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Old 18th August 2024, 02:25 AM   #8
HughChen
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Join Date: Aug 2024
Location: China
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Quote:
Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey View Post
These two keris have the same type of pamor, that is, "mlumah", or "laying down pamor" this type of pamor is made as I have already described and is placed on either side of the core as I have described, with the layers of material parallel to the core.

The reason that they look so different is because the Bugis(?) style blade has been subjected to minimal carving & the pamor material has not been surface manipulated prior to being carved. The Bali style blade has had the pamor material manipulated by punch work or grinding & has been heavily carved to produce the odo-odo.

Exposure of core in the Bugis blade is minimal, exposure of core in the Bali blade is greater.

The Bali blade looks as if it started with fewer layers of pamor than did the Bugis blade.

The blades were both made using the same basic process, but were subjected to different treatment during that process & came from the forge with different number of pamor layers.

Each blade is a common representative of its type, nothing special, nothing different, same process of manufacture but subjected to different treatment during that manufacture.

As for meteoritic pamor, that subject has been addressed multiple times in this forum, & I really don't feel like ploughing the same field again. Somebody else might like to lay the story out, or even a while spent with the search function might help. Here might be a good place to start:-

https://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?p=207340

I have made a number of blades using meteor as the contrasting material, no keris using meteor, but I did prepare some meteoritic material for another craftsman to produce a couple of keris, the blades I made that included meteoritic material were damascus blades with meteor included to add contrast. Once the meteoritic material is clean there is no difference in welding it than in welding nickel as an inclusion.

In fact, although we talk about the number of layers of pamor material in a keris, these are really nominal layers, we might have done X number of folds & welds, but with each weld we lose some of the material, then when we begin to carve the blade we lose more, so we might have produced a forging that has a nominal 128 layers of pamor, but if we cut it and etch the cut we might find many less than 128 layers, and the number of remaining layers will vary from place to place throughout the length of the billet.

200 years is not particularly old for a keris blade. In fact, very early keris, say, keris that pre-date 1500 usually have quite simple pamor, and the earliest type of keris, the Keris Buda has no pamor at all.
Hi, Alan, thank you for your explanation. But, if it's layers of billet parallel to the core being carved to form the odo-odo, wouldn't the apparence looks like this picture(it's a Damascus steel known for it's folded lines )?

For folded steel with many layers, if we cut a section or a bevel, we will be able to see many parallel lines because the steel block is folded in multiple layers, and the welded lines can be seen in the bevel or cut surface. But this keris does not show these layered features in the odo-odo and the bevel caused by the slotted middle. So, I guess, is this keris carved first, including the formation of odo-odo, the groove of the sword, and then welded with a thin layer of Palmer?
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