Question Fine TK control or better?

Trying to figure if a character need fine control or better to etch/inlay/impregnate(?) silver just under the surface of a glass paper weight/ Thoughts?

I'm sure Imp could do something like that, if she had need to. Aegis might get there with practice. Lancer could, maybe if he did something similar to his technique with the paper swords to an engraving tool. It ultimately would depend on the character's ability to both get a fine enough point, and being having the strong enough field to do it.

I mean Ratel can focus her field to be very sharp, but she would probably lack precision with the claw points.

Sure, but there's a layer of glass in the way that they'd have to also cut through. I don't think that's what Cryptic is after. I think he's talking about using TK to reach past the glass to manipulate the silver alone.

Got the idea from Sunny Day in DC over on Twisting the Jellmouth

{quote]Xander built the six-foot Arch out of obsidian bricks against the greenhouse, next to the front door, fusing them together and creating the runes inside the bricks themselves. It took less than a gram of gold to form the runes he needed, not having to worry about erosion or tampering on even the most delicate work, thanks to their placement.[/quote]

To get the metal actually under the surface of solid glass, I think we're talking Warper effects here, not just TK. Either that or molecular level PK. However, there's a much easier method that tons of TKs in the Whateleyverse could use, and that's simply to do it while the glass is molten. As long as the metal has a lower melting point than the glass and your character can manipulate a molten mass as well as the wire, they could do some amazing stuff. Even if they don't have the fine control to bend the wire into shape or handle a viscous fluid, they could still bend the wire into shape by hand, pour the glass like an ingot the old-fashioned way, then use TK to lower the wire into perfect position and hold it there until the glass is solid enough to let go.

I was using glass as an example/the test case in the story, the final product would be synthetic gem stone.

Perhaps the synthetic crystal has a metallic element in its structure that can be caused to accrete somehow, similar to the way a 3d image can be laser-etched below the surface of glass. You'd still need very fine control to do it with TK. And the microfractures created by that etching make the glass block more fragile, but that's an amorphous solid. I don't know how a crystalline structure would fare.

Another alternative would be to look at the techniques for making synthetic gemstones.

This was theoretical research in the late 1990's, that became successfully applied research in crystallography by 2000.

Gemstones were being sold on the NY gem markets to fund the research in 2000/2001, and they were an unspoken secret within the diamond cartels.

By 2005 the researchers had managed to get the techniques working on an industrial scale.

Most industrial diamonds that need to be shaped for a specific purpose are made this way, and the energy-cost price-point of the manufacturing techniques is continuing to drop.

And that's just in OUR narrative universe. Without Gadgeteers, or Devisors.

By 2007/2008 academic year, the techniques would be only relatively obscure in the WU.

Also refer to JG's discussion via Eldritch, about the effects on the magical applications of the materials.

foe example, synthetic sapphire is easy to come by - in industrial quantities. What's not that easy is one-off colors for single gem-quality stones to integrate into a bespoke piece of custom jewelry. That's where a TK with molecular level control could make a comfortable living - as long as too many people didn't try to horn into the market.

It's the age-old tradeoff between mass production and artisanal production. The former is cheaper when you want a gazillion of something, the latter is far cheaper for one-off products. Industrial production requires tooling, which in turn requires priests trained technicians to run it, etc. A TK doesn't need any of that.