ElizabethKerner

Morning all - and possibly good Monday morning Thomas P. I really can't thank you enough for all the thought and expertise apparent in your posts. Your generosity with your time and knowledge is very much appreciated. Richard - I love that idea! As it happens, it isn't applicable, but oh, I can see it... Thomas - ye gods, it IS a small world! My husband is Steven Beard, one of the software designers for the UKATC, and of course he has worked with David and Nuria. They cleverly managed to zip out of the UK astronomy mess! Amazing. Nice to meet you! Oh, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to complain about the jargon, I fully understand that you were simply stating things in the clearest possible fashion. I really meant simply to bemoan my own ignorance! Sorry if it came across otherwise. Frosty - yes, I do care about internal consistency - you have to in any kind of writing, as you know. Alas, my sojourn here has mostly taught me that it is highly unlikely that my characters would have a cat's chance in Hades of learning how to smelt iron from first principles. Not gonna happen. Just means they will have to get creative in the matter of utensils. Darn it. And here we come to the disappointing bit of the Boffin Post - I may not be able to use much of this terrific information. Especially as Thomas P. has reinforced what I was starting to realize - even Lanen's mom, who has been a smith for 40 years, never really had to smelt her own iron. She bought it like everybody else, from those whose profession it was to produce it for the smithing trade. It may simply come down to their having to work with wood - though again, interestingly, my husband mentioned copper as well, or possibly bronze. I am going to have to think about this at length - I really don't want to center the story around the Swiss Family Robinson idea, my work tends to be character driven and there are others vastly better qualified to do the 'they figure out how to smelt iron and make a forge from basically nothing' scenario, should they wish to do so. You won't get rid of me easily, I warn you. At the very least I'll lurk for a while and try to learn a little something, even if only which books to read on the subject! Thank you again, everyone. You have been terrific - and if I do get to use any of this great stuff, I will most certainly credit the site and the person who gave me the information. Especially as Thomas P. knows, metaphorically, where I live! Cheers, Elizabeth Kerner

OK, first, I am SO glad I've found you folks! What a great site, so many kind and knowledgeable people willing to help. Thank you all. My favorite suggestion is yours, Glenn - to hie myself to a blacksmith. Oh yeah! I'd love to, but as it happens I've got to get the first book written before I do that. I don't land my characters in the anvil-less past until the second book. That said, nearer the time (about this time next year) I will indeed do my best to find a kindly smith or two in this area (near Edinburgh, Scotland) and donate my effort if they will take pity on me and teach me a thing or two, let me learn the basics (including the drudgery jobs), maybe if I'm lucky work with a bit of iron. What a great idea. Thomas Powers - wow, thanks for that lesson in smelting! I found it fascinating - or at least, I found the bits I could understand fascinating. There is an AMAZING amount of jargon in this craft! Of course there is, it's ancient. I'm going to get my engineer husband to have a look at your post and see if he can help me with the hard words Alas, I am even more ignorant than you realised. My husband has the same problem, he's a software engineer for astronomy, and when he starts explaining he has to rachet down a few notches before normal humans can understand. I think I'm gonna have to get a better dictionary... I'm assuming that my smith Lanen would have acquired enough knowledge in 15 years of smithing to know how to set up a smelter and later a field forge, maybe on a stone (I like that as a swift and mostly painless way to get started) with a stone hammer to start with. Love the field furnace as a long low structure facing into the prevailing wind, Matt, thanks! They're not too far from the coast so they could set up there, in fact that solves another plot problem! Would she make tongs first, or a hammer? I'd assume that those green wood tongs would last a VERY short time? Then, presumably, some kind of small-ish anvil, and over a year, cooking pots, axes, knives, garden spade and fork, maybe eventually a plow if they can get enough iron together. And thanks all for the dragon suggestions, Frosty, but - as it were - that's my end of the business! Er, they're not on an island, they're stranded in an earlier time. And they don't so much have dragons as are dragons - some of the time - it's complicated! I'll spare you the fairly baroque plot in this forum, but if you really fancy answering dumb questions I'd be happy to have an experienced field smith as a source of real information. Happy, did I say? Ecstatic, perhaps, is the mot just! Though I love the idea of dragons thinking that they could smelt with just their breath. There are a couple of cocky teenagers who would be up for trying just that, without realising that you need - er - carbon, was it? I quite like the idea that the dragon fans (bless them) would learn something! I'm happy to provide my e-mail address for off-forum discussions, if you think that would be more appropriate. Or does everybody want to play? Thanks again, everyone, for the kindly welcome, the vast amounts of information, and the good humour. :)

Dear Thomas - Thanks for your swift reply! I will be glad to mention both this site and the folks who help me out. It's the least a writer can do. Boffins in specialist subjects are, in my experience, highly honoured adjuncts to the fantasy writing profession - mostly because we don't want to look like idiots. My first three books are: Song in the Silence, The Lesser Kindred, and Redeeming the Lost. The next book is untitled as yet, but due out April 2011 (-ish) from Tor Books in New York. Oh - and did I mention that the two blacksmiths in the books are women? Figured it was time for the ladies to get a look-in. :)

Elizabeth Kerner here. I don't, alas, forge iron, though my one taste of that wonderful craft was instantly addictive, and I would love to take it up a bit later in my life. I have decent upper-body strength, and I loved the feel of the hammer, and to be honest (how sad am I?), even the shaping of a tine for a garden fork, which was as much as the kind smith would let me attempt, was entirely wonderful. For the moment, however, I'm a published fantasy novelist, and two of the main characters in my books are blacksmiths! I am about to embark on an extension of that series, and am going to land my poor unfortunate characters in a place where they can't go out and buy an anvil, or indeed anything else. They are going to have to start from first principles - though they do have access to coal and wood, and to iron ore. Oh, and to a really strong heat source! (Dragons as heat source for a forge - it'd be different!) Can anyone suggest a good book that might have this kind of information, e.g. how to make an anvil from first principles? Or does anyone feel like being a kindly boffin to a humble novelist and answering what will probably be a lot of really dumb questions? (now there's a tempting offer!) I can offer only an acknowledgement in the book, and I know I'm asking rather a lot - but if it sounds like fun, I'd appreciate it immensely! And I'm quite happy to just leave it open to the forum and let everybody chip in with their two cents. In any case, I'm glad I have found this forum. Elizabeth Kerner