First Age research question(s)

[thrihyrne]

Firstly: it feels so great to be returning to my Tolkien fanfiction writing roots! It's been a while. A few weeks back while at my weekly sauna time I found myself thinking of my beloved Dwarves and how much fun it would be to write a story set in a time period that I was pretty certain didn't have a lot of Dwarf-centric fic in it already, the First Age. Gotta love a new research project! My issue is that I'm setting at least most of it during the massive project time of the creation of the underground fortress of Menegroth. Which is great fun, but I'm at a loss about dates. I don't have a real handle on the years to hang a few things on, like, say a completion date of Menegroth. Or is there a date range for the Nírnaeth Arnoediad? With a date somewhere of that battle and/or or a death date for Azaghâl I could work backwards and have what is a probable time frame for the Dwarves I'm writing about with an average (back then) lifespan of around 240 years. I figure I can be fairly loose in terms of how long it would take to create Menegroth, but I will be writing about a couple of Tolkien-named Dwarves from very early in their history and I don't want accidentally to be writing about them several hundred years before they're around. But I haven't found a great handy timeline for the peaceful time of Menegroth's creation and how long it takes to get from that to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

Any and all resource assistance/guidance is very welcome!