Making Cob

Finally, having finished the bellow, I decided that it would be best to make a draft furnace to maximize the amount of oxygen the fire would receive while not burning it out, which should not be a problem since I would be using charcoal.

After all, although it was certainly possible to just met copper and tin together using just a bellow and a campfire, that would take a lot of time and constant effort from the person in charge of using the bellow, while using a draft furnace would accelerate the process while also being less reliant on the performance of the person using the bellow as it would be able to get the fire inside it to reach the melting point of copper and tin regardless of whether a bellow was used or not.

Finally, having a plan in mind, I was once again forced to go into the system store with my 67 RP and look for info on building a draft furnace. ( I had spent 36 RP on the info regarding how to make a bellow). Unfortunately, once I entered, although I could find the knowledge, it was way too expensive, being worth 90 RP.

Unwilling to give up though, I decided to spend 3 RP getting the system to tell me what a draft furnace was made out of since the structure of a draft furnace wasn't exactly difficult to figure out since it relied on getting air from outside to go in from the base to increase the oxygen the fire received.

From there, I learned that the furnaces were actually made from this material known as Cob. Sadly, when asked the system what Cob was made from, it refused to answer and just told me to buy the knowledge on how to make it from the store.

Seeing that the system refused to give the info, I assumed that Cob was probably tough to make and required lots of steps to complete, with this idea being further reinforced by the 50RP price tag on the knowledge.

It all turned out to be really underwhelming, though, as when I returned to reality and now had the knowledge, I realized that Cob was just a mixture of clay, sand, dirt, and straw. It was that last part that stumped me though as I knew for a fact that there was no straw in the amazon.

Even after asking the system, it confirmed my fears, already having invested way too much RP to quit now though I decided to enter the wilderness and look for any types of plants that even slightly resembled staw in its texture as I knew for a fact that straw wasn't needed because of its durability against fire.

And thankfully, I was able to find a plant that was similar to straw, only being slightly bendier; it was the best I had though, so I decided to give it a shot regardless. Once having covered that, I thought about the clay situation.

I already knew that clay could be found near rivers and water puddles, so I knew that it would be good to look However, before I began searching for it under the soil near the rivers, I remembered that we had cleared about four miles of soil directly under the river and thrown it to the side.

Once having secured way more clay than I am pretty sure I would ever have to use (excluding artistic use), the only two things missing were just sand and water, both easily accessible, well the water at least, sand was a different story.

The soil under the river also contained sand, which meant that technically I did have all four ingredients in hand; the problem was that there was a lot more sand needed than clay when making Cob.

Of course, I could just follow the river until I found a small formation of sand as those could be found near pretty much all rivers; the problem though, was that they would probably be infrequent to find here as I had gone 4 miles without encountering any, so I would rather not do that if possible.

Regardless, although I was certainly not following the exact procedures that the system knowledge had given me, I still held the belief that it would probably work, mainly because even if I couldn't separate the dirt from the clay, or the sand from the dirt at the moment, I was still able to add more sand if needed. Cob could contain small rocks, after all.

I just created four 3ft by 3ft wooden planks that could be used to build the different layers of the draft furnace I was planning to build since it was a lot easier and quicker than doing it one layer at a time.

Actually, making the Cob was surprisingly easy, with the only real problem I faced being getting it to take shape as it was sort of separated into chunks (since I had to build the layers of the furnace by using small bits of Cob at a time) meaning that I had to basically close in all the gaps by stretching it together or padding it down.

Once that was done though all that was left was figuring out how to make a mold that I would be putting the molten bronze into since I did need a mold if I was going to be making anything.

At first, I had been considering to make one out of rock, but that would be a terrible idea since although I certainly could shape stone to some extent, it wasn't like I could get any sort of detail or specific shape to be formed, only a fundamental outline, meaning that I had to use a material that could resist the heat required for bronze to be formed; therefore I chose Cob.

That wasn't the end of my troubles though, as I still needed to find an easy to melt yet hard substance like beeswax to make a Cob mold since the mold would have to be put to harden by fire in order not to fall apart when the bronze would be put in.