Ok, I found the metal, now what?

I had no idea what kind of metal it was... It was blue after all. I knew that copper turned a greenish blue kind of color when exposed to air. Maybe this was just some sort of copper. It was possible. But this metal was deep, rich looking blue... What the heck do I do with it now?

There were veins of blue spread out all over the cliff face, and there were even rocks all over the ground with bits of blue in them, so I wasn’t lacking any ore. Sadly though, my father never experimented in smelting ores. Nor did he ever attempt to do any blacksmithing. The only thing that I knew about smelting ores was that you needed to put it in a furnace. But that was just in a game... Weren’t there really tall chimneys as well?

Oh man... Do I have to build a tall chimney? I’m gonna need so many bricks... Good thing the river is just right there. How would I even smelt the ore? Do I just throw the ore in with the fire? But won't it melt? How would I collect it? Do I need a bowl or something to contain the ore? But how can I get a bowl that won't melt while the ore does?... Whatever, let's just build a chimney first and worry about that later.

"Alrighty then Nora. We found metal. Let's set up camp here and upgrade our tools. We're gonna need a chimney... that's a lot of digging for clay to make the bricks..." I sighed and set down my pack. "We've got a lot of work to do."

The first thing that I did was figure out where we were going to be sleeping. There weren’t any caves or anything nearby, but as we were in the middle of a forest I did find a large tree with a thick canopy in between the river and the ore-cliff. So, I cleared the area around the tree of any rocks and piled up the leaves and pine needles to form a bed for me and Nora to sleep on. I cleared an area next to my bed of any leaves and needles and just piled them all onto my bed for extra padding. In that cleared area, I used the stones that I cleared from under the tree to form a campfire ring. On top of the “bed” I spread out my two spare leathers to help contain the leaves and protect me from the needles. Then I threw my fur blanket on the leathers.

Bed made, I needed a shelter for when it rains. So, with Nora’s help... Ok, it was mostly Nora doing the work, but I helped. Anyways, we found felled trees and long branches and leaned them up against the tree we made our bed under. Nora even knocked down a few tall, thin trees to use. We placed them up against the tree’s branches so they won’t just roll to the side and fall. I even tried to shake them a bunch and they didn’t fall. We kept at it until there was a half-circle lean-to over the bed. Then we gathered branches with leaves still on them and layered them on until the whole thing was covered. Inside the lean-to there was just enough clearance for Nora to belly crawl inside, but it should be enough to protect both of us from the rain.

By the time the lean-to was finished it was already getting dark, so Nora quickly left to hunt down something for us to eat while I gathered firewood and started a fire. The fire pit was just inside the lean-to, so we could have a fire going while it rained.

Eventually, Nora came back with a deer in her teeth. It was already dark, so I just used a claw to cut a small slice off of the haunch and started cooking it. Nora took the rest of it off into the woods and ate it over there so we wouldn’t have to clean up. Any remains of the deer would attract predators after all. She came back licking her lips and squeezed into the lean-to. Once I finished my meal, I snuggled into Nora's side to sleep.

In the morning Nora went off to hunt again for breakfast and I just got to work. I started by clearing a space for where the chimney would go. I couldn't just place it anywhere, I had to put it somewhere where there were no branches overhead to catch fire... I mean, I've driven past factories before and they've always had fire coming out of the top of their chimneys. And I don't want to start a forest fire. Luckily, there was an area not ten feet away where Nora knocked down a couple trees. The stumps were still there but that wasn't a problem. There was plenty of space for the chimney.

I didn't want a chimney to be too wide, because then I'd have to have a bigger fire to heat the whole thing. A tall and thin chimney is what I was going for.

I made another ring of stones there for another fire. I needed to make the bricks after all...

Wait... wouldn't that make the bricks like ceramic? Are bricks ceramic-like? I was thinking I could just make a rectangle of clay and bake it... that's how bricks are made right?... whatever, I'll just try that first. If that doesn't work I'll try something else.

Over the next few days I fell into a routine. Well, it wasn't really a routine, it was just digging up as much clay as I could from the river. Once I had a decent pile, I'd squish some handfuls together as best as I could so it was one solid lump and then form it into a rectangle. I used the same stick to measure the height, width, and length of the rectangles to keep the bricks consistent. Once I had four bricks I'd place them on top of a bunch of sticks in the firepit, then build a fire around them to bake them. Once the fire burnt down to coals, I used a pair of sticks to get them out and to the side. Once they were cool, I stacked them up in a square, using wet clay as the cement to hold it together. Then I would repeat the process.

On the morning of the fourth day, I finally had a chimney that was twice as tall as I was and had a small opening at the bottom. At my eye-level, there were two bricks that I could take out and put back in. In those two bricks I had shaped little handles to make it easy for me to take out. I made that so that I could throw in ores and fuel.

Once the chimney was complete, I took a break from working to go hunt with Nora. It turned out to be a very fruitful hunt, because we found a Steelthorn berry bush! It’s been a long time since I had any Steelthorn berries, so I loaded up as many as I could fit in my arms. My leather pants didn’t have any pockets. Which really was an oversight on my part; pockets are very useful. I needed a pouch or something to carry anything I gathered.

I cut another square of leather off of one of the spares, and made another seed envelope. I put all the Steelthorn seeds that I had for lunch inside, sewed it shut as best as I could, then shoved it deep into my backpack to be with the apple seed envelope.

After lunch, I decided to collect as much ore as I could in a pile next to the chimney. There were loose rocks all around the base of the cliff that had veins of blue, so it was just a matter of hauling them over. It wasn’t too far but it was a lot of back and forth trips. Nora refused to help, but I couldn’t get mad at her. I wouldn’t want to carry rocks in my mouth either.

Now with a decent pile of ore, I spent the rest of the day trying to break down the rocks. I tried to break away the rock from the veins of blue. I just grabbed one ore, placed it on a bigger rock, then used a hand sized stone to smash at it until one of the stones broke. Usually it was the ore that broke, but if it was my smasher rock, I just grabbed another rock to smash with. Of course, that was exhausting work, so I would take a break from that by collecting an armful of firewood and then get back to smashing. By nightfall, I had enough blue bits to try to smelt and a good pile of wood to burn.

In the morning I started a fire in the chimney. I started by throwing in small sticks through the opening in the bottom, then once the fire was going strong I used the opening I made at eye-level to throw in bigger sticks. Then I threw in a handful of blue bits, then more sticks, then another handful of blue bits, and so on until I ran out of the blue bits that I had separated. I placed the bricks back into place to close the opening. By now there was fire coming out of the top of the chimney.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I just let it burn. I went around and collected more firewood, stacking it up near the chimney. Occasionally, I would use a stick to pull out the two bricks and throw in more wood. While I let it burn, I spent some time smashing more of the ores down to get at the blue bits. The blue bits weren’t that big, they were just little pebbles.

When I ran out of ores to smash, I started gathering another pile. There were only a couple more ores just laying at the base of the cliff that I could grab though.

Looks like I need to make a pickaxe first, so I can dig out more ore from the cliff... huh, never thought I would ever go mining in real life... If I wasn’t in the situation that I’m in right now then it would be pretty cool, but honestly, I’d rather not have had to do this.

Anyways, I hauled the rest of the ores that I could find back to the smelting area. The pile of ores wasn’t as big as the first pile I had made, but it should be plenty to make a pickaxe out of. I started smashing those ores as well to get the blue bits out. The growing pile of blue bits was already even bigger than the pile I had this morning!

What should I even call this metal? I can’t just call it the blue stuff... Are there blue metals back home?... Man, I should have paid more attention in chemistry class. Cobalt is an element right? And isn’t it blue?... maybe? I know there is a color called cobalt blue, so it must be blue. Makes sense to me.

Since Nora was lounging nearby watching me smash rocks together, I decided to ask her.

“Hey Nora, do you know what cobalt is?”

She just raised an eyebrow at me.

“Cobalt is an element back on my world,” I said, smashing another rock, then gathering the blue bits. “I’m pretty sure it’s a blue color like this. Anyways, I was just wondering what we should name this metal.”

I paused to catch my breath. Smashing rocks is hard work.

“Wait... do you know what the name of this metal is?”

She growled.

“Oh, ok. I guess even if you did, you wouldn’t be able to tell me anyways.” I shrugged and went back to smashing. “How about cobanium? ‘Coba-’ like in cobalt, and ‘-nium’... because it’s an element... lots of elements end in ‘-nium’.”

Nora rolled her eyes and barked.

“Huh? The first name I recommend?!” I turned to stare at her, fake indignation plain on my face. “You made me come up with loads of different names for you before you accepted one!” I sniffed and pretended to wipe away a tear. “It’s as if you don’t care about the great discovery we have made here. A new element!” I shouted, raising a fist to the sky. “Our names will go down in history!”

Nora’s eyes could not have been rolled harder, but she still grinned at my antics.

I stared at her, but she didn’t do anything else so I just shrugged and said, “Alrighty then, cobanium it is.” And I went back to separating the cobanium from its surrounding rock via smashafication.

By the end of the day, I finally let the chimney burn out. I had kept it going all day, making sure that there was enough wood in it to keep the fire continuously spewing from the top. Surely that was good enough... right?

It wasn’t.

After painstakingly digging out the ashes and charcoal, there were still pebbles of cobanium everywhere. Now, I didn’t really know what to expect as I had never done this before, but surely it should have melted together or something. So, I sifted through the ash to get out all the cobanium.

“Well, this sucks,” I told Nora, “I don’t think the fire got hot enough... if only we had some coal or something... would charcoal work? I mean, I know people use charcoal to grill stuff, so maybe it will. But isn’t charcoal just burnt wood? So wouldn’t it be the same as burning wood?”

Nora just shrugged.

“Yeah... I don’t know either... but I guess it has coal in the name, so we might as well try it out. We’ll try it tomorrow, let’s get dinner and go to bed.”

In the morning, I didn’t feel like making more stone rings for fires, so I just asked Nora to dig out some holes. She made four holes in a line behind the chimney. I gathered enough wood to overfill each of the holes. They were fairly large holes too, about knee deep and two feet across. Then I started a fire in the campfire ring and then used that to light one end of a bundle of sticks which I shoved into one pile of wood. That pile was soon all on fire. Then I did the same thing to each pile, so that all four piles were burning. While they burned down, I gathered more wood to prepare for the next batch. Of course, by now I had already gathered most of the fallen branches and wood to burn, so I had Nora push down a couple tall and thin trees. I used my stone axe to start chopping them down to size.

Once the four piles had burned down, I shoveled out all the charcoal leaving behind the ashes. I piled the charcoal next to the chimney, but not too close. I didn’t want it to catch fire. Then I started it all again, filling the four holes with wood and lighting them all on fire, and then going back to chopping more wood.

I spent the whole day doing that. Making charcoal.

I spent the next day also making charcoal.

My pile of charcoal was pretty big, so in the morning of the third day, I started another smelt. This time I started a fire at the opening at the bottom, but then, through the eye-level opening, I threw in two handfuls of charcoal, then one handful of cobanium pebbles, then repeated that until fire was pouring out of the opening and the top of the chimney. I closed the opening with the bricks and waited. I threw in more charcoal every so often, keeping it going hot for hours.

After seven hours, just an hour after lunch, I figured that that was good enough and let the chimney fire burn out. I dug out all the ash and whatever was left over. There was a lump of dark blue cobanium the size of a bowling ball. Did that mean that it smelted correctly? Maybe. I couldn't be sure until I tried making something out of it.

But in order to work with the metal, I would need some things first. I would need an anvil of some sort. A large rock with a flat top would work.

Or should I use this lump of cobanium for that?... I mean, I still have enough cobanium pebbles to make another lump like this one. And I could make a pickaxe out of that... Nah, I don't want to waste time or metal. I can't take the anvil with me, might as well use this to make something I will use for a while... Hmm... Do I even need to make the pickaxe? Let's see, I need an axe, a knife, four speartips, and a pot... my clay pot broke a while ago... But first I’ll need tongs and a hammer to make everything... yeah, nevermind, I'll need that pickaxe to get more cobanium. I don't have enough for everything.

With Nora’s help I eventually found a large stone, a boulder really, that had a flat top and was about waist high for me. I couldn’t move it at all, but Nora was kind enough to push it for me. She easily pushed it along with one paw. She put it about five feet from the chimney.

Now with a stone anvil, I set a fire in the chimney with the charcoal and put in the lump of cobanium I smelted. Once the lump was glowing white, I used thick sticks as tongs to place it on the boulder. With one hand squeezing the sticks to hold the lump in place, I used a stone to hammer at the lump. Pieces flaked off but most stayed together as I hammered the lump into rectangular shape. Every time the glow dimmed, I stuck it back into the chimney until it glowed again and then continued working at it with the stone.

Once I had a decent rectangle, I started hammering in the middle until it was too thin and split in half. I tossed one half to the ground next to the anvil and kept working on the other half. I hammered it into a rectangle again, but flat and long. Then I started hammering the ends into long triangles to form the points. I used a stick I debarked and sharpened to punch a hole two inches wide in the center for the handle. Then, with it glowing, I carried it over to the river and plunged it in.

Now, I needed the handle. I found a large branch that was fairly straight and used a claw to debark it. I whittled one end thinner so it could barely fit into the hole of the pickaxe head. I spread some tree sap around the tip then jammed it into the hole. Then I hammered three steelthorns into the top like nails to act as a wedge and apply pressure to the sides, that way the pickaxe head was firmly in place.

My pickaxe was done.