, hardly going to have you building a boat or a wheel on your first efforts now are we. You need to gain the measurement skill, cut or saw at the least before I’ll let you anywhere near anything more complicated than something I’m going to wipe my feet on.” He answered gruffly perhaps a little peaked that Aleera’s comment could be taken as a complaint.
“So what comes first?” I asked to break the slight tension developing.
“First you need to choose your wood. Second, use the rule to measure an arm's length. Third, measure it again and mark it. Fourth cut it. Once you have eight pieces cut to the same length I’ll show you the auger and how you can use it to put a hole through them and we will tie them up to make your first piece, a wooden doormat.” He firmly outlined the steps before handing us the rules.
“Right come and choose your wood.” He took us over to a wood bin. “These are all decent enough pieces but for this piece, it doesn’t matter too much so best to let you practice on the offcuts. Which ones are the best?” he asked.
We looked at the bin of wood wondering what exactly he was asking us to look for. It was filled with odds and ends. “Choose your wood carefully. It doesn’t matter for this piece but it will in the future.” These were his final words on the matter.
We pulled out pieces making sure that they were the same width as ‘two thumbs by two thumbs’ according to the anachronistic rule we were holding in our hands. I was not quite sure what he meant by choosing your wood carefully. Until he insisted, “Look closer.”
If you concentrated on the pieces using mana sense instead of our eyes it showed that some of them held more than others. Was this what he meant by which ones were best? I pulled out the pieces with the most mana in them and asked, “These?”
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“I can see how you have chosen those pieces of wood they resist the weather well. But that isn’t all there is to choose a piece of wood. You need to look closer at the grain, see if there are knots, ruptures or wanes.” Each time he mentioned something to look out for he would point it out in either one of the pieces I was holding or one that Aleera was holding. “Then you need to check to see if there are insect attacks, scars, soft rot or even firm rot. It won’t matter what you are making today but in the future, it will. You need to check the grain to see whether it has a wavy grin or cross grain it is all going to affect the grade of the wood and what you can make with it.”
We stared at the wood in our hands which was suddenly a lot more complicated than we first thought.
“Pick your pieces but see if you can remember what I’ve just taught you and pick ones with the least knots, scars or pockets.”
Round three of picking our pieces took a lot longer as we carefully worked our way over each piece looking at not only the mana but the grain of the wood and every inch of it. Uncle Karl did not mind which pieces we choose as long as we could discuss their properties and which parts of it we would avoid using.
Next, it was measure, measure again, mark and cut. The entire time Uncle Karl was standing behind us guiding our measurements, and hands to ensure we were cutting in the right place.
Ding! Measurement (Lv1)
Despite the esoteric nature of the measurement scale, it seemed the system still counted it and it wasn’t long before I gained the skill and a noticeable improvement in the speed and accuracy of my measurement. The improvement in my measuring did not stop my uncle though. He continued to adjust anything and everything he felt was out of place and we soon had 8 nearly identical wooden slats that required holes drilling in them.
“This here is called an auger. One of Aaron’s finer pieces of work. It isn’t too bad having a blacksmith for a brother. Kai you might find this a little difficult to use depending on how strong you are but Aleera should be able to cope.” He explained. I had been standing on a box for the majority of the morning to reach the top of the table where we had wedged the wood for sawing.
Holding the wood in place we measured, measured and marked before drilling the holes. The last stage of binding them together with a knot in between was far easier with my high level in knots.
“Guess Kaius has taught you a little on that boat of his then.” Uncle Karl nodded approvingly of our ropework. “And there you have it. Your first piece of woodwork. If you want to come back and continue there are plenty of jobs to be done.”
Ding! Carpentry (Lv1)
We told him we would be back once we had visited all the uncles. “We’ll don’t bring any of their bad habits here. We each work in our own way and it is best if you remembered that.”
We left before lunch and before our cousins had managed to return with the tree they had been sent to fell. Oh well, we would see them another time. Tessi herself was very keen to come to the island for magical lessons from either us or Lady Acacia.
. . .
Having gained three new skills in the last two days there was no reason not to keep going. The next uncle on our list to visit was Uncle Cephas the Stone Mason. He ran the quarry with his son Ferris and employed others to help out when they needed more stone for building houses or the wall. His daughters Alaina, Gemma and Sela worked on the stone as well but from home rather than out at the quarry. Also if they ever found any gemstones in the mining the daughters tended to be the ones to cut and polish them.
Interestingly enough they had not developed the technique to create faceted gems but instead created the Cabochon Gem with a flat back and rounded top. However, seeing as they don’t have access to modern machinery it's no surprise. I’m left wondering whether elsewhere in the world they can create such gemstones.
“So you’d like to come along with Ferris and me today?” Uncle Cephas asked us.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well Aleera can stay here with Alaina, Gemma and Sela but you are welcome to tag along if you can keep up. We will be heading out in a minute or two. You just caught us before we left.” Uncle Cephas answered.
“Thanks,” I replied. It wasn’t long before we headed out. Both of them were a little surprised at how easily I kept up with them as they headed off to the quarry.
“Don’t invest too many points into dexterity boy. We are all hoping that you will be able to unlock magic for the rest of our family as well as your other cousins. All the girls as well as Ferris are keen to be able to wield magic. Aren’t you son?” He advised.
“Yes Dad, we’d all like to be able to wield it.” He agreed with his father.
We journeyed on towards the quarry while Uncle Cephas explained what was there. “Mainly we are quarrying out stone for either homes, docks or expanding the town’s wall. But when no one is asking for anything specific we enjoy mining to see if we can’t find any seams of gems or metals.”
“Are they many?” I asked excitedly
“No, not a lot but we manage to find enough to keep Aaron busy without importing any iron from further afield and enough stones to keep my daughters working hard polishing them up.” He happily informed me. “We’ll show you how we cut stone and you can have a go before we show you the mine.”
If we were going to go looking through the earth for gems and metals I really needed to work on my sonar skill. Echolocation did a good enough job above land and under the water but seeing through the earth had always proved challenging for me. Mana sense working far better at it than the images I got from using echolocation.
“Nearly there, Kai.” Uncle Cephas said.
Soon we rounded a corner showing a sizeable portion of the hillside cut away.
“So what do you think?” Asked Uncle Cephas.
“That’s a lot of stone,” I answered impressed by how much had been mined out already.
“Takes a lot to build the town walls for starters. The inside of them may be rubble or earth or general stones but to build it properly we needed cut stone from here and this is what we have provided.” They had a little shed with their tools in a corner of the quarry. Crime on this island was practically non-existent even if someone did steal something they would not be able to use it in public or sell it to anybody with so few working in each profession it would be obvious when it disappeared as well as when it reappeared.
“What do you think comes first?” Uncle Cephas asked.
“Measure and cut,” I responded with the answer drilled into us so often by Uncle Karl yesterday.
“Of course but you don’t have to worry so much about the measuring I’m not my brother Karl. Besides best to aim to get it right but these stones will be in the town wall there is always a little room for error that can be trimmed down on sight when placing them. Not that you shouldn’t try your best anyway. Have you managed to get the measurement skill? Most cousins who work with your Uncle Karl get the skill of hard work and practice or simply the necessity of needing him to stop hovering over everything you are doing.”
“Was he always as . . “ I searched for the right word. “particular?”
“As far back as I can remember he has been but then he is one of my older brothers so I can’t remember everything. You’d have to ask Aaron but I doubt he was any different before I arrived.” He answered. “I’ll show you how it’s done then you can give it a go.” He scratched a line in the stone using his rule before marking out points a hand’s distance along them. Then he chiselled and hammered a row of tapered holes into his carefully marked spaces before tapping in wedges in sequence until they were tight. Then he continued to hit them harder and harder in sequence until finally with a crack the rock split. The wedges forced the stone apart rather than him cutting through it.
“Ready to give it a go? We need blocks an arm by half an arm.” He asked before handing me a set of slightly smaller tools.
I measured and marked the cuts out before having a go with the hammer and chisel, it was hard work. I tried. I really did but although my vessel was supporting my sats more and more I was still a little small for this kind of work. I would get there in the end but it was going to take a while. “Would you mind if I used some of my magic?” I asked looking at the very shallow progress I had made so far in driving the wedges into the stone. It would not be cracking open anytime soon.
“Be my guest. I hope you weren’t expecting to have completed the block already. Stone takes a lot longer to work with than wood or even metal. At least if you want a finely carved block of masonry rather than a rock.”
I was no longer sure quite what I had expected but this was taking significantly longer than the other two visits and I seemed to be making less progress despite starting quicker and tackling the task straight away. So I decided to use a little bit of magic. I held the mana in tight along the line that I wished to cut before applying the skill, Melt. The stone ran out from around the block leaving a perfectly shaped block that could be carried off to one side.
“Well, that’s just cheating,” Ferris exclaimed looking over at my smoothly carved block of masonry.
“You can do the same with skills when you level them up high enough.” Uncle Cephas objected. He walked over with a hammer and chisel. Driving them in quickly and promptly probably using some skills to separate a block in a few quick strikes. He had been taking his time to demonstrate the correct technique earlier.
"If you have seen enough of the quarry why don't we look in the mine." he cut short our practice with the stone, but when you can meld stone with your magic what was there to mind? I was looking forward to seeing what I could find in the mine.