Shaping guide
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Shaping is one of the disciplines in the Engineering craft that consists of two basic parts. The first is gathering wood and refining the wood into lumber, also known as lumberjacking. See the page on Lumberjacking for more information on tools, dangers, wood types and locations, and turning raw wood into lumber. Once you have the lumber you can make things from it. In addition clay items will be possible at some future point in time.
Shaping products from Chapter 8 of the Shaping book requires a second book called a Design codex; which is used for products with additional fine design details such as detailed prayer beads.
Basic Tools Needed to Complete Your First Work Order
The beginning Engineer's first shaping product will most likely be a Toy Bow. Here are the basic tools you will need:
- 1. shaping Instruction Book - for knowing what you're making.
- 2. Engineering logbook - for if you want to make money doing work orders.
- 3. scissors (available at Outfitting Societies) - for marking and cutting your lumber stacks to size.
- 4. drawknife - for creating the basic shape from your lumber.
- 5. carving knife - for carving fine detail.
- 6. wood shaper - for further shaping your product.
- 7. rasp - for smoothing out rough spots.
- 8. clamps - for holding your pieces together.
- 9. bow string - for assembling with your lumber.
- 10. stain - for finishing your product.
- 11. lumber - Balsa lumber is easy to work with and is sold in the Engineering Society in stacks of 10.
For your first product you will not need wood glue, sandpaper, the codex, leather strips, or backer material.
Basic Steps Needed to Complete Your First Work Order
- 1. You need to study your shaping book: STUDY BOOK for the product you want to make before you cut your lumber. You may need to re-study the book if you find yourself forgetting the instructions.
- 2. With your stack of lumber in one hand, and your scissors in the other, MARK MY LUMBER AT # where # is the number of pieces you need for your product.
- 3. CUT LUMBER WITH MY SCISSORS. You're not actually cutting the wood, but you're cutting the twine used to mark your pieces. The lumber you need to use will be at your feet. Stow the scissors and the lumber you have in-hand, and pick up the lumber you will use.
- 4. Using the drawknife, SCRAPE LUMBER WITH MY DRAWKNIFE to get it to its basic shape. The lumber in your hand will turn into your product name (in this case 'toy bow').
- 5. Now you have to pay attention to the messaging, which is pretty clear on what you need to do. You will switch between your carving knife, your rasp, and your wood shaper for much of the product.
- 6. Eventually you will get the message about clamps. PUSH <PRODUCT> WITH MY CLAMPS.
- 7. Sometimes you will get mixed messages, telling you to apply the stain and assemble the pieces at the same time. Stain is always last to finish the product, so get out your bowstring (or whatever piece is required for what you're making) and ASSEMBLE STRING WITH <PRODUCT>.
- 8. Finally, you'll see that it's time to apply stain and finish your product. POUR STAIN ON <PRODUCT>.
- 9. If you're doing this for a work order, BUNDLE <PRODUCT> WITH MY (Engineering) LOGBOOK to get it ready to turn in for money.
- That's it! You're done!
Lumber Use
Each of the lumber types can be used for multiple items you can make but some are better at specific items. See Woods for a chart of the wood types and their material properties. It can help to keep it open in another browser tab to quickly reference.
Fletching
Fletching arrows involves making arrowheads from critter parts at present and making shafts and then combining them with flights to create an arrow. At some future point we will be able to possibly use bone, metal, and stone to make arrowheads, which will expand the types of arrows we can make. This area of the guild will explain the only tools needed to make the items for the arrows and the final product.
Tools to use for Arrow making
The tools for making arrows are basically most all of the tools required for shaping. Those are as follows:
- Tool 1 – Shaper
- Tool 2 – Carving Knife
- Tool 3 – Glue
- Tool 4 – Feather flights only from the shaping society.
- Tool 5 – A part from some critter to make an arrowhead.
- SKIN CREATURE FOR PART
These creatures yield these arrowhead material parts: cougar claws, boar tusks, sabre-toothed warcat sabre teeth, marbled angiswaerd teeth, hele'la claws, elsrael teeth, young firecats' soot-stained claws, sinuous ice adder teeth, storm bulls' jagged horns, and lava drake fangs.
Shaft making
Ok shaft making is really simple. You'll need ~50 ranks of engineering. You get some lumber It does not appear to matter what you get wood wise as long as you can make it masterful. Masterful shafts all appear to work the same no matter what wood its made from. So first you get some lumber. If you use 2 pieces of your lumber you can make 2 sets of shafts that will make 5 arrows each. That would be 10 arrows you can make from 2 pieces of your lumber. So if you have a stack of lumber and only want to turn 2 pieces into shafts you do the following:
- Step 1 – MARK MY LUMBER at 2 (pieces)
- Step 2 – GET MY SCISSORS and CUT LUMBER WITH MY SCISSORS. (you're cutting the binding holding the lumber together)
That should give you in hand 2 pieces of lumber with the rest at your feet or on the ground where it may have been when you started. Now with the 2 pieces of lumber either in hand or on the ground. Here are the manual steps to make the shafts.
- Step 1 – GET MY SHAPER from your container.
- Step 2 – SHAPE LUMBER into ARROW SHAFT or SHAPE LUMBER into BOLT SHAFT (syntax is specific for arrow and bolt shafts)
- Step 3 – PUT MY SHAPER in your container.
Now you have your shafts.
That's it you now have shafts in hand. Count shafts, analyze shafts, appraise shafts careful, hug your shafts, kiss your shafts, just don't get shafted. Your done making shafts for now. Note in my work with shafts I find they all combine and it does not matter what wood you use. So bottom line here is use the wood you can make the shafts at masterfully done. The type of wood does not matter to the final product only the fact that its masterful.
Arrowhead making
Arrowhead making is pretty simple just like making the shafts. You'll need ~50 engineering ranks to shape arrowheads, for any part type. You must have some skinned critter parts though. Early on that means boar tusk or cougar claws. Each tusk or claw will make 5 arrowheads. So if you want to make 20 arrows all you need is 4 of them. As an example lets say you have 4 boar tusks. Put them in your container. So to manually turn 4 boar tusks into arrowheads you do the following steps:
- Step 1 – GET TOOL to shape the arrowhead. The tool can be a hammer, knife, shaper, weapons of various types, etc.
- Step 2 – GET BOAR TUSK (or other arrowhead material) from your container.
- Step 3 – SHAPE <PART> INTO ARROWHEAD. The word arrowhead must be typed completely. The parser does not accept any abbreviated forms.
- Step 4 – PUT ARROWHEAD in container
- Step 5 – Go back to step 2 and continue till done.
Note: although the shaping instructions books claim you can make metal arrowheads with ingots and nuggets, this is not actually implemented.
Arrow making
Arrow making can get fairly complicated. But its also fairly easy if you follow a few simple rules. Once you shape the shafts proceed to the shaping part and stay there till you get a message to do something else. Make sure your shaping book is turned to the right page for the right arrows your going to make. At this point I need to mention the difficulty of making arrows. The first two arrows that can be created are Cougar-claw and boar-tusk arrows. These are considered simple difficulty and that means with no techs, no career and no hobby you need 200 skill in engineering to work them masterfully. With techs and a career or hobby and good tools you can probably bring that down into the 140 range but arrows are up there in difficulty. The steps to make arrows look as follows:
After Step 2 you always get this message - arrowheads to continue crafting some unfinished – which means you now have to assemble the arrowheads to the shafts, which is step 3.
Step 1 - get your shaping book
- STUDY MY SHAPING BOOK
Step 2 - put shaping book away
- GET MY WOOD SHAPER
- GET MY SHAFTS
- SHAPE MY SHAFTS WITH MY SHAPER (this will use 1 set of shafts and put the rest of them at your feet slot)
Step 3 -
At this point you will go to step 5, unless you got the message to use the carving knife of step 4. This message is the only one you get to carve something - A handful of rough edges require carving with a knife to remove. - Any other message you just keep using step 5 with. You will repeatedly do step 5 unless step 4 is needed till you are asked to assemble the flights in step 6. This is done when you see the message - You need another arrow flights to continue crafting some unfinished – which directs you to step 6. At that point you will do steps 6, 7 and 8 in order. If you have a stamp to stamp the arrows, you will not do step 8, but will do step 9. You will know you have performed the last step when you see the message - Applying the final touches, you complete working on some – which is the end point in making your arrows.
Step 4 -
Step 5 -
Step 6 -
- put tool away
- GET MY FLIGHTS
- ASSEMBLE MY FLIGHTS WITH MY ARROWS
- GET MY GLUE
- APPLY MY GLUE TO MY ARROWS
Step 7 -
Step 8 - If you are not stamping your work: Arrow making is done.
Step 9 - If you are stamping your work:
- GET MY STAMP
- MARK MY ARROWS WITH MY STAMP (this can only be done for a short period of time after item completion)
This will complete your first set of 5 arrows.
Shaping Bows, Weapons, and Items
This document goes through how to shape items in the shaping craft. At present this can be used to shape all items currently in chapters 1 (short pole), chapter 2 (shortbows), chapter 3 (longbows), chapter 4 (composite bows), chapter 7 (items), chapter 9 (staff weapons), and chapter 10 (tables). Chapter 8 requires a codex to be able do the items in chapter 8 (beads, totems, figurines, statuette, statue). This will allow clerics to make prayer beads with lumber at a higher quality bead and takes (beads are extremely easy to very easy which means it takes between 25 and 50 skill in engineering to make the beads) much lower skill and no techs if they lumberjack their own lumber. Other wise you will need the shaper specialization technique to handle the lower quality lumber. Some of the other items in chapter 8 might be for enchanting.
Now you have 3 ways to get lumber to do these tasks. You can lumberjack to get it and refine it (high quality lumber), or you can simply forage stick/branch/limb (which is now random on what is obtained) and when you get enough of the type you want process it (low quality lumber), and last you can buy it in the engineering society as already processed lumber (medium quality lumber). I would only use the low quality lumber if your not doing work orders and just making things to learn engineering skill. Work orders can be either the high quality or medium quality lumber though you will get better pay for the work order using the high quality lumber. For items you want to make for yourself or for others use only the high quality lumber.
You will need tools and materials to perform these tasks. These are covered in the rest of this document.
Tools and materials needed
The materials needed for the items in the shaping book can vary but they include bow string, backer, short cord, leather strips, long pole, short pole, and lumber. The lumber can be obtained in 3 ways and the short pole can be made. All the rest of the items must be purchased in the Engineering Society building.
The tools required for shaping are as follows:
- Tool 1 – Shaping book (apprentice, journeyman, master)
- Tool 2 - Design codex (6250 kronars in engineering society)
- Tool 3 – Clamps (can only be bought at this point)
- Tool 4 – Wood shaper
- Tool 5 – Carving knife
- Tool 6 – Rasp
- Tool 7 – Glue (can only be bought at this point)
- Tool 8 – Wood Stain (can only be bought at this point)
- Tool 9 – A maker's mark if you qualify for and own one
Right now only the shaper, carving knife, rasp, and maker's mark can be crafted. It would be a good idea to get a set of these crafted tools even if they are not top of the line. A good set of high or medium carbon steel tools works really well to improve the quality of your output item.
Everything in the apprentice book is in the journeyman and masters books and everything in the journeyman book is in the masters book. So basically it just comes down to what you can afford. The apprentice book is under a gold, and the journeyman is 15 plat and the masters book is 62.5 plat kronars. The apprentice book will teach to around 200 skill if you have no techniques, but get enough techniques and that could drop to around 150 skill. I think the journeyman books will teach to around 425 at the very least and probably higher.
Follow the steps above in the section on shaping your first product up to step 7. Then:
Step 8 -
Step 9 -
Step 10 -
Step 11 -
- ASSEMBLE MY POLE WITH MY <ITEM> (does 4 poles for tables)
- All tables but one require long poles, one uses short poles
- ANALYZE <ITEM> – This tells you the next step.
Step 12 -
- put up last tool
- end script with completed item.
Step 13 -
The possible messages produced during this process are as follows:
- Shaping with a wood shaper is needed to
- Shaping with a wood shaper should even out the
- ready for shaping with a wood shaper
- ready for continued shaping with a wood shaper
- A bulbous knot will make continued shaping difficult unless rubbed out with a rasp.
- A cluster of small knots deforms the wood's structure
- is ready to have more fine detail carved with a carving knife.
- grain looks solid and ready for continued knife carving.
- appears free of defects that would impede further carving with a knife.
- You do not see anything that would prevent further carving with a knife.
- The bow now must be pushed with clamps or a
- The bow's pieces and backing material are now ready to be clamped together.
- You need another finished bow string to continue crafting
- You need another bone, wood or horn backing material to continue
- You need another finished leather strips to continue crafting
- You need another finished short leather cord to continue crafting
- You need another finished * wooden pole to continue crafting
- Applying the final touches, you complete working on
At this point you have completed your product or should have. You can now bundle the item with your logbook and proceed to the next item if you are doing a work order. These are the basic manual steps you can use to finish your item. Remember if you get stuck you can always analyze item and should get information such as the following:
- >analyze my shortbow:
- You analyze every aspect of the Nisha shortbow and nod as your understanding grows.
- When crafting is complete this will be a type of finished shortbow.
- With all major carving work completed, the wood is ready for the application of stain.
- From the progress so far, it looks like the shortbow is masterfully-crafted.
- The shortbow is a somewhat challenging piece to make.
- You estimate that it is very nearly done.
- Roundtime: 9 sec.
Notice the fourth line in the above information. It tells you the next step you need to take in order to complete this shortbow. So if you get stuck ANALYZE the item and do what it indicates.
Bow Enhancements
This document discusses the process of performing enhancements to bows through lamination or increase/decrease the draw weight of a given bow. At this point I have found that you must have some pretty good quality lumber to be able to do this. If you were to use society bought wood like maple for a shortbow and try to laminate or increase the draw strength of the bow you would fail (with no techs, 530 skill, good quality tools). I found to be able to actually do this I had to have lumber that was much higher quality than that found in the society buildings and you only get that if you lumberjack it yourself or get it from someone who did.
Parts and tools required
To do bow enhancements you need some parts you buy in the society building, such as backer for lamination, and leather strips for cable-backing. Lightening the draw strength usually just involves shaping of the bow to take more material off of the bow.
For the tools you need the following:
- Tool 1 – Shaping book. (apprentice or journeyman or masters)
- Tool 2 – Clamps (can only be bought at this point)
- Tool 3 – Shaper
- Tool 4 – Carving knife
- Tool 5 – Rasp
- Tool 6 – Glue (can only be bought at this point)
- Tool 7 – Wood Stain (can only be bought at this point)
- Tool 8 – A maker's mark if you qualify for and own one
Right now only the shaper, carving knife, rasp, and maker's mark can be crafted. It would be a good idea to get a set of crafted tools even if they are not top of the line. A good set of high or medium carbon steel tools works really well to improve the quality of your output item.
Everything in the apprentice book is in the journeyman and masters books and everything in the journeyman book is in the masters book. So basically it just comes down to what you can afford. The apprentice book is under a gold, and the journeyman is 15 plat and the masters book is 62.5 plat kronars. The apprentice book will teach to around 200 skill if you have no techniques, but get enough techniques and that could drop to around 150 skill. I think the journeyman books will teach to around 425 at the very least and probably higher.
Manual steps to enhance a bow
When you enhance a bow by lamination or cable-backing you also add some weight to the bow. When you lighten a bow you remove material from the bow and it gets a bit lighter. So you basically laminate a bow to increase its durability. You will find if you used a wood that has poor durability it almost appears like there is very little enhancement made to the bow. There are differences but its really subtle. Keep that in mind when you enhance bows.
The basic steps to doing bow enhancement by hand requires you to have the bow in the left hand, tools and ingredients in your container, the Shaping book must be turned to the right page. The first step is to get the shaping book and study it, Then put it up and get your clamps and clamp the bow. Clamping the bow will generate a message that tells you the next step to take and it will be either step 3 or step 4 or step 5. At that point you will cycle between steps 3, 4, or 5 until you need to clamp the bow one more time. For lamination the end process would be using step 6, then step 7, then step 8, then steps 9 and 11. For Cable-backing the end process would be using step 6, then step 7, then step 10, then steps 9 and 11. To lighten the bow you would simply keep using steps 3, 4 or 5 till you use step 6 and then do steps 9 and 11.
Step 1 -
- STUDY MY SHAPING BOOK
Step 2 -
Step 3 -
- Use wood shaper when needed.
- SHAPE MY ITEM WITH MY WOOD SHAPER
Step 4 -
- Use rasp when the messaging results in: A bulbous knot is present.
- RUB MY <ITEM> WITH MY RASP
Step 5 -
- Use carving knife if fine detail is needed.
- CARVE MY <ITEM> WITH MY CARVING KNIFE
Step 6 -
- Use clamps when needed.
- PUSH MY <ITEM> WITH MY CLAMPS
Step 7 -
- APPLY MY GLUE TO MY <ITEM>
Step 8 –
Step 9 -
Step 10-
Step 11-
The possible messages during the process are as follows:
- Shaping with a wood shaper is needed to
- A bulbous knot will make continued shaping difficult unless rubbed out with a rasp.
- The wood is ready to have more fine detail carved with a carving knife.
- appears free of defects that would impede further carving with a knife.
- grain looks solid and ready for continued knife carving.
- materials are ready to be compressed with clamps or
- Glue should now be applied so assembly can begin.
- appears ready to be reinforced with some backer material.
- Some wood stain should be applied to the wood to finish it.
- appears ready to be strengthened with some leather strips.
- is ready to be assembled with leather strips
- construction shows improved signs of durability and wear resistance
- weight and draw strength appears significantly
- Close inspection of the completed
- You study the instructions about bow cable-backing
- You study the instructions about bow lamination
- You study the instructions about bow lightening
Note the variation in the messages comes mostly from the Steps 8 and 10. Where you assemble the backer or the strips and then analyze the bowtype. Its entirely possible not all the messages that are possible have been seen yet. In that case you may need to add a few more to this set.
Making Beads and totems from Chapter 8
Beads, totems, figurines, statuette and statues can be made from chapter 8. However, this chapter requires you have a codex. What you do is set yourself to the item in the shaping book you want to create. Then you turn to the chapter and page in the codex for the type of item you want to shape. After study of both books starting with the shaping book, you proceed just like you were making a normal item, bow, or staff weapon. The steps are included in the MANUAL STEPS TO SHAPE section.
Repair of wood based items
To repair any item you make with a bow requires two things. Sandpaper and stain. Having the repair techs helps a great deal as well. The steps to repair wood based items are as follows:
Step 1 – RUB MY ITEM WITH MY SANDPAPER (The CLEAN and SCRAPE commands may be substituted for RUB).
Step 2 – APPLY MY STAIN TO MY ITEM