Difficulty’s in working with meteorite as a pamor material

[Pusaka]

How difficult is it to work meteorite pamor? I have been told that it is much harder to work meteorite pamor to achieve a desired pamor then it would be to make it with pure nickel material. Has anyone got any photos to explain the posibilitys/dificultys? Is it difficult to produce a good controlled pamor with meteorite material?

[Andrew]

What type of meteorite are you referring to?

I would suggest a search of the archives for discussions about meteorites. Here's an interesting thread:

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ghlight=meteor

[Rick]

Read this .

Gentlemen:
I am honored to present to you the comments of Dr. James Hrisoulas on meteoric material, its components, and words about the forging process.

Part 1

Iron meteorites are characterized by the presence of two nickel-iron
substances: kamacite and taenite. These, combined with minor amounts of
nonmetallic and sulfide minerals, form the three basic types of Fe/Ni
meteorites. Depending upon the percentage of nickel/iron, these are:
hexahedrites (4-6% Ni) octahedrites (6-12% Ni) ataxites (12+% Ni) .

Now the most common of these would be the Octahedrites, and these, when
properly etched exhibit the well known Widmanstatten pattern* (that everyone
goes gaw-gaw over...).
http://www.meteorlab.com/METEORLAB2001dev/widpatrn.htm
This unique crystal structure/pattern is the result of
the combination of the two nickel-iron minerals kamacite and taenite being
present in approximately equal amounts.

Now that we have the bare bones basics out of the way I can get into the nuts
and bolts. There was no way that any "ancient" smith/empu or anyone could
know just from looking at any given fragment of Fe/Ni material exactly what
they got ahold of. Now one must realize that the majority of Fe production at
this time was more or less hit or miss when it came to "quality" and even
then, that was speculative at best. Grading bloom iron was done by eye,
experience and sometime "voo-doo metallurgy"..otherwise known as a blind
guess, Now with experience and consistent methods in smelting a smith could
get pretty good at separating the good from the not so great and go from
there. I am NOT saying that the material was "bad," but it all depended upon
the abilities and the skill of the smith involved, This is where the
legendary smiths got started...Ones that had the "eye" and the "feel" to make
decent iron, to make decent steel and to make the best whatever. Anyway,
back on track.

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 top "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).
Now it is not unusual to have to add additional native Fe during this
refinement as you loose to scale, oxidation and weld material loss between 3
to 7% of the volume every time a weld is made. The amount of loss varies with
the skill and the working habits of the smith.

Note: the following is for a "one piece laminate blade", not one with a
centre core of higher C content steel:

So you have the stuff "refined" and then you go onto the lamination... Now,
since there is very little C content, this will have to be welded to a higher
C content material, and from what I could find from doing examinations of
blade shards, it must of been between 0.80 and 1.25% C material. as the C
content in the laminate was at the norm, between 0.40/45% and 0.60/70% C..
(Usually 0.40%+ C is required to harden...this does vary a bit...)

Now Ni does not form carbides, but the Ni content is not high enough to form
a C barrier to C migration, so by the time the Fe/Ni material is refined,
whatever C content was in the native Fe would be more or less homogenous
throughout that material, and depending upon where the piece was positioned
in the fire, additional C may have been introduced to the material or removed
from it...


For a three piece (Two laminate with one high carbon center section) blade
the following was usually the way it was done:

When the Fe/Ni is welded and laminated back unto itself, whatever C content
that was in the native steel that was introduced into the mix would now be
well distributed into the blade... This is why a lot of the traditionally
made Keris have a higher C content center steel section within the laminate,
as by the time the blade's outer "skin" (the patterned section) had a
somewhat lower C content than would be optimal for hardening.

Now this is all in very general terms here, and there are exceptions....
-
First, there has been a lot of rumor surrounding the composition of Fe/Ni meteorites, and most of this mentions Ti... Now in all the Fe/Ni material I have examined, and from all the material I have seen analyzed, Ti simply is NOT present. Period.

"Typical" content of various elements are:

C: 0.05 to 0.20% Co: 0.50 to 0.72% Cu: 0.03 to 0.09% Cr: 0.04 to 0.10%

Fe: 87.3 to 92.9% Ni: 4.1 to 12.9%+ P: 0.10 to 0.30% S: 0.08 to 0.20%

Now realize that the above are average ranges for the material that I have seen doc's on and that has been otherwise examined. Ti has, as far as I know never been mentioned as far as being in a Fe/Ni material. Now in stony material, yes, but in only trace amounts.

So what causes the pamor effect? Well, the C content isn't high enough so it is the Ni content mainly. Interesting point, one of the most "common" materials nowadays for pattern welding is L-6 steel which has a Ni content of only 1.75% (AISI spec's) and that material is favoured for its contrast with simple carbon steels (like a 10XX series), and the L-6 has less than 25% of the Ni than most Fe/Ni meteorites. It is the higher Ni content, along with the grain structure that can cause welding difficulties.

Now since this material has such an elevated Ni content, a very "clean' fire must be used. Charcoal would be excellent for this purpose, as would a properly "tuned" gas furnace or a very well coked and CLEAN burning coal fire. The Ni does have a tendency to "pick up" all sorts of nasties in the atmosphere at such a high temperature, and this can (and usually is) very detrimental to the welding processes. So clean burning fuels are a requirement ... but be that as it may.

How to tell? You really can't. Well, you can't without destructive testing. Some folks believe that meteoric pamor has a "greasy" feel, some say it has a "rough" feel and some say it even feels "prickly." Outside of actually watching the smith/empu work from the raw materials, the only way is metallurgical testing for alloy composition and that is a destructive test. And even then, if you don't know what to look for, you may not be able to tell.

Now if you have a bone-fide "pre western world" contact Keris, and it shows a high contrast pamor, I would venture to say that it is probably extraterrestrial material. Simply due to the fact that Ni is present in such "large amounts."

What does this mean? Actually, nothing in terms of a weapon/tool.. As far as the extraterrestrial stuff goes, it is a "raw material"....nothing more really. It does make for a good story though (I will refrain from getting into the esoteric). BUT,,,,no matter what the "olde tyme" smith/empu used, it is still some damn fine work considering that the "art" at the time where they practiced was little more than early Iron Age technology. I have literally 100s and 100s of Keris in my collections, along with kamplian, tambok, mandao and other pieces from that part of the world and it is truly amazing when one considers that these pieces were done with little more than a fire and a couple of rocks.

All in all, there really isn't a reliable way (other than destructive testing) to say that any given piece is extraterrestrial. Not unless you actually watch the maker from start to finish.

Now there was a heated discussion amongst several metallurgists that I comverse with a while back about the extraterrestrial material in Keris and other items from that part of the world, saying that the use of Fe/Ni meteorite resulted in the ever so rough surface after several etchings. Well, these folks should know better than to say that, given the nature of hand making iron and then turning the bloom into steel. The repeated welding/forging/welding processes, coupled with the cementation of C into the iron top form blister steel, and the further stacking and then welding of the blister material into shear steel would result in a "rough" surface appearance when etched for a considerable length of time. Sometimes folks "forget" the obvious for looking at the not to obvious.

So anyway, that's all I can tell you about extraterrestrial materials as far as Pamor goes, I know it's not what you really wanted to hear but there is no "fool proof" way to tell if there is extraterrestrial material in any given piece, outside of destructive testing. And this is especially true if the smith/empu of any given piece was "worth his salt" and properly refined the meteorite before he incorporated it into the native iron. I have done literally 100s of pieces of pattern welded material with Fe/Ni meteorite in them and they all "worked differently" and well, I think that they turned out rather well, but the amount of time involved in just working the meteorite down to a usable material is considerable, and this is employing "modern" equipment such as gas furnaces and power hammers, and even then, the first few welding/drawing coursed must be done by hand or else you will have meteorite fragments flying all over at 2100 degrees F! Just being able to refine this material is amazing to me given the level of tooling and technology that these smiths/empu were working with. Well, it's just like I have said in the past, it isn't the tool that makes the art, it is the ARTIST.

Jim Hrisoulas

[Andrew]

That's outstanding! Thank you Jim.


Rick, did you get this from Jim specifically in response to this thread?

[Jeff Pringle]

I have been told that it is much harder to work meteorite pamor to achieve a desired pamor then it would be to make it with pure nickel material...Is it difficult to produce a good controlled pamor with meteorite material?

The main difference/difficulty between meteoric material and pure nickel or hi-N steel is that, as Dr. Hrisoulas says, you have to turn the meteorite into workable metal before you can use it in a laminate. Commercial sources of nickel and steel give you ready-made strips of material that is uniform in size and thickness, very easy to weld together into predictable patterns. With meteorites, you have the not-so-easy process of refining the metal and turning it into uniform strips to mix with low-nickel metal before you can start making it into pamor.
Once you have gone through the effort of turning the meteorite into useable metal, it's not all that different from using commercial metal, but that first step is a considerable one.
Jeff

[nechesh]

Thanks Jim, and thanks Rick for passing that on. A very informative post, but it is my suspicion that Pusaka is more interested in how difficult the process would be today than in the past. I could be wrong, but from past postings i got the impression that he was looking for someone to forge a new keris with meteoric pamor for himself. Still, your post shows how difficult (though certainly do-able) the process is.
I would disagree with Jim on one passage:

Now if you have a bone-fide "pre western world" contact Keris, and it shows a high contrast pamor, I would venture to say that it is probably extraterrestrial material. Simply due to the fact that Ni is present in such "large amounts."

It seems probable that much of the nickelous pamor material used was pamor luwu from Sulawesi. Though Groneman's studies show Ni content of that material at only 0.4%, Bronson, in his paper "Terrestial and meteoritic nickel in the Indonesian Kris" shows that there are deposits of ore on that island with at least 2.2% nickel content. I could be mistaken, but i believe that this level of Ni content would be sufficient to produce fairly high contrast patterns in pamor. Contrasting pamor, though not always nickelous in nature, where reported as early as 1433 in the descriptions of the knives carried by all Javanese men written by the Ma Haun. It is doubtful, IMO, that these early pamors were the product of meteoric Ni.

[Pusaka]

Thanks for all the info guys

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. Once the pamor is made is it more difficult to control then pure nickel, because that is what I was told.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Andrew

That's outstanding! Thank you Jim.


Rick, did you get this from Jim specifically in response to this thread?

Hi Andrew , no ; this was on the old forum where a similar question came up .
I contacted Dr. Hrisoulas and asked him if he would be kind enough to comment on the subject .

Since this subject has come up before I thought I'd just 'cut to the chase' and present this again for ease of access .