FORMING HOT METAL WITH BARE HANDS

[Richard Furrer]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Which I did. Once.

Don't know anything about leidenfrost.

Do know a little bit about fire and iron.

Addition:-

Just checked the liedenfrost thing. Looks like that's what was happening. Now I know its name.

As someone who has unintentionally grabbed,not gently touched nor bumped, but put a hand sqeeze on an orange bar of steel in a very unfocused moment.....I would say that it is all legend. It took me three weeks to heal enough to really use that hand again.
At a good welding heat 1% carbon steel is about as close to dripping liquid as it will get...and still more resistant to our flesh than we are to it.

That is not to say that we can not bend it or twist it, but we can not "forge it"...apply enough pressure to leave an indentation the bar...no way. In blade thicknesses it cannot be done, but I would think that one could ripple a bar of 1/16" thick steel without much issue, but leaving indentations in a 1/8" thick or more bar..no.

I have seen blades which had "lip prints" and "finger prints" in the steel..done with tools not flesh I am sure.


As to the vapor barrier...yes it can help a lot with lessening the severity of casual contact burns, HOWEVER, once you push hard enough to break through the vapor....which one would need to do to forge, well...that is a different story.....ever see meat on a hot grill? That was my hand...made the same sound too.

Ric

[A. G. Maisey]

Richard, I recognise you as an experienced smith, however, I have indented red hot, not orange, iron with the tip of my middle finger.

The material was paper thin, which is the thickness of a sombro blade, paper thin, not one sixteenth, nor anything like it.

I had a tray of sand on the anvil, I kept my right hand in water until the iron was directly over the sand and as close as it could be without touching, then I punched my finger tip into the hot iron as fast as I could. I tried this a few times, and I burnt myself once, the burn was not severe, but that was the last time I tried it.

What I've described can be done, but you need to move very fast.

I understand exactly what you are saying, and I was not forming metal, the metal I hit with my finger tip was paper thin.

As to forming metal with bare hands, my feeling is the same as yours, but I've seen some very strange and totally inexplicable things in Jawa and Bali. Maybe it is a possibility, but not for me, and not for you.

[Richard Furrer]

Alan,
You have messaged me in the past that I would not find what I was looking for should I travel to watch Empu....I think this is just one more technique I will never see.

Ric

[Rick]

Could not this effect be accomplished with a special tool rather than the hand ?

And who could tell le difference ?

[A. G. Maisey]

Richard, you're 100% correct about never being able to see it.Keris pijit that are accepted as genuine all come from the very distant past.

I've seen genuine things in Jawa that are totally inexplicable, not parlour tricks, but manifestations of powers that cannot be explained with reason, nor logic.

Bear this in mind:- by profession, I'm an auditor. Not a bean counting auditor, but an auditor who deals in areas involving subterfuge, confidence tricks, and other rather interesting things. By nature I'm a sceptic, and better than 50 years in my profession has made me even more sceptical.

Knowing Javanese culture as I do, I am prepared to accept that keris picit could have in some cases been made in a similar way to the way I experimented with. The ones that we accept as genuine are in all cases paper thin sombros, or similar.

I do not believe that it would be possible to actually forge a blade by finger pressure, or by hitting with the hand. I see this as the mixture of myth and reality that is perfectly normal in Jawa. It may be culturally real, but that does not make it fact.

The empus of the distant past were akin to shamans.

They were in some cases, nothing like the current crop of people who can make keris.

Rick:- yes, of course, and the vast bulk of "keris pijit" are the result of coming into contact with something like a ball pein hammer. But there are a very few that we do accept as most probably real.

However, nobody needs to believe that they're real. Its all a matter of how you measure something based upon experience.

[VANDOO]

IN THE KRIS MYSTIC WEAPON OF THE MALAY WORLD BY EDWARD FREY PAGE 10 ARE SOME PICTURES OF FIGURE D AND FIGURE E. THEY MAY BE EXAMPLES OF THIS TECKNIQUE BOTH ARE ARCHAIC KERIS.

I INCLUDE TWO PICTURES OF THE MORO KRIS BLADE THAT GAVE ME THE IDEA OF ASKING IF THERE WAS ANY KNOWLEGE OF THIS TECKNIQUE / STORY APPLYING TO ANY OTHER WEAPONS BESIDES THE KERIS. THESE MAY BE PITS BUT THEY APPEAR TOO UNIFORM AND THE REMAINDER OF THE BLADE LOOKS CLEAN . I WAITED TO USE THE PICTURES UNTIL THE TRANSACTION WAS FINISHED IN THE SWAP FORUM.
FROM WHAT HAS BEEN SAID BY THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE FORGED AND EVEN ATTEMPTED THIS TECKNIQUE IT WOULD APPEAR LIKELY A TOOL IS USED PERHAPS SHAPED LIKE A FINGER. IT DOES MAKE ONE WONDER WHEN THE STORY CAME INTO BEING.

[David]

Barry, i saw this kris up for sale, but never for a second thought these indentations were formed at the forging. Their placement does not give that impression. I would be more likely to buy into a story of possible damage from bullets before i would think the former.
As for the possibility of this technique being possible with the fingers i have little doubt, though obviously many examples that we see are not done that way.