Chapter 9: Enchanted Mold
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Han Tiezhang, hearing the boy's question, spoke while looking a little disheartened.
"At the moment, the forge only has one commission, but it's a bit problematic, and with the time left it'll be difficult to finish it completely."
'Only one ?' Zhu Rong was a little confused by this.
Being a small, unpopular workshop, it was normal for them not to have many commissions,
but having only one was too little, even for them.
He wondered what the reason could be.
As far as he could remember from his past life, they always had a few jobs, from simple tool repairs to weapons of various grades.
Back then, he'd joined them two months from now, and at that time, work was never lacking.
So why did they only have one commission now?
'Maybe it's too big of an order?'
And just as he thought, it was indeed a big order that the workshop had taken on two weeks earlier.
Apparently, someone had been looking for several blacksmiths to produce a large number of weapons, and Han Tiezhang, hearing about it, had decided to accept part of that job.
Two hundred double-edged iron swords.
The price offered for the production was one low-grade spirit stone, a much higher price than average, considering the cost of materials and labor in general.
It was known that a low-grade spirit stone was equivalent to one hundred gold coins, a big sum for a forge of this size.
Han Tiezhang had thought it was worth it, since the profit wouldn't be low, and so he accepted.
The estimated time to complete all the weapons was two weeks, and technically, they should have finished by now.
But apparently, luck wasn't on Han Tiezhang's side.
One of the previous workers had quit for some reason, and that had seriously delayed the production.
At the moment, they had produced just over half of the total required weapons, and with the time left, Han Tiezhang didn't believe they would manage to finish.
'Well, this is new. I didn't know something like this happened here,' Zhu Rong thought.
Maybe he hadn't noticed it at the time since he would lose himself in his own world whenever he started forging, not to mention the fact that this incident had happened long before he'd joined them.
That said, eighty-two swords in two days.
It was way too much for a small forge like the Old Iron Shop.
He realized Han Tiezhang was now forging as many swords as he could before the deadline.
Han Tiezhang, seeing him lost in thought, said:
"Don't worry, it's not that big of a deal, and with you joining us, we should be able to speed things up a bit," he said, patting Zhu Rong on the shoulder.
Even though Han Tiezhang said it wasn't a big deal, he knew it actually was.
A missed commission, a poorly handled job, and so on,
small things like that would damage the forge's reputation in the long run.
He had decided to turn this place into his current source of income, so how could he just leave things as they were?
He couldn't sit by and do nothing.
A small issue like this wasn't anything too complicated for a Saint Blacksmith like him.
Now, with him included, the forge had five people in total, and even if each of them made one or two swords a day,
it would still take more than two days to complete them,
and that's assuming they all worked at the same pace, which they didn't.
He knew the current staff at the forge well, so he was very aware that they wouldn't be able to make them all using ordinary methods.
So, he decided to take a different approach.
"Old Han, what if we use molds?
We might be able to finish all the remaining swords within the day and leave the final touches for tomorrow," he said.
The method he was suggesting was casting, pouring molten metal into pre made molds to create certain objects faster.
This technique helped speed things up, especially when it came to small items like nails or low-grade knifes.
It was a method with its uses and advantages, but for weapons like swords, it wasn't exactly the best choice.
And sure enough, when Han Tiezhang heard his suggestion, he shook his head and said:
"Kid, you've got talent, but there's still a lot you need to learn.
See, if we use a method like that for something of this size and thickness, the metal will cool on the outside first, leaving the inside of the blade to take much longer.
Needless to say, that won't just lower the quality of the blade, it could leave internal flaws like air bubbles or cracks that'll cause the blade to break much faster.
In short, its durability would drop to practically nothing.
And you get that I can't go selling stuff like that, right?
If an accident happens later, i will be the one losing face," he said, thinking he might have overestimated the boy a little.
Zhu Rong didn't bother arguing.
Normally, he'd be right, but that only applied if you used traditional methods.
High-level blacksmiths didn't rely solely on the usual ways of doing things; they improved them, adding more and more innovative techniques.
Using an ordinary mold would give exactly the result Han Tiezhang described, but Zhu Rong had no intention of using a regular one.
He looked at him and said:
"If we go with normal mold casting, then you'd be right. But if we use an Enchanted mold, we can avoid the problem of uneven cooling."
"A Enchanted mold? Kid, what kind of place do you think this is?
That thing alone would cost the forge several low-grade spirit stones.
Even having one inscribed with a rune formation would cost too much, and you know we don't have that kind of money lying around right now," he said, a little surprised by the suggestion.
Enchanted Mold were common in bigger forges since they helped speed up the production of many items, but those places could afford them, they couldn't.
Han Tiezhang knew how to engrave a little, enough to enchant a few weapons here and there,
but he wasn't at the level of engraving a runic formation of that kind.
Formations like those were too expensive even to buy, let alone inscribe.
"Old Han, don't worry about that. Just make me a mold for those swords, I'll take care of getting it inscribed," Zhu Rong said, not directly saying that he'd be the one to do it.
For his past self, inscribing a low-grade formation like that would've been child's play, but for his current self, it was a bit more troublesome.
With almost no cultivation, he could only sit down and carve it line by line.
It would take him a few hours, but he didn't have many other options at the moment, so he decided to go for it.
'Since I'm at it, I might as well take a look around while I'm there,' he thought as he waited for Han Tiezhang to make the mold.