Where can we get Cold Blue? Attn Alan Maisey or anyone who lives in Australia
 

A while back ago Alan Maisey suggested Cold Blue as an alternative to arsenic coating on keris pesi / tangs. My Australian cousin is coming to Indonesia pretty soon and I would like to ask her to get Cold Blue for me, but she doesn't have any clue where to get Cold Blue.

Is there an Australian online shop somewhere that can deliver Cold Blue? If not, can someone please recommend an equivalent stuff that works similar to Cold Blue?

Many thanks!

Gun shops.

I've used Birchwood Casey:-

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/419...ue-3-oz-liquid

A little bit goes a very long way. The bottle I have now is still about half full and I bought it maybe 30 years ago.

I suggest that your cousin should do a ring around of gun shops in her area and ask if they stock the stuff.

Its major value is as a touch-up agent, it can help save an old stain job that is looking a bit holey around the edges. You could probably do a complete blade with it, if you exercised care.

Many thanks, I will pass the info to her.

Just out of curiosity, given that you live in Indonesia where it shouldn't be too difficult to get your blades stained in the traditional manner, why do you want to go this route? While there are certainly many other methods to bring contrast into a pamored blade it has always been my understanding that only a warangan treatment will yield the proper colors for the particular materials used in the blade. Perhaps i am wrong about this. :shrug:

David, I am not presuming to answer on behalf of Silkreeler, and I hope that he will give you his own response, however, getting a blade stained well, and correctly, is no longer easy in Jawa, and I doubt it has ever been easy in other places in Indonesia.

For many years the primary source of quality warangan was Toko Vera in Pasar Gede, Solo. They used to supply re-sellers all over Jawa, and further afield, however, a few years ago the old stock that they had been relying on for many years ran out, and they obtained some more from India, which was not much good at all and caused the users a lot of problems. Now that has run out as well and apart from the difficulty of locating satisfactory material, government regulation now prohibits the import of warangan, which is, of course, a form of arsenic. Toko Vera is owned by members of my wife's extended family and is run by her nephew and his wife.

The cost of getting a poor warangan job done in Solo has escalated. It is now extremely expensive to get a job done that 5 years ago I would not have accepted, but now you cannot get a better job done. Decent short-term work is still being done in Surabaya and other places in East Jawa, but the operative word is "short-term". It looks pretty OK directly after it has been done but it will not last for many years, as the old jobs used to. I've seen these current jobs, both from Surabaya and from Solo go bad within 2 or 3 years.

I believe that this problem will sort itself out sooner or later, people will begin to use lab quality white arsenic, but those people will be educated, qualified people who have the required govt. qualifications to be in possession of and use, this hazardous chemical, and because of this required certification + the cost of the material, a blade stain will no longer be a nice, comparatively cheap little addition to a blade, but will cost as much as or more than the blade itself.

Blades have not been stained in Bali for as long as I've been going to Indonesia --- dealers there say they are stained there, but they are not, Bali blades are sent to Surabaya.

Those of us who live in the western world and who do understand how to correctly stain a blade now carry knowledge that could well disappear in Jawa.

Thanks Alan for that detailed response. :)

Precisely!! It is quite a headache to get a properly done warangan job in Indonesia. Besides, in my case, I only want to get a portion of my blade re stained (the pesi, or some areas of the blade where I just rubbed off the rust along with some stain) ... I don't want to remove the entire coating from the blade, so I don't mind having a portion of the blade having a different color hue from the rest ... From what I know no warangan guy would like to immerse a partially whitened keris into their warangan solution.

By the way, Alan, when you said the solution can do the entire blade, does it mean it would still give color contrast between pamor and the iron?

It is not an overkill to say that it is a dying art. A friend quoted me a Chinese guy who passed away couple years ago. He was a Chinese warangan expert in Surabaya who was a stickler to tradition. He said according to the traditional method, you would have to watch for the climate and observe the clouds, among many other factors, to ensure your warangan job would do well. A guy once didn't observe this requirement, and his keris didn't get the optimum color, it was "not properly dried because the weather was more humid than it was supposed to be".

Heck, I'm not sure if I'm quoting stuffs right, anyone who knows better please correct me ...

Is it this one?

http://www.amazon.com/Birchwood-Case...ood+Casey+cold

When you do a stain job, the first thing you must do if you want an acceptable job is to get the entire blade back to a bright, clean white. In other words you strip the entire blade of whatever is on it, whether that is rust, or whether it is part of an old , worn previous stain.

With cold blue you can spot little bits of a worn stain job, and if you're careful, you can blend the touched up spots carefully so you can't really see where the spotting has been done.

On the art of staining, a normal commercial job is done by soaking. In my opinion this usually results in a pretty lousy job. The only way to get a good job is to do each blade individually, and whether you do it with the brush on method, or the massage method you do need to have a fine understanding of climatic conditions to get a good job, and also be prepared to go back to a white blade again and again until you get it right. Experience does help, but no matter how experienced somebody is, not every blade comes out perfect every time, and with a good blade, perfection is the only acceptable result.

You can get some sort of a result under almost any conditions, even inside in the middle of winter, but for a truly good result you need a clear sky with no clouds --- clouds cause a less than brilliant, sparkling finish --- middle range humidity so that the drying time between applications is neither too long nor too short, and a temperature that is neither too hot nor too cool. In Jawa, probably early morning in the dry season is about the best time to do a stain job. Whenever you do the job, wherever you do it, the weather is vital for perfection.

Yeah, that link looks like the stuff I'm talking about. My bottle looks a bit different because I bought it a long time ago, but its probably the same stuff.

Ah yess!!! I recall him also saying something about clouds ...
Anyway, thanks for the answer, I will get that solution and try my luck. I guess I should avoid the pamor areas as it will stain the nickel part just the same?

I'm not sure that it will stain nickelous pamor in the same way as it will ferric material. I have never tried a full blade, only ever used it to touch up worn areas. I think that the effect on nickel would probably be that it would give it a brownish tinge, but I think this could probably be polished off with steel wool on a toothpick. With care you could fake a proper stain I believe.

However, the problem is this:- not all pamor is simple modern nickel. If its pamor Luwu it will most likely contain iron, and that will stain dark and be uncleanable. If it is high phosphorus iron it will stain just the same as the rest of the blade, but with a different colour.

Best to limit the use of cold blue to a touch up job.

Many thanks. I will stick to my original intention - covering patches previously filled by rust (mostly black are anyway) as well as tangs / pesi. Off to harass my Australian cousin!!

Such products are difficult to find. I was told that the chemical composition prevents from shipping via air mail.

My Australian cousin got me my Birchwood Casey pen and boy I was so happy with it. First tried it on the tip of my Dwi Sula that was bent and got hammered back to shape, scratching off some of the warangan in the process. Then I re stained that part to perfection with the pen, the color was unnoticeable. Will try on something more ambitious later. Thanks again, Alan Maisey.

You're welcome.

Yeah, it does a nice touch-up job, one of these days I'll try it on a complete blade.

I don't have a pen, I've got a very small bottle of the stuff, near as I can figure I've had that bottle for close on 50 years, and its still got about a quarter in it. Mostly I use it to touch-up my rifles.

I usually pay 200,000 IDR – that's about 17 USD/18 AUD/13 EUR – at a small shop in Jakarta that sends the blades to Yogyakarta AFAIK. I'm quite satisfied with the results, a good contrast, and so far the color didn't rub off or faded. Of course only time will tell how long it lasts, but for this small amount of money I'm not going to experiment myself. I'm not sure, however, if the clouds are properly observed … ;)