Sirek, the really big problem for me is trying to work from photos on a computer monitor.
In virtually all cases, those photos are very much less than good, and even with really excellent photos, what I see, and what everybody who looks at their own computer monitor sees, is altered by the many processes that the image that is put into the camera goes through before it arrives on the screen.
In other words, what I see, and what each of us sees, is at best only an approximation of the actual keris.
However, to distinguish between recent and old, good and poor, genuine and false is something that even a person with much knowledge and experience often has a degree of difficulty with when the object is right there in his hand.
However, there are some indicators, or "tells" that tend to push an experienced person's opinion in one direction or another. Sometimes these tells are very plain, sometimes they are not, so often when the opinion is formed it must be regarded as only an opinion, not something that is known with certainty.
When I give an opinion on a blade like yours please remember it is an opinion only. It is not an infallible pronouncement. If I held the blade, my opinion could change.
However, in the matter of the combination of the various components of this keris, the matter is entirely different. I do not need to see the same amount of detail, nor to examine it in the same way as I do with a blade. A slight difference in the angle of the photograph is not so important, a slight variation in colour or texture doesn't really matter. I can see just about all I need to see in even a poor photo --- and your photos are by no means poor.
How to pass this sort of knowledge on?
I do not know how.
It would be possible to draw up some sort of primer, but it would be about as useful to the average collector as a text book on probability theory would be to a student who had not yet completed primary school.
I simply cannot see any substitute for long experience. I'm sorry.
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