Chapter 15 - How to sharpen your blade for dummies (Patreon)

Not long after the attack I found myself back in the part of the cave network I'd slept in last night. I was keeping myself busy by cleaning my sword, since I’d already cleaned my phaser pistols. The Cardassian blood was really turning out to be hard to get off the blade, even staining it in places, possibly due to some unique aspect of their physiology that I hadn’t bothered to learn about. Once I was done I’d sharpen and then polish it following the ‘grain’ of the sword.

24th century metallurgy was advanced enough that it made most of this largely unnecessary, especially the manual way I was doing it versus just using some fancy bit of technology that could get it done perfectly in 20 seconds, but I had always enjoyed the act of taking care of my weapons, the physicality of it, the repetition that came together for a visible positive result. The combat engineer in me enjoyed the mindless, but useful act I guess.