Need advice on this keris I got from eBay

[Azman]

I’m trying to understand the pamor. Looks pretty interesting. Almost like a coiling snake but can’t really tell. Appreciate your thoughts. Btw, good to be back to this group after awhile.

[HughChen]

It seems that the ganja of this Madura Kris may has been rusted through.

[Rick]

A picture of the entire keris and it's scabbard please.
Otherwise, we're just wasting time.

[sirek]

hard to see, looks like Lam Alip

[milandro]

the kris certainly needs to be undergoing a cleaning and then , ideally, a staining to reveal its completely pamor .

The coiled shape in that area isn't uncommon but it may be incorporated in different pamors


You also appear to have a fractured ganja which is something that may give you some problems if and when you decide to clean and stain as it , most probably, will come off.

The hilt appears to be modernly made in the Madurese stile while the sarong appears to have been made to look like a Balinese-ish sarong but it is not. The blade appears to be dhapur Tilam Upih (?) which is not uncommon in Madura.

[A. G. Maisey]

There are a number of ways that the gonjo of a keris is kept in place, one of those ways is to cut a tiny keyway into the gonjo hole, and drive a pin home into that keyway to hold the gonjo in place. If the gonjo has a weakness at the point where it surrounds the pesi, the tension created by the key will often cause a fracture in the gonjo. This flaw can be repaired by resetting the gonjo over the pesi with plastic steel.

In Jawa & other parts of Indonesia we just make a new gonjo. This is not a big job, but it can be tedious and in my experience most people living outside keris bearing societies are unwilling or unable to attempt it.

The wrongko is a typical low level East Jawa/Madura gayaman.

I'm uncertain about the correct name to apply to the hilt, there are a couple of choices & I have heard both applied to this form, in the absence of certainty I'd sooner not guess.

The manipulated piece of pamor in the sorsoran does look as if an attempt at lam alif(p) has been made, as Sirek has mentioned.

Dhapur is brojol ( no tikel alis).

It is a nice example of an "every man's" keris.

It would benefit from the fitting of a suitable mendak.

[Azman]

Thank you for the feedback everyone. Let me attempt to clean the blade first then IÂ’ll repost the picture for our discussion. I just received it yesterday and I only used WD40 to take out some rust and oil it good. IÂ’m planning to use my gun oil to clean it well. Hopefully weÂ’ll be able to see the pamor better. I agree, I canÂ’t tell if the warangka is original. It may not be. But the blade look authentic. At least I hope so. Interesting observation on Lam Alif. Is there any significance to this Arabic word?

[A. G. Maisey]

I once asked a very good friend of mine who was Javanese and a devout Muslim if he could explain Lam Alif to me. He told me that to even get a beginning of understanding I would need to spend seven lifetimes in study of Al Quran in order to prepare me for the next seven lifetimes of spiritual practice, only after this might I recognise the way to understanding.

He warned me that anybody who claimed to understand Lam Alif was not to be believed.

Lam Alif is actually two letters that when placed together form a singularity.

My friend was a very spiritual man and enjoyed speaking in ways that nobody could understand.

[Azman]

Thank you Maisey. I did a bid of search on what you said below. Interesting indeed. On one side the pamor looks like a Lam Alif at a base of a large tree trunk. Perharps it’s just my imagination.

[Azman]

One the side with a clrearer Lam Alif and the tree trunk, I can see the pamor seems to be continuous and turns into island shape at the tip of the blade. Whilst on the other side it looks like an Arabic letter Ta as it seems to have like and inverted C with two distinct dots on the open crescent. One think interesting for sure is I could see the flow of the blade uniformly hammered grain boundaries running up to the tip. I thought this is very interesting and almost looks like a dissimilar metals being forged and pressed but I cannot say what they are. Some of the metallurgy looks shiny and some just plane white spot. Interesting point to ponder.

[A. G. Maisey]

The metal is what we call "pamor sanak", the word "sanak" means "related", this metal is a mixture of two or more types of ferric material.

[Azman]

This one is longer and it has a beautiful warangka. The blade looks like it’s gorge from steel and has some coating on it. Alimony looks like varnish. Hopefully it’s not some kind of poison like ‘getah damak ‘ which was used those days for poisoning arrow tip and tombak or spear. I was told by the seller that this was from 1900 to 1940 range but who knows. It looks so much sturdy and I think almost like a katana blade. It’s longer too, almost 14.5 inch blade. I can tell it has been forge with layered metal but it has no pamor and the surface is not like a typical keris roughness. It’s much smoother. What is your view in this interesting sundang?

[A. G. Maisey]

Javanese, dhapur brojol, possibly classification (tangguh) Tuban, blade probably before 1900, needs a clean & stain.

This is a keris, it is not a sundang.

Incidentally, "getah damak" in Malay means "blowpipe gum" > "getah" is natural latex, tree gum, a "damak" is the dart used in a blowpipe, by itself this stuff is not poisonous, but to make it poisonous the sap of the ipoh/ipuh tree is added to it.

[Azman]

Thank you Maisey. Wow…never thought that this keris could be this old. I’ll try to clean it.By the way, can you detect any kind of pamor on this keris?

[Azman]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The metal is what we call "pamor sanak", the word "sanak" means "related", this metal is a mixture of two or more types of ferric material.

Maisey, Thanks again. Any idea on the age of this keris?

[A. G. Maisey]

See Post #13.

Scabbard & hilt could be around the same age, pendok is recent.