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 Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:41 pm
"There's a good lad," Goldleaf mused, a brow raised as he stared on. A short bout of laughter caught Thorn's next question, and he lifted a foot, talons clawing at the air as he sighed, grinning widely. "Experience, m'boy! And knowledge! There is a good list of things to look for, you see. Luster, structure, hardness, streak, and any other obvious distinguishing properties. Of course, all these things must be observed with the object in front of you. It does no good to assess it in the water, because the water and reflections can distort things. Now, let me see...." He paused for a moment, brows furrowed and eyes shut, the feathers on the back of his head and neck rising slowly.
"Mmm, Zahavi, fetch me specimens and a pan, won't you dear?" He shouted, nodding his head as the skurri's head popped into view and out of the hut. A few moments of rustling and clanking, and she was coming towards them, dragging, about as big around as Goldleaf's head, with two rocks bouncing around in it. She laid it at the crafter's feet and then returned to the hut with a chatter.
"Good, good. There we are... now, this is the pan, obviously, eh? I've punctured the bottom with the tips of my talons, holes just small enough for grains of sand to pass through. You'll be wanting to invest in one of these, yes! But we'll worry about that later." He leaned his head down and pushed the rocks out of the pan and onto the bank, placing them about a foot apart.
"Now, Thorn! Pop quiz. Which is a metal?" He asked, eyes twinkling as he inclined his head, a small chuckle flowing through his throat.
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Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:37 pm
Thorn stared at the specimens in the pan. Some of them were obviously not metal; they were clearish, like dirty crystals. "Those are gems, right?" he asked. "There isn't metal in them." One of the specimens was dull gold in color, and sparkled a bit in the light. "This one... this one is pyrite?" He'd seen the harder-than-gold gold used before, though not often. However, some of the other rocks were tougher. Some had bands of what looked like metal in them. "Are... are those there, with the stripes ore? How do you get the metal out of ore?"
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Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:26 am
Goldleaf raised his head in surprise as his charge called out answers quicker than he could say, "Correct!" With booming laughter and a shake of his head to smooth his feathers, he leaned down to inspect the rocks. "Well, Thorn! Someone's already done half my work for me, I see, in teaching you so well! Yes, some are gems, others are their mineral counterparts, others are just rocks I found by the banks, and still others are metals, or hosts, and contain other things. Metals are usually shiny, or 'lustrous', hard yet still bendable - or malleable -, and it takes a lot of heat to melt them." The crafter beamed in delight as he looked down on the fledgling. "We'll get on with extraction, later, as that deals with heat and fire, sometimes water and lots of will, and I want you to learn the basics first. Eager, eager fledge~!"
"This shiny gold one is indeed, Pyrite! It is a mineral, not much of a metal, though it does contain iron. It's also been called Fool's Gold by many a crafter, as the inexperienced ones often mistake it for the other stuff." He nipped gently at his necklace with his beak as he ended the last sentence, then settled closer to the clearer ones. "Now, this here, it is clear and sort of has a white tint, you see. But so does this one here!" He opened his wings in mock-alarm, moving his eyes from one specimen to the next.
"Like I said before, looks can be deceiving! They are not the same specimen. In fact, one is called quartz, and the other is called halite. There's a very simple test one can do to see which is which of these. Do you know it, Thorn?"
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