Questions about warangan of keris with motifs

[Anthony G.]

I sometimes commission new keris with motifs which are coated with kinatah, silver, brass etc. and will encounter after warangan, the kinatah (gold plating), silver etc will came off from some part of the motif.

Then the smith has to coat the motifs again and have it warangan again. Is this the correct procedure?

[A. G. Maisey]

Anthony, I avoid the staining of older blades that bear kinatah work, I have done a few that were fairly heavily rusted, & for those I used nail lacquer to protect the kinatah work. It should be noted that I never use the soak method of staining, I use brush & finger pressure.

For any older blade where the blade can be read, I usually do not stain.

I have had current era blades that bear kinatah & have been competently stained, I do not know what method the m'ranggi has used to to the job.

[Anthony G.]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Anthony, I avoid the staining of older blades that bear kinatah work, I have done a few that were fairly heavily rusted, & for those I used nail lacquer to protect the kinatah work. It should be noted that I never use the soak method of staining, I use brush & finger pressure.

For any older blade where the blade can be read, I usually do not stain.

I have had current era blades that bear kinatah & have been competently stained, I do not know what method the m'ranggi has used to to the job.

Hi Alan

Thanks for sharing.

I will ask the craftsman to coat the motif with something suitable before he warangan the new forged keris again so that the coating on the motif will not fade/remove off by the warangan.

[milandro]

Originally Posted by Anthony G.

I sometimes commission new keris with motifs which are coated with kinatah, silver, brass etc. and will encounter after warangan, the kinatah (gold plating), silver etc will came off from some part of the motif.

Then the smith has to coat the motifs again and have it warangan again. Is this the correct procedure?

The person whom washes krises for me wouldn't take any kris with any other metal work on the blade (although perhaps he might do for Gold but the purity of this would have to be assayed to know if it was a low grade or high grade gold).

The reason is that he would end up polluting his warangans (he has many) and the results, due to other metals reacting differently, would be highly unpredictable.

True he uses the immersion method.

He has been very specific to warn me from bringing him any such krises .


Covering the decoration with some form of isolating material (such as nail polish ) may be the ( time consuming and therefore expensive) way to deal with this , I suppose that if you have a valuable piece it may be worth it.

I have seen many , especially Naga, such krises entirely or partly coated with what seemingly looked like brass, although it may have been gold, but I doubt it . In Museums I saw beautiful examples of this.

I don't know of anyone in the NL willing or capable to do any different than the person whom does the work for me (and many many others, some also on this board)