[A. G. Maisey]

The Prambanan meteorite has somewhere between 5% and 10% nickel content, depending upon which analysis we refer to.

10% of 220grams is 22 grams, so 22gm. of nickel. This is not too much for a normal size keris.

The way that meteorite is welded in Jawa is by putting little lumps of it into an iron envelope, you weld the envelope, fold and weld a number of times, in my experience 8 or 10 times is about enough, you know when the material is clean because the billet at weld heat does not give off sparks. The meteoritic iron combines with the other iron and there is a more or less even distribution of nickel throughout the billet.

If we want to weld a simple mlumah pamor, like wos wutah we can then go ahead, split the pamor billet and put the steel core into it, however, if we want to weld a more complex pamor that involves either billet manipulation in the forge, or surface manipulation of the finished billet for the keris, we will use more material, depending on the pamor, perhaps vastly more material, and this will call for a much larger basic billet of pamor to be forged, which means we need to use more of the contrasting material:- nickel.

If we were to weld, say, a ganggeng kanyut pamor, I personally doubt that 220grams of meteoritic material would be sufficient.

But again, all of this depends upon the type of forge we are using. Coke and charcoal eat more of the material than does gas, which is quite economical to use, and is as easy as baking a cake, maybe easier. It is virtually impossible to make a mistake with gas, no matter how hard you try it is just about impossible to screw up a job, provided you follow the rules.

Coke and charcoal, especially with the simple side blown forge that is typically used in Jawa and Bali, is much more capricious and requires something more than mere skill to understand.

In the old black-smithing text books and hand books you will find mention that not all blacksmiths can take a good weld, apparently what developed was a system where smiths would concentrate upon the work that they did best, so sometimes you had a situation where there might be several smiths in the same area, but all the difficult welding work was done by only one smith, who sub-contracted to the other smiths.

Welding iron and nickel is not really difficult, but when we weld iron (or mild steel) + nickel + high carbon steel (something like 01), which is what we do when we make nickel damascus, the level of difficulty does increase, especially if welding in a traditional forge, rather than in gas.

Seerp, much of what I know about keris and other things Javanese, does not come complete with documentation taken from somebody else's work, it comes from having spent a lot of time in Jawa and talking with Javanese people.

In fact, I find much of the keris information in books is misleading, incomplete, or misunderstood. This applies also to Gronemann. In one part of his description of the smith's work he omits a crucial part of the process. It is my guess that the smith concealed this part of the process from him. When I was taught this part of the process I was told that it was "sufficient for Mas Halen alone" (in Jawa most people pronounce my name as "Halen").

EDIT
I've received a private email that advises me that my use of "Mas" as a form of address for myself is incorrect, because I'm married and was a mature man when the (reported) conversation referred to in my last paragraph above took place (amazing how people know more about me than I do about myself).

In order to avoid any further confusion I wish to provide the following clarification:-

the man who used to address me as "Mas" was a long-time friend, we were on very familiar terms, I also addressed him as "Mas". Seniority and age were not part of the equation, our familiarity was the factor that permitted both of us to use "Mas", rather than "Pak" as a form of address.

I trust this explanation will satisfy any more queries of this nature.