"Armour Piercing Keris" ???

[Paul de Souza]

One way dealers and sellers here ups a price of a keris is by saying that it is "armour piercing" ie the fact that the keris can lift a coin after a single tap on the coin.

I admit, not all my keris can do it. What is your take on it? Is it really "armour piercing" or a just a case of good tempering and manufacture?

[mariusgmioc]

Originally Posted by Paul de Souza

One way dealers and sellers here ups a price of a keris is by saying that it is "armour piercing" ie the fact that the keris can lift a coin after a single tap on the coin.

I admit, not all my keris can do it. What is your take on it? Is it really "armour piercing" or a just a case of good tempering and manufacture?

To me it is obviously a coin-chipping Keris!

Without being too knowledgeable on the subject, I believe it is pure marketing BS. Something like the trick with the standing Keris.

PS: And I suspect that a guy who is doing this to sell a Keris, is selling nothing but crap...

[kai]

Hello Paul,

I'm pretty much with Marius on this one:

The usual copper-based alloys for coins are quite soft - it doesn't need any sophisticated heat treatment for even very mild steel to become tougher than coins! (BTW, keris are traditionally not tempered which would need controlled re-heating the hardened blade to a fairly low, bluish temp specific for any given iron alloy - not really needed nor practical for laminated blades.)

You show two keris with very pronounced ada-ada: In my experience any of the traditional blade and tip geometries do perfectly well for coins... (Since armour in the Malay/Indo world tended to be pretty basic, I doubt that nicking coins tells us much about fighting function in the old times. )

Any keris blade that does not pass this coin test needs to be retired from "active service" as a sidearm and it usually will be a "ghost" blade that lost much of its body from erosion (rust and washings). Of course, such a worn blade may still be a valuable pusaka and/or retain any intrinsic powers (isi, etc.).

Regards,
Kai

[kai]

PS: And I suspect that a guy who is doing this to a Keris, is selling nothing but crap...

That may be a bit too harsh a judgement - at least it doesn't hurt any decent keris in decent condition.

I guess it mainly boils down to the well-known adage: Buy the keris and not the story...

Regards,
Kai

[A. G. Maisey]

As with many good stories, this one has a basis in fact.

During the Kartosuro era, one problem faced by Javanese warriors was the fact that their kerises were unable to pierce Dutch breast plates. The Javanese keris was made as a personal weapon, and if carried into battle, it was a weapon of last resort, but that last resort was no resort at all if faced by a Dutchman wearing a breast plate. At that time, normal Javanese dress was naked from the waist up, so you didn't need a particularly robust keris to be able to stick your dhuwung into your brother-in-law's kidneys if he stole your terkuku.

Enter Brojoguno I.

His claim to fame was that he could make keris that were able to pierce Dutch breast plates. The recognised test for a keris that was claimed to be able to do the breast plate thing became the ability to pierce a copper coin:- copper coin on a wooden bench, pierce that and you were accepted as having proved your point.

Brojoguno was not born in Kartosuro, he came from outside, I don't know where, but very probably Madura or the North Coast. His descendants all took the name of Brojoguno.

[Timo Nieminen]

I would be very impressed by a keris penetrating a Dutch breastplate. Not just a keris, but any one-handed stabbing weapon. Not so easy to drive a point through approximately 2mm of iron sheet.

[A. G. Maisey]

Pretty well established that it did happen Timo, I have no idea at all of what Dutch breast plate is like, but the fact that Brojoguno keris did penetrate them is a part of history.