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 projects from Chapter 8 of the Shaping book requires a second book called a Codex, which basic observation tells me will be where clerics will make prayer beads and perhaps items for enchanting.

Basic Tools Needed to Complete Your First Work Order

The beginning Engineer's first shaping project 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 project.
   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 project.
   11. Lumber (3 pieces for the toy bow) - Balsa lumber is easy to work with and is sold in the Engineering Society in stacks of 10.

For your first project 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 project 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 TO #, where # is the number of pieces you need for your project.  Then, CUT LUMBER WITH 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.
   3. Using the drawknife, SCRAPE LUMBER WITH DRAWKNIFE to get it to its basic shape. The lumber in your hand will turn into your project name (in this case 'toy bow').
   4. 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 shaper for much of the project.
     a. CARVE <project> WITH KNIFE to bring out the details, or
     b. SHAPE <project> WITH SHAPER to give it more form.
     c. RUB <project> WITH RASP to smooth out the rough parts.
   5. Eventually you will get the message about clamps. PUSH <project> WITH CLAMPS.
   6. 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 project, so get out your bowstring (or whatever piece is required for what you're making) and ASSEMBLE STRING WITH <project>.
   7. Finally, you'll see that it's time to apply stain and finish your project. POUR STAIN ON <project>.
   8. If you're doing this for a work order, BUNDLE <project> WITH (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 Category:Woods for a chart of the wood types and their 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. These can be cougar claws, boar tusk, Sabre tooth, Angiswaerd tooth, Hele'la claw, Elsrael Tooth, Soot stained claw, Ice adder tooth, Jagged horn, and drake fang.

Shaft making

Ok shaft making is really simple. 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 your scissors out and cut lumber with scissors. (don't ask)

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 shaper from your container.

Step 2 – Shape lumber into arrow/bolt shaft

Step 3 – Put 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 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, can be hammer, knife, shaper, weapons of various types, etc.

Step 2 – Get boar tusk from your container.

Step 3 – Shape part into arrowhead/bolthead.

Step 4 – Put arrowhead in container

Step 5 – Go back to step 2 and continue till done.

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 shaping book

        study shaping book

Step 2 - put shaping book away

        get shaper
        then get shafts.
        shape shafts with shaper (this will use 1 set of shafts and put the rest of them at your feet slot)

Step 3 - Get arrowheads

        assemble my arrows with my arrowheads
        get glue
        apply glue to my arrows.

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 steps 9 and 10. 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 - put tool away

        get carving knife
        carve my arrows with my knife

Step 5 - put tool away

        get shaper
        shape my arrows with my shaper

Step 6 - put tool away

        get flights
        assemble my arrows with my flights.
        get glue
        apply glue to my arrows

Step 7 - put glue away

        get carving knife
        carve my arrows with my knife

Step 8 - If no stamp

        Arrow making is done.

Step 9 - If stamp

        get stamp
        stamp arrows with my stamp

Step 10- Put stamp up

        arrow making is done

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 - Codex (6250 kronars in engineering society)

Tool 3 – Clamps (can only be bought at this point)

Tool 4 – 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 personal Stamp if you have one

Right now only the shaper, carving knife, rasp, and stamp can be crafted. It would be a good idea to get a set 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.

About the books. 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 project up to step 7. Then:

Step 8 - Assemble backing with bowtype

        get glue 
        apply glue to bowtype (Comp Bows)

Step 9 - Assemble strips with item

        analyze item – This tells you what is needed next.

Step 10- Assemble short cord with item

        analyze item – This tells you what is needed next.

Step 11- Assemble pole with 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- put up last tool

        get stamp
        stamp item with my stamp.

Step 14- put up stamp

        end script with completed item.

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 project 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 personal Stamp if you have one

Right now only the shaper, carving knife, rasp, and stamp can be crafted. It would be a good idea to get a set 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.

About the books. 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 - Get shaping book

        study shaping book.

Step 2 - put shaping book away

        get clamps
        push my bow with my clamps

Step 3 - Use shaper when needed.

        Shape item with shaper.

Step 4 - Use rasp when A bulbous knot is present.

        Rub item with rasp.

Step 5 - Use carving knife if fine detail is needed.

        Carve item with knife.

Step 6 - Use clamps when needed.

        push item with clamps

Step 7 - apply glue to item. Step 8 – get backing

        Assemble backing
        analyze.

Step 9 - get stain

        apply stain.

Step 10- get strips

        assemble strips with item
        analyze

Step 11- put up last tool

        end script with completed item.

Step 12- put up last tool

        get stamp
        stamp item.

Step 13- put stamp away

        end script with completed item.

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. Step 2 – get Stain

        apply stain to my item.