Nia is pretty excited for shop. In a general sense, of course, she's not specifically excited to make a knife, but she does like the idea of being able to do stuff in class that she will then be able to physically carry with her back to her room and own indefinitely, unlike potions, which must be hoarded until not using them will literally kill you, or literature, which is almost completely worthless, or languages, which you can technically keep but which require rather more upkeep than your average lump of metal.

Mold! Metals! Crucible! Bonking herself in the thumb with her hammer nailing the wood together for the mold ow! But she's not bleeding and will be okay again in a minute.

Shop, knife making, like he's done... only three times, actually, but it wasn't that hard, he didn't drill until he could do it in one try in his sleep like some people but he will get it done with time to spare. Last month he did this once, but he spent more time memorizing the common pitfalls for materials, especially for the common intro projects. For this one, they were... tin vs. zinc, right, scratch them to get the patina off and be sure it's not lead, then lick them, zinc has a flavor and it's... blood, right.

He explores the stocks, good and proper knife at the ready. Finds some bottles of of resin before he finds copper or possibly-tin, so thank you, shop, that was very helpful. Copper is elusive... but that's some zinc-or-tin and he stabs, scratches, and licks, and it doesn't taste like blood, so it's tin. He grabs about three people's worth before heading to the lab benches.

"Trading tin for copper? Verified tin, not zinc, will not produce toxic fumes if you try to use it for the knife!"

"Trade you," Bella says, swinging by Theun's table and holding out a copper bar, "I got like four of these dumping out a barrel. How do you tell the difference?"

"First you make sure it's not lead, then you lick it. Zinc tastes like blood, tin doesn't taste like anything. I... don't remember why that's the test, honestly."

"Well, they look very much alike." Ker-swap. "Pleasure doing business with you."

"You'd just figure there was something better than a taste test, you know? But yeah, likewise."

"There probably is but not that we have on hand. Maybe later there's spells for it or something." She retreats to her own table and drops the metals she requires in.