Keris with pesi repair?
 

Today i want to share a keris that i bought a few months ago. From my (very) limited knowledge i would classify its dapur as Sengkelat and the (rather battered) warangka as Ladrang Kadipaten of Solo origin. I can't make out any distinctive form of pamor but maybe the keris just needs restaining.

The thing that puzzles me is the area right above the pesi. It looks like someone sawed of a dove-tail shaped piece and replaced the pesi and possibly the ganya. Strangely the replaced dovetail-shape has the same color as the rest of the keris while the ganya seems to be slightly darker.

What do you think? Old repair or original manufacturing technique?

Hi Mr Wizzard,

Nice keris , so far i can see on the photo it is indeed a repair of the peksi.

Regards,

Danny

One of my keris has a same little square and I have also wondered what it could be?

-a part of the forging process?,
-is it talismanic (adding metal of spiritual value)
-or a previous type of tang/pesi repair

Wondering if anyone knows the meaning of it, and this is often done.

Hello Mrwizard, I think that this is indeed a peksi repair but I have never seen it by keris from Indonesia but by kris from the Philippines. Look for example here:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4743

And I think that there will come out pamor after a new staining/warangan.

Regards,

Detlef

Thanks for all the input and the pictures of other samples.
The repairs look almost exactly like the repair on my blade.

This seams to be a common technique to repair a
broken peksi. In fact it must have been so common the technique was also applied to moro kris.
The latter is rather surprising (or at least to me) as the Moro kris is primarily a slashing weapon. The forces on the tang area must be immense and i wouldn't trust my life on a repair like this -- even if the smith is a master on fire-welding as the keris and kris makers doubtlessly are.

Here is how i think the repair process looked like
1. soft annealing of the blade
2. cutting a rectangular piece from the broken peksi tang area
3. forging a replacement peksi with tight fitting rectangular top -- ideally using material from the old ganja.
4. fire-welding the parts together. Even if the old smiths had a flux like borax this would be very difficult as hammering on the interface would certainly lead to deformations.
4. Hardening & annealing the blade
5. Refinishing the the now surely oxidised surface of the blade

I'm am sure after refinishing the blade must look like new. The rectangular areas we see, appear after several etchings and mostly because there is some oxide on the interface indicating an imperfect weld. This might be okay for a stabbing weapon like a keris but not for a kris.

If i would repair a broken tang on a kris it would probably look like the kris in this thread:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=11663

Edit: or like this
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showpo...2&postcount=14

Please correct me if you think i am wrong... :shrug:

Best Regards,
Thilo

I have seen this in a number of Javanese blades.

I have also seen at least one blade where the tang was inserted into the blade base, and erosion had exposed part of the tang; I have also seen a very old blade where the tang had been inserted into the blade base and it is now loose. These two examples are in my possession, but I have not seen them for a while, and I do not know precisely where they are. In both these blades the tang material appears to be the same as the blade material.

I am not altogether certain that these methods of fixing a tang to the blade are repairs. I strongly suspect that these tangs were fixed in this way at the time the blade was made.

When a blade was made in accordance with traditional requirements, it was made to a specific formula which involved length as well as mid blade width. There are a number of ways to approach this creation of a numeric value attached to the blade, but the blade value always needs to be balanced to the requirement for the person the blade was made for.

I do not know, but I strongly suspect that this method of tang fixing was used when material in the forging from which the blade was made, was insufficient to permit a tang to be forged from that forging. In an ideal world, this would, of course, not occur, but in virtually all human endeavour there is an economic bottom line.

There are a number of ways to repair a broken keris tang, all of them much more simple, much more cost effective, and much stronger than this inlet method of fixing a tang.

Thank you very much for this information!

Regards,

Detlef

Thank you, Alan. This is a very interesting piece of information.

I don't know anything about keris making and the information available on the web is rather unspecific. I wrongly assumed that the tang was part of the original package like it is done for modern european damascene techniques as shown in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F27WzpIAiQ

Of course it is also possible to use a compact package and weld in a seperate tang during the final folding step of the package. This saves precious metal and is a lot easier than performing an inlay repair on an old blade.
Another benefit is that the smith can not only make up for wrongly calculated material but has good control of the pamor at the base of the blade. Drawback is that if too much material is removed the outline of the welded-in tang becomes visible.

So the rectangular shapes we see might indeed as well be the result of the original manufacturing technique.

Best Regards,
Thilo

Thilo, normally the tang would be forged into the forging used to carve the keris from, but if there was a miscalculation and a specific numeric value needed to be satisfied, then one way of doing this would be to mechanically fix the tang.

Yes, the tang could be scarf welded, however it would be useless to scarf weld to the uncarved forging, as the carving would cut through the weld, and a weld after the carving was complete would destroy artistic value and be very obvious.

The easy solution would be to mechanically fix the tang, and if this were to be done with a shrink fit near to the end of carving, another weld heat could be put into the sorsoran and the tang would be quite firmly attached.

All this is hypothesis, but when we so have many easy ways to repair a tang, I just cannot see anybody going for this very difficult method of inletting, or dovetailing.

I have made a few keris, and I do understand the making process.I have put forward the idea of miscalculation, but there is also the possibility of a flaw that is uncovered during carving. If a flaw is uncovered that interferes with the integrity of the point or the tang, one way of rescuing something from the exercise would be to remove the flawed section of forging and fix a separate tang.

Possibly if we thought about this matter long enough we could come up with other possibilities, but the one possibility that I have some difficulty in accepting is the one of a repair. It just doesn't make sense.

Again, thank you for the very interesting information.
There is really a lot to learn from this forum :)

And exactly that is what i thought could be the origin of the rectangular shapes right above the peksi. Of course, as you indicated, it would be a rather stupid idea to choose a technique that is prone to lead to inferior results that early in the manufacturing process.

You are of course right, such a complicated repair doesn't make if there are easier ways that don't compromise the appearance of the keris.
Therefore i have to agree that shape we see in the specimen above is most likely the result of a repair/fix
during manufacturing.

Best Regards,
Thilo