Blacksmith Basics; Thursday, Second Period [06/09].

[special_rabbit]

If the shop that day seemed a little more cluttered with a wide variety of different pike pole heads....don't worry about it. Amaya had maybe been trying to work through some things, things that had nothing to do with pike poles at all, and that wasn't why any of you were here, anyway. You were here for knives!

"At this point," Amaya started with a nod, and a faint grin on her face, because it was hard not to get excited about quenching day, "your daggers should start looking more like daggers, and if they don't, well....we might need to go back to the drawing board or perhaps work a little bit more on filing, but I think you've all got it close enough, I'd say, unless you feel otherwise. If you do, don't worry about going back a few steps if you have to, it's important that you feel good about what you've got before progressing forward. And today, we're going to be going over some of the more basic finishing techniques, or, at least, finishing when it comes to the blade itself, and those techniques involve heat treatments, especially tempering and quenching.

"First things first: I've had some iron heating up in my own forge for a bit now, so I'd like each of you to grab one of these rods with your tongs and put those in the buckets of oil you've got at your station. That's what we're using to quench the blades, and you'll have a much better time if you quench with warmed oil than cold. If you cool your blade...especially a thin blade like the ones we've been working...too fast, you're more likely to crack it, and that's no good. Anyway..."

So she had them heat their oil, then check their blades, and get started on the first step: normalizing. Reseting and redistributing the steel to a more normalized state and relieving stresses. Heating it and then letting it cool in still air, repeating it about two or three times, and she showed them how to use a magnet to help determine if you're doing it properly, because heating it properly will cause the metal to become nonmagnetic, which was just neat, when you got right down to it. She explained how color could also be taken into consideration, but that's something that'll develop with experience, since there's a fine art to just telling it's ready by looking at it.

Next step: the quench! Amaya explained that quenching is basically what's going to harden your steel, and oil is generally better than water, and they were basically rapidly cooling the steel, changing the makeup of the steel to strengthen it. Heat it up, quench it to cool it, then heat it back up again. Heat and quench, heat and quench. You want to be quick about it; the steel cools pretty quickly even just in the air, and then get it in the oil with a slight back and forth or slicing movement. Be careful of flare ups, and submerge the blade for about ten to fifteen seconds.

Do a file test on it, to see if the file bites into the steel. If it does, the blade's not hard enough, time to go for another round. If it doesn't bite into the steel, your knife is hard enough, and you've got to finish it up with some tempering that wasn't too dissimilar to baking.

"I usually just pop these guys up on top of the forge for that step," she explained, doing just that and showing off a few other things that were already up there. Mostly pole pike heads, at the moment. "And that's probably where we'll leave them until next week, when we'll see how they turned out and finish up on making 'em a little prettier. Any questions before you all get started?"

Yoga; Thursday, Third Period [06/09].

[died8yearsago]

It looked to be another day of moderate rain, but it seemed to have gone over well enough last week that Rosa figured they'd keep on it and meet at the beach again today.

"So far," Rosa started, "we've been focusing a lot on different poses and asanas, but today's going to be less about movements and more about the mind. Pratyahara is one of the eight limbs of yoga, which we touched on when we talked about Pranayama, or breath control, but with Pratyahara, we make the conscious effort to draw our awareness away from the external world and outside stimuli. Aware of our senses but detached from them, we turn our attention inward.

"This is probably the one most people have the most trouble with." Not Rosa. At all, it was honestly her favorite part of yoga, but, then again, she definitely didn't consider herself most people. "But we're going to go over a few asanas that should help encourage better Pranayama. They're going to seem simple, maybe even pointless, but the point today isn't what you're doing out here," her hands swept around her shoulders a little to indicate the physical self, "but what's going on in here." Finger pointed to her head.

Which she was sure that, for some of them, was a pretty disturbing place. Or a completely empty one.

Library, Thursday, 6/9

[noonedecidesmyfate]

It was fairly quiet in the library today but it was cold. There were chilly breezes coming from somewhere. Very chilly breezes.

Belle was wishing she'd brought a sweater with her, or a cloak, or at least worn something with sleeves today and perhaps a longer hemline.

When a gremlin walked through carrying a toolbox she decided it was best not to ask and to just hope he was fixing things somehow or at least not making them worse. The banging noises she heard shortly after didn't fill her with confidence.

Driving: From Woe to Go, Period One

[wrongkindofsith]

The go karts were once again set up in the Danger Shop, though today they seemed to have panniers with what looked an awful lot like shell shaped grenades in them. Clearly nothing to worry about there.

"You'll be racing today," Cara told them. "And we're going to make it interesting." It was entirely possible that your teachers' research had extended from movies to video games and that one of them was very, very competitive.

"And you will be able to change the positioning of yourself and your classmates with... turtle shells and banana peels?" Jaskier was still a little lost on that, but it was probably magic.

Powerful magic. Cara clapped her hands together. "So strap in and get ready."

Because there was also some jaunty music going as the race track took on an interesting look.