Summer 1, 123
Makt began his workday like any other nowadays: dealing with inane problems his coworkers dumped on him. Today, each and every single one of the coworkers asked if they could have the next few days off. This annoyed Makt to no end because there was no way the business could operate if everyone was gone. And of course, if the business had to shut down then he would take the blunt of the blame. The only thing Makt could do was offer someone double pay to take the shifts which was taken in a heartbeat. Makt had the suspicion that this set a bad precedent and that he would be put into this situation again.
At long last, Makt was able to get to his real work. He sat down and discarded the small lengths of wire the two had been toying with from before and cut a dozen more. "I wonder how these things I've been making actually translate to jewelry. I'm sure there are many applications but I can't quite picture them in my head. I suppose one thing I could do is twist them. When I twist wire together I give a three dimensional feel even when it is placed over a flat surface. I guess my imagination is the limit for how I can use twisted wire to add intricacy to my wares. And don't probably am not limited to this cheap silver I've been using; I think I can repeat these same techniques with wire of any material."
The young man held a length of wire in his pliers and as soon as he pulled his hands away the wires snapped. He had applied such a small force that it surprised him. "I've got to be extremely careful with this stuff. I can't afford to mess up too many times!" Makt tried to focus and try to calm his nerves. He made his best effort to sit still and concentrate on keeping his movements steady. He would pick up another length of wire and pull the ends and be careful not to twist too suddenly and instead tried to simply bend the wire around itself. The end result wasn't impressive, but it was a decent attempt.
Twisting wire was an odd thing for Makt to picture in his mind. He pictured intertwined coils wire wrapping around a necklace and it seemed pretty tacky. Left alone to his own devices, Makt took several lengths of the silver wire and placed them side by side. He then coiled the two wires separately and in opposite directions. He superimposed the coils on each other and realized that his really was as cheesy as he thought it would be. He went through the lengthy process of stretching the wire straight again and tried again. He tried placing the wires in an "X" shape and making a criss –cross shape but still was not satisfied. It was becoming increasingly obvious how ridiculously skilled one had to be to make wire twisting look good.
Makt was mildly annoyed that he couldn't come up with anything fabulous, but he decided to just go for it. He took a ring by his hand, placed it in a vice, and attempted to twist two pieces of wire around the ring. It wasn't enough that the wire was hard to shape but Makt now realized that he had to bond the wire to the ring as well! That meant he had to have a hot rod of metal at his side just to handle the bonds. It took a great deal of effort but Makt was able to twist, heat, and cool the metal over and over until the wire was twisted all the way around the ring.
During the twisting Makt had made sure to use more wire than possible. This paid off because he was able to melt and shift some of the wire to make space for a gem to be seated. Makt looked over the ring meticulously and filed away at his imperfections. His favorite part about jewelry making was that all but the most egregious mistakes could be corrected with enough good old filing! "Well, only because I'm working on low level stuff. I don't think I could fix a gem with filing!"
"Now all I have to do is cut a gem for this bad boy," Makt said to himself, "yeah, as if that's no difficult task on its own." The space between the wiring that Makt had cleared for a gem was not conducive to fitting the hand sanded shapes that he knew. The space was quite circular despite his best efforts. He was going to need his boss's help to learn a suitable cut. The young man made his way to the front room and told Karo about his issue. The old man grunted and looked at the time and stated, "Don't I pay you to make jewelry? I'd have thought you'd have picked up on this stuff by now. Very well, let's get this over way."
Karo held his pupil's creation up to the light and had a look of satisfaction on his face. "There's a lot of room for improvement," he began, "but I will allow it to be sold at this shop. Come, I will let you learn how to use the faceting tool. Have you got a gemstone in mind?" Makt nodded and held up an uncut topaz. It was a dark looking gem which the student thought might go well in contrast with the shiny silver. It was also a cheaper gem which would be a more forgiving financial loss if worst came to worst.
Days of working and Makt had barely spent any time with actual gemstones. He tacked this up to having spent so much time metalworking jewelry, but it was time to start learning how to do more than sanding gems by hand. Makt was tasked with obtaining a few more topaz gems for comparison while Karo prepared the lesson. Half an hour later and the two jewel crafters were huddled around the faceting machine while Karo explained its mechanics. "As you know, all the gems cut in this store are cut on a faceting tool. It's the only way to guarantee that we are using the right angles. You can still get a beautiful gem with hand sanding but the difference is night and day."
Karo handed Makt a set of instructions which went into detail for the main components of the tool. First there was the lap which was essentially a way to sand the gem. Makt had gotten experience manipulating this mechanism a few days ago so he understood how it worked. Next there was the water reservoir which could be adjusted to drip water onto the lap as the gem was cut. This cleaned the entire residue from the lap and the gem into a tray.
The final main component was the mechanism that held the gem into place. This complex mechanism was covered with so many adjusters that it made Makt's head spin. Then there were all the pieces of the tool that weren't even pointed out. Perhaps they were only for fine tuning to a degree that Makt couldn't even comprehend.
Seeing his student's confusion, Karo explained, "All these are used to adjust the angle of the gem. It may seem complicated but it's fairly simple. For any given gem and cut there is a sequence of angles and cuts. Lucky for you, I have reference documents that detail which angles to use. All you have to do is adjust the settings in until the angle matches the instructions. I am, of course, greatly simplifying the near infinite fine adjustments that makes a gem truly brilliant. We will go in depth on this tool at a later date. For now, just practice using it. Adjust it to forty five degrees."
Makt stared blankly at the machine and realized that he didn't know how to measure angles, "excuse me, Sir. I think I understand so far. But how am I supposed to know that the angle is correct? If the documents say forty five degrees then how can I measure out forty five degrees?" The old man looked puzzled for a second as if he had been asked how he knew to take a breath every couple seconds to avoid death.
The teacher asked, "boy do you not know what a protractor is? It's one of the most basic of mathematical tools!" Makt shook his head which caused Karo to smack his own forehead in frustration. He had known his pupil was poor at math but this was a bit much. Perhaps he would send the boy off for lessons.
"Well I guess we'll leave that part for tomorrow. Run along now, you've done enough for today." Makt was happy to oblige, but there was still the matter of cleaning up the huge mess he had made over the past few hours. "One day I'll have someone to clean up my messes for me."
