Need example of Pamors: Meteor, Luwu, and modern Nickel

[lemmythesmith]

Hi Alan, I've been meaning to reply on the new lot of pics-got sidetracked with a work in progress (not a keris!) so.............

1-could be meteoric, I've noticed that meteoric can sometimes develop a "coppery" tone, only very slight but this pamor looks that way. Mlumah

2-pamor with a higher proportion of nickel material, could be pure nickel. Mlumah

3-looks like a ferrous nickel alloy without too much nickel , I'll go for native smelted metal-luwu. Miring

4-same as 2. Has a melted look to the nickel, low layer count. Miring

5-could be meteoric, may be high nickel content ferrous alloy. Mlumah.

6-I'll say the same as 3. Mlumah.

I'll try and post a couple of pics myself, the pics may not all be keris blades but they will all be pamor alloys found on keris,
C'mon guys....step up to the plate, have a go!! A good fun learning experience.

Regards, Graham.

[Gustav]

I simply don't have enough knowledge about forging work, different pamor material and staining to say something at all.

About #1 I also thought, it could be metheoritic, becouse of very thin, sometimes almost transparent layers. I have also heard about colour variations, but isn't this colour coming from rust and/or staining?

I thought, #5 could be nickel.

#4 looks like a combination of mlumah and miring.

As #3 is pamor poleng, it couldn't be older then 30 years (?). Is the surface treatened in this way, because it could be an old looking dhapur?

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for your answers Graham and Gustav.

As previously advised, only one of these pamors is known for certain, the other pamor information is opinion, but probably as good an opinion as you can get, and it is Javanese keris expert opinion, in three cases from men who have made Javanese keris, in one case from a dealer in Javanese keris, the total experience represented is about 200 years.

Where I have noted "consensus of opinion", this refers to the material, whether the pamor is miring or mlumah is known with certainty as this can be clearly seen in the physical presence of the blade. Somebody with experience in this field does not need to see more than an inch or so of blade to be able to know with certainty whether it is miring or mlumah, but you need to see the blade, not an image of the blade. From an image it is extremely difficult to know anything.

1. --- meteoritic, attributed to Empu Jayasukadgo, surface manipulated pamor mlumah.Consensus of opinion

2. --- meteoritic, attributed to Empu Jayasukadgo, mlumah. Consensus of opinion.

3. --- believed to be motor bike muffler and mild steel, current era, Sumenep Madura, miring. Consensus of opinion

4. --- luwu, mlumah; this blade is a Bugis "chieftain" keris, probably second half of the 19th century, appears to have been removed from point of origin soon after manufacture. Provenance is partly known which supports the consensus of opinion.

5. --- European nickel and mild steel, current era production by a leading Surakarta pandai keris, surface manipulated mlumah. This pamor is known for certain.

6. --- believed to be motor bike muffler and mild steel, current era, Sumenep Madura, mlumah.Consensus of opinion.

Graham is obviously pretty good at this game, but even his knowledge and experience does not give a perfect result.

Given the same images , but without personal knowledge, I doubt that I would even come as close as has Graham.

What chance has a person without extensive knowledge and experience of hands

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for your answers Graham and Gustav.

As previously advised, only one of these pamors is known for certain, the other pamor information is opinion, but probably as good an opinion as you can get, and it is Javanese keris expert opinion, in three cases from men who have made Javanese keris, in one case from a dealer in Javanese keris, the total experience represented is about 200 years.

Where I have noted "consensus of opinion", this refers to the material, whether the pamor is miring or mlumah is known with certainty as this can be clearly seen in the physical presence of the blade. Somebody with experience in this field does not need to see more than an inch or so of blade to be able to know with certainty whether it is miring or mlumah, but you need to see the blade, not an image of the blade. From an image it is extremely difficult to know anything.

1. --- meteoritic, attributed to Empu Jayasukadgo, surface manipulated pamor mlumah.Consensus of opinion

2. --- meteoritic, attributed to Empu Jayasukadgo, mlumah. Consensus of opinion.

3. --- believed to be motor bike muffler and mild steel, current era, Sumenep Madura, miring. Consensus of opinion

4. --- luwu, mlumah; this blade is a Bugis "chieftain" keris, probably second half of the 19th century, appears to have been removed from point of origin soon after manufacture. Provenance is partly known which supports the consensus of opinion.

5. --- European nickel and mild steel, current era production by a leading Surakarta pandai keris, surface manipulated mlumah. This pamor is known for certain.

6. --- believed to be motor bike muffler and mild steel, current era, Sumenep Madura, mlumah.Consensus of opinion.

Graham is obviously pretty good at this game, but even his knowledge and experience does not give a perfect result.

Given the same images , but without personal knowledge, I doubt that I would even come as close as has Graham.

What chance has a person without extensive knowledge and experience of hands on forge work in this medium got of learning anything at all from pictures?

[rasdan]

G'day Alan,

Sorry i'm a bit late. Thank you very much for your explanation. From what i see, i think i can conclude that it is impossible to differentiate pure nickel and nickel ferro pamor from pictures. I'm afraid i only have rookie questions on this issues. Sorry..

1. What do you think is the contributor to the prickly feel to meteor pamor as compared to nickel?

2. How do we differentiate an old iron that is folded numerous times to make a dense material and modern iron which is already dense? Probably the folding lines, but if it is very dense i would imagine that the line would disappear. No?

3. How can we differentiate the lines of fibrous inclusions found naturally in wrought iron to the folding lines produced by repeated folding or mbesut process?

Thank you..

[A. G. Maisey]

G'day Rasdan.

Mate, I cannot tell one thing from the other when I look at pictures. Even when we know, or strongly believe that the material is the same, its appearance can vary enormously depending on the way it has been worked, the amount of surface erosion, and the staining. Anybody who reckons he can tell much from pictures of pamor, or iron, is just kidding himself.

To really see the nature of the material you need to hold it in your hand, feel the material, and turn it this way and that in good light. Then you might --- only might --- get some sort of indication as to what you're looking at.

Why is meteoritic material often prickly to the touch?

No idea.

How do we differentiate an old iron that is folded numerous times to make a dense material and modern iron which is already dense?

It looks different.

How does it look different?

I cannot explain, but it has a different look.Yes, you can mostly see some sort of grain in it, even when it is very padat you can see grain under magnification.

How can we differentiate the lines of fibrous inclusions found naturally in wrought iron to the folding lines produced by repeated folding or mbesut process?

It looks different.

Again I cannot explain, it just looks different.

Something to bear in mind:-

prior to about 1850 steel was not mass produced, and even after mass production began, it was only common in major areas of population in industrial countries. Up until WWII wrought iron was a pretty common material. About 1950 mass production of steel became very economic and efficient with the introduction of the basic oxygen process, since that time mild steel has replaced wrought iron completely.

Thus, in a modern, current era blade we could expect to see mild steel rather than wrought iron, but in anything from pre-WWII we would be much more likely to see wrought iron. Go back into the 19th century and earlier, and we will certainly be looking at wrought iron.

Up to now this thread has been about just pamor.

Here is the original question:-

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could post images contrasting the differences between the pamors - meteorite, luwu, and modern nickel.


I posted examples of recent blades with various types of pamor. None of those blades are more than 150 years old, and most are much younger than that. In other words, this was all about as easy as it gets. But to be honest, if somebody else had put those examples up, and I had no personal knowledge of the blades, I could not have said with any certainty what it was that I was looking at.

That was my purpose in posting the examples:- to try to demonstrate how absolutely futile it is to try to learn about pamor and blade materials from pictures.

Quite simply it is totally impossible.

However, when we broaden the area under consideration a bit, and we begin to enter into aspects of blade appraisal and classification, we then need to consider the entire blade, not just the pamor. When the entire blade comes under consideration we get a lot more feedback from what we can see, and all this information cross matches to assist in the appraisal or classification.

Thus, if we are considering a blade that is obviously very old, there is no possibility that mild steel is involved, similarly, European nickel will not be present. We then need to decide if we are looking at Luwu material, or phosphoric iron, or one of the multitude of other materials that have been used as pamor, such as imported Chinese tools.

When we get involved in this sort of exercise it gets hard.

Very hard.

And far, far beyond what can be conveyed by any sort of image.

[rasdan]

Thank you for your explanation Alan. Do you think it is reasonable for beginners like me to forget about pamor material at the moment and try to understand iron and steel first? The problem with this approach is that some keris have very large coverage of pamor material and it becomes very hard to see the iron. My further questions are (these are the last ones as this had strayed out of topic..sorry):

1. What i understand from Wikipedia is that wrought iron is iron with low carbon content. This means that mined iron sand that were melted and cleaned can be considered as wrought iron. Is there any way to differentiate wrought iron that comes from industrial smelters and the ones that were traditionally melted and cleaned? Is it the impurities? What exactly do we have to look for in identifying this?

2. Does pig iron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_iron) with 3-4% carbon qualifies as baja in keris? Had it been used (or is it possible to be used) as keris material at all? Can it be used to make kelengan keris?

3. If we heat iron with coke and we get baja (if the above is true) i have yet to see any baja that have fibrous inclusions. I had seen baja with lots of impurities, but no inclusions. Why is this so Alan?

I am sure that the process is more complicated that what ever perception that i have in mind, but i have yet been exposed to any of these matters. Sorry about my ignorance Alan. Thanks.

[A. G. Maisey]

The product of a smelt is called pig iron.

Pig iron has a very high carbon content that makes it very difficult to work, so it is refined into wrought iron. The word "wrought" means worked. There are and have been various methods used to turn pig iron into wrought iron.

Wrought iron has a very low carbon content, the more it has been refined, the lower the carbon content, the higher the weld temperature, and the easier to weld and to work.

Theoretically mild steel can have a similar carbon content to some types of wrought iron, but in practice good wrought iron has a much higher weld temperature than mild steel, which indicates a much lower carbon content.

Wrought iron has a fibrous appearance that is contributed to by inclusions of slag; during the refining and cleaning processes slag is broken up and removed along with excess carbon.

Iron can be turned into steel by the addition of carbon. When the carbon is only added to the outside layers of the iron we call this "case hardening", and it is not at all the same as incorporating carbon into the iron and making it an alloy.

All wrought iron will show a fibrous texture after it has been worked, but to see this texture it is necessary to etch the surface, and sometimes to use magnification. If we have not seen fibrous inclusions & etc, it is because we have not used the techniques and skills of metallurgical investigation an analysis.

Rasdan, some of the information you are seeking is really within the sphere of metallurgical analysis. You're moving away from the very simple visual examination that keris fanciers use. I've tried to give a simple, brief outline of the area you're moving into, but if you wish to learn more, you are going to need to carry out study specific to metallurgy. Forget about keris in this context until you get some foundation in metallurgy.

I have the results of many analyses of old keris and tombak blades that were carried out by Professor Jerzy Piaskowski of Poland. These give a very good guide to the actual content of old Javanese blade material.In fact, in some old Javanese blades, wootz was used.