Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Difficulty’s in working with meteorite as a pamor material

Rick · 13th March 2006, 04:00 PM

< Deep breath taken ; thank you Kai Wee >

Pusaka , if you read post #3 I think you would have seen the following passage :

" So you give a smith a chunk of meteorite, they think it is iron, they get it
hot, smash it with a hammer and it crumbles to bits. It'll happen 9 times out
of 10 this way. You need to "flatten it gently" and then sheath it in a
good quality iron and weld it back, very similar to refining wrought iron
bloom. This will help drive out all the "crud" and impurities as well as
getting the grain structure refined and allowing it to weld back to itself
without the red short effect (this is what the crumbling is commonly called). "

The Pandai Keris forges of Jawa and Madura are not flush with Yoder power hammers and all sorts of modern equipment to do their work . They would doubtless still use the old method by hand as described in the above passage by Dr. Hrisoulas .

So when you say :

" I’m guessing that modern Indonesian keris makers would get their meteorites from ebay like anyone else so nickel content and therefore pamor contrast would vary greatly depending what meteorite you selected. I am more interested in the difficulty’s a modern keris maker would face. "

My eyes roll ; why would an Indonesian Pandai keris (not Empu) waste his money (what little he has) bidding for meteor pieces on ebay for inclusion into the pamor of a keris which when finished cannot be proven to have meteoritic pamor without destructive testing when it would be so much easier just to claim meteoritic origin ?

So I guess that it would be *possible* for your scenario to happen but IMO it's very unlikely .

13th March 2006, 04:00 PM	#16
Rick Vikingsword Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 6,333	< Deep breath taken ; thank you Kai Wee > Pusaka , if you read post #3 I think you would have seen the following passage : " So you give a smith a chunk of meteorite, they think it is iron, they get it hot, smash it with a hammer and it crumbles to bits. It'll happen 9 times out of 10 this way. You need to "flatten it gently" and then sheath it in a good quality iron and weld it back, very similar to refining wrought iron bloom. This will help drive out all the "crud" and impurities as well as getting the grain structure refined and allowing it to weld back to itself without the red short effect (this is what the crumbling is commonly called). " The Pandai Keris forges of Jawa and Madura are not flush with Yoder power hammers and all sorts of modern equipment to do their work . They would doubtless still use the old method by hand as described in the above passage by Dr. Hrisoulas . So when you say : " I’m guessing that modern Indonesian keris makers would get their meteorites from ebay like anyone else so nickel content and therefore pamor contrast would vary greatly depending what meteorite you selected. I am more interested in the difficulty’s a modern keris maker would face. " My eyes roll ; why would an Indonesian Pandai keris (not Empu) waste his money (what little he has) bidding for meteor pieces on ebay for inclusion into the pamor of a keris which when finished cannot be proven to have meteoritic pamor without destructive testing when it would be so much easier just to claim meteoritic origin ? So I guess that it would be possible for your scenario to happen but IMO it's very unlikely .