Summer 10, 120
Makt took a light jog to work this morning and burst into the shop nearly falling over in the process and stumbled right into the old man Karo. He was late to work and had missed out on performing his duties for the day. He hoped he wouldn't get reprimanded too hard. In his rush, he had tripped over a stone and ended up right on his butt. The young man's face turned white as he staggered backwards and apologized profusely. Karo seemed quite displeased with being touched by a very sweaty employee.
"Listen up lad I was going to let you interact with some high end customers today," Karo said heatedly, "If you come in late again I'll have to reevaluate letting you take on additional duties!" Makt was taken aback by the harsh words and dropped his head in shame. "Yes sir," he replied respectfully and headed into the workshop. Karo followed and closed the door behind him. "Today I will teach you how to manipulate wiring to make jewelry. Wipe that frown off your face and go fetch me the box of wire spools and the box of pliers." The boss was much too wise to let such a skilled employee go, but he had to be harsh or everyone would walk over him.
Makt brought the requested boxes to the work bench with much difficulty and sat attentively. He was curious as to why they were working on wire of all things. Anyone could use wire in a bracelet or necklace, after all. It seemed like something that simply didn't need to be taught. As that thought went through Makt's head Karo pulled out a small statuette that depicted a winged humanoid. It had a shiny ruby on its forehead and metal twisting round its limbs in an extravagant manner. The wire was split at the tips and had a slight and deliberate curl which must have taken forever to shape.
"Take a look at this," Karo said as his sour mood started to fade away. He was talking about jewelry now and that always cheered him up. "People don't come to a master craftsman just to pick up a well cut gem - many people can pick up a book and learn how to cut a gem. They come to a master to get something unique. What you see here is just a taste of what is possible with wiring. Today I will teach you how to create wired jewelry for you to sell." Makt was still in amazement at how absolutely astounding the statuette looked. If he would be able to make something like that then he had underestimated wiring this whole time.
Karo's first lesson would be to teach Makt about the tools necessary to manipulate wiring. It wasn't as simple as simply cutting off a piece of wire since, unlike most jewelry, the wire would be visible. Makt grabbed a piece of paper and took notes on the soft and smooth gripped pliers that were suitable for use. He was taught how to examine the pliers to ensure there weren't imperfections that might cause an indentation in the wire. Having found a couple burrs in his practice pliers Makt was instructed to take a file and remove them then move onto the next inspection.
After verifying Makt's pliers were smooth enough to use, Karo went on to teach the next step of preparing the tooling. He bustled over to a shelf and brought over a variety of liquids and solids. Makt recorded each material and watched as his boss mixed them under heat. Slowly the mixture turned into a very gooey concoction which Karo dipped his pliers into. Makt followed suit with his own pliers and the two waited for the pliers to dry.
"This is what we call a rubber coating," Karo explained, "You need to do this every time to give you the grip that you'll need to bend the metal in complex shapes. If you don't have enough grip then your pliers will slip and you've just ruined all of your work thus far."
Now that the two finally had pliers suitable to manipulate wire, Karo pulled out a spool of wire and handed it to Makt. "You're a competent metal worker so I assume you know about annealing metal. It is metal that has been strengthened and it is the only kind that is worth using for any jewelry." Karo reached into his pocket and pulled out a series of silver rings. Each ring looked as plain as the last and Makt realized what they were going to do. They were going to twist wire around the rings to make the low value silver rings look and cost a lot more.
Makt followed Karo's lead by cutting off a length of wire approximately one foot long. He used a snipping tool to cut the metal, as he had always done, but only now realized that this was probably a mistake. "Sir," he interjected, "what do we do about the ends of the wire?" Karo held up a needle nosed file and demonstrated how to clean up the cut end. The elder explained that it wasn't necessary to do that step until the end, however. Makt sheepishly copied the filing process until he had a wire with smooth ends.
Karo picked up a ring and continued, "The reason we cut off such a long piece of wire is that it is cheap and it's always surprising how much of the stuff you will go through. Never underestimate how much you will need, especially with curved jewelry like rings! It is much easier to make a larger curve and working with the extra metal than to make a curve too small and finding out you've got to start all over. Go ahead, try for yourself."
Makt took the old man's advice by making a repeating S-shaped curve along the edge of the ring with the wire. He made the curve much larger than needed and was easily able to work with the extra material. The young man then tried a much smaller curve and realized that he simply could not make any modifications. This was a unique thought for Makt since whenever he worked with other jewelries he could get away with having too little and adding more later. Makt's mind was now opening to this interesting concept.
As Makt fiddled around with his S-curves, Karo noticed that the wire was being pressed a little too hard. With each curve of the S the metal was being squeezed in addition to being bent. "Respect your own strength lad," he warned, "When bending and straightening the wire you need to make sure you're not squeezing it too tight. Take it slow and steady." Makt wasn't sure what the elder was talking about until he took a closer look. The boy had made the mistake of bending the wire as fast as his teacher had demonstrated and had not considered the strength of the metal.
Now that Makt had learned how to curve the wire, Karo showed him how to straighten it back out. It turned out that straightening out a wire that wanted to bend was quite a laborious process. A long wire was to be secured in a series of rubber coated vices and pulled taught. For short sections of bent metal, such as the S-curves that Makt had made, it was more practical to simply press the curves until they straightened out.
Karo demonstrated this by aligning the curve with the length of his pliers and clamped down. "You see," the man explained, "you simply cannot straighten a short length of wire in most circumstances. Take this statuette. Not a single piece of its wiring is long enough to straighten with a vice. The quality you get is how carefully and gently you are able to bend and straighten your wire."
Makt spent the next half hour straightening wire his employer had bent and subsequently trying to bend the wire back to the way it was without messing up too badly. With each repetition Makt could feel himself getting a better handle on how much pressure to apply to the annealed metal. He was still a good deal away from leaving no trace, but that would come with muscle memory and time.
Karo looked somewhat satisfied and would observe as Makt worked the wires over and over, making shapes that could be placed onto other pieces of jewelry as décor. Hours passed before Makt's wrists and fingers started failing out of fatigue. He was a trained jewelry crafter but he wasn't a machine.
"Alright lad, head on home for the day," the boss would say curtly, "you know what you're doing now so I expect you to be able to do this on your own tomorrow. And don't come in late again, remember that!" Makt nodded in agreement and took off for the day. In truth, he didn't care if he was fired in the slightest as he was already developing his own business plans, but he was going to play the fool for just a while longer.
