"Nnnnoooot yet, nope."

He stands back from the bark-stripped twig he has inside a circle of various trinkets. It does not seem to have changed visibly, yet.

"It's not working as expected? Should I get a bigger timber for you?"

"No, no, I'm pretty sure it's working, it's just slow and kinda inside-out."

"I see. Well, we're done with the most crucial tasks to make sure my ship can keep going tomorrow - I've got a bit more work to do but Evara's done to my satisfaction - unless you volunteer for more work."

"I should stay with this if we don't want any accidental fusing of the metal – could get messy."

Evara shrugs. "I'd like to look at the books sometime? Starglass could be useful. But I can help out some more."

"I'll fetch you a couple of books. It's about sunset. I have electric lights - but I don't like running them when I don't have to, so lights-out is as soon as your metal experiment finishes, Akien."

"… Maybe I should've got started on the lights, first. But yeah, okay, shouldn't be too much longer."

"Well, I haven't made the things I want you to enchant yet as I had urgent work to do to keep the ship afloat tomorrow. I'll do that now."

"Mm, but – I mean, could've just used something from my bag in the meantime." Shrug. "I can sleep soon,  that's fine."

He nods and gets to work.

The sun sets. The electric lights are really quite poor compared to natural light.

Akien, fortunately, does not need much light to be able to do his work.

It takes him about an hour more to get much done in the way of progress, but then there is a visible gold tip to the stick! It is about an inch long and Akien can then detach it from the rest of the wood quite neatly.

"I thought you were doing iron?"

"When I do it in bulk, yeah, but I can't set up a proper processing area here? You said gold would net money, I thought it'd be smart to go for that first and start iron later."

"Gold will net money, yes. Rather a lot. But if you had a few kilos of it then it would depress the local market rather quickly." He looks suddenly grumpy. As if he should have asked for a percentage of the results in exchange for workspace.

"This is…" He pauses, picks it up and tries to get a feel for it. "Probably less than 200 grams? So hopefully it won't have so much of an impact. I can always split it into pieces if it's much of a problem."

"I'd guess 75 grams tops. I have a balance if you want to see for sure."

He looks at it. "I would've guessed a bit more – still pretty confident it's less than 200, but sure." Shrug.

"Small objects are small. I find many people don't have a good intution for it. I didn't ask this in advance so no fee on this one, but if you use my workspace and materials again aside from the lights you've agreed to make I want a 10% cut of the results, or a flat fee if you prefer..."

He brings out the scales.

The piece of gold weighs 86 grams.

"Do you have any idea how much this'll get? I assume it varies by location, but, a range?"

"One gold to a hundred copper is a good bet. And a meal in a decent restaurant costs five or six copper."

"How much is 'a gold' in copper?"

"I meant weight for weight. One gram gold to a hundred grams copper. I should just go ahead and make a list of common currency materials."

Pause. "I mean I knew I could plausibly live quite a lavish life back home, relatively, if I chose to, but I hadn't really realized it."

"I don't know that it's that valuable back 'home'? And a six copper meal is pretty modest and a great deal, come to think, that's mostly what I pay in ingredients when I cook. Sorry for the confusion."

He starts writing down currency conversions. 

Common currency materials

Silver. 1g silver = ~2-3g gold

Gold. 1g gold = ~80-100g copper = ~16-20g silvered brass.

Silvered brass. 1g S.brass = ~5g copper

Copper, steel, and starglass. 1g copper = ~1-1.5g steel = ~3-5g starglass

Various plastics. 1g copper = 10-30g plastic, depends on type.

Wooden tokens. Depends on town.

Rates variable - rough guide only