Question

[Rick]

Is this pamor I see in the kruwingan of this Anak Alang keris ?
If it is, is it adeg ?
Thanks in advance for any comments .

[PenangsangII]

I saw it too. It looks like miring type adeg.

[ganjawulung]

Or maybe, the iron of the blade is the type of "nyerat" (English?) in Javanese term. But no pamor. ("Kelengan" but "nyerat"). Kelengan (pamorless) keris with "besi (iron) nyerat" -- in Java -- regarded as a well forged keris, and much sought...

Ganjawulung

[Rick]

Thank you Gentlemen .

This keris seems to be made from very high quality steel/iron and judging from the pitting on the blade it is old .
I noticed when giving it a Pineapple juice soak and subsequent cleaning that it 'rings' with a lovely voice.


I was wondering if this was purely a pamor or possibly a technique of blade construction .

Ganjawulung, can you provide any more information about 'besi nyerat' please ?

Rick

[asian-keris]

Hi, all
I have something like this blade but with pamor ngulit semangka.
Your blade looks lron welded, so only one material used.
I think my blade is orig from madura.
best regards,
Gert-Jan

[ganjawulung]

Originally Posted by Rick

This keris seems to be made from very high quality steel/iron and judging from the pitting on the blade it is old .
I noticed when giving it a Pineapple juice soak and subsequent cleaning that it 'rings' with a lovely voice.


I was wondering if this was purely a pamor or possibly a technique of blade construction .

Dear Rick,

It was possibly a technique of blade construction, to built a "certain philosophy"...

By touching or groping an old keris blade, we may have some categorization of good iron/steel used in the blade. Also, by "ringing" ("ninthing" the blade, or "thinthingan") the blade as you mentioned in your post. Besi or iron that has character of "nyerat" (fibrous) is only one of them. There are other kinds: "nyabak" (smooth, solid, greenish), "ngawat" (bigger fibrous than "nyerat"), "madas" or "madhas" (like rock), "nglempung" (as if clay), "ngglali" (melt of sweets, 'sticky'), "mrambut" (as hairs) etc... This characters emerged from the mixture of material used by the keris maker in the forging process.

Mixing or pairing the iron materials for forging a keris was also "philosophying" (in your language now, maybe "to make limiting belief of people"). This was written also by keris writers in the past. Besi "purasani" (kind of iron, believed from Persian origin) believed to have power to good livehood, good rank, good carrier... While besi "windu adi" for instance, believed to have power to make stronger, in unvisible term... So if you mix the two good characters of iron, then the blade will bring up glory, nobility to the owner etc...

Keris with "besi nyerat" (in the past) believed to have good "tuah" (good luck) to built "better self-confidence". Bring up characters of brave, audacious and courageous... Oops, am I a practitioner?

Ganjawulung

[cahaya]

Originally Posted by ganjawulung

Or maybe, the iron of the blade is the type of "nyerat" (English?) in Javanese term. But no pamor. ("Kelengan" but "nyerat"). Kelengan (pamorless) keris with "besi (iron) nyerat" -- in Java -- regarded as a well forged keris, and much sought...

Ganjawulung

berserat = fibrous/grained

besi berserat = iron with fibrous/grained ??

[A. G. Maisey]

Cahaya, I apologise if this may seem like a stupid question to you, but I would ask you to forgive me for my stupidity.

Exactly what do you mean by your last post with the cute little yellow face going "shrug, shrug"?

I'm afraid I miss your message. Could I ask you to explain in words what you are trying to say with the cute little yellow face?

Thank you so much for your consideration.

[Rick]

Thank you very much Ganjawulung .

It would be interesting to have a thread on the iron itself .

If I may, is this below also an example of nyerat; or more like your description of ngawat ?

[ganjawulung]

Originally Posted by Rick

Thank you very much Ganjawulung .

It would be interesting to have a thread on the iron itself .

If I may, is this below also an example of nyerat; or more like your description of ngawat ?

It depends of what you feel when groping the blade. "Nyerat" is smoother than "ngawat", although both are "nyerat" type. Visually, the "fiber" of "ngawat" is bigger than "nyerat". Maybe like "beras wutah" (wos wutah), and "pedaringan kebak" in pamor term. "Pedaringan kebak" is a dense "beras wutah"...

It is more like "ngawat", Rick...

Ganjawulung

[Rick]

It is coarser than the Anak Alang 'nyerat' pattern Ganja .
Thank you for your response .

[cahaya]

Originally Posted by ganjawulung

It is more like "ngawat", Rick...

Ganjawulung

Hi Gonjo,

......why is more like "ngawat"??? why not more like "madas"???

[cahaya]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Cahaya, I apologise if this may seem like a stupid question to you, but I would ask you to forgive me for my stupidity.

Exactly what do you mean by your last post with the cute little yellow face going "shrug, shrug"?

I'm afraid I miss your message. Could I ask you to explain in words what you are trying to say with the cute little yellow face?

Thank you so much for your consideration.

Hallo Bapak Alan,

I try to find word in English for "nyerat", that is correct "fibrous/grained"?, or Bapak Alan have an English word for "nyerat",..

thanks

[PenangsangII]

Pak Ganja,

The wesi nyerat, would it be as a result of miring forging technique? Or, could it be as a result of nyepuhan? In any case, what type of pamor that Rick's keris has?

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks Cahaya.

Nope---"fibrous/ grained" is fine.

"Serat" = grain or fibre.

"ngawat" is from "kawat" = wire or cable---same thing but as already noted, more coarse.

This surface presentation is because of the forging used for the material. It is invariably wrought iron that presents like this, and if you weld it a lot of times prior to forging to shape, you get a fine grain, only weld it a few times you get a coarse grain. New, and straight off the bench you naturally cannot see the grain, but after its been washed a few times, or artificially aged, the grain begins to become apparent. Probably the finer the grain, the more dirty the iron was to begin with---probably hot short into the bargain---which means it was washed a lot before use, resulting in more dense material.

[ganjawulung]

Originally Posted by cahaya

Hi Gonjo,

......why is more like "ngawat"??? why not more like "madas"???

Interesting question, Cahaya,

I will ask for second or third opinion on this, and try to find (hopefully) the right answer for you. Thanks, Cahaya...

Ganjawulung

[ganjawulung]

Originally Posted by PenangsangII

Pak Ganja,

The wesi nyerat, would it be as a result of miring forging technique? Or, could it be as a result of nyepuhan? In any case, what type of pamor that Rick's keris has?

Dear PenangsangII,

Alan has answered this question. I think he is the right person to answer such technical question...

Ganjawulung

[A. G. Maisey]

There's a lot more to this whole "nature of iron" business.

The wrought iron I mentioned is the stuff that blacksmiths used right up until probably WWI. I don't think it has been made for maybe 80 or 90 years, mild steel has taken its place. Some mild steel can be very low carbon content, like roadside guard rails, and this material behaves a bit like wrought iron in the fire, other mild steel can approach a carbon content where you can harden it and maybe get a pretty fair cutting edge out of it.

Wrought iron came from a few different processes.Iron ore and charcoal were put into a smelter---I think the technical name for these smelters is "bloomery", the smelter was fired up, the temperature was below iron melt point, the slag in the ore melted and ran out of the smelter, the iron was left. This iron was called a bloom. The bloom then had to be worked through forge processes---forge out, weld, fold, weld, forge out again and again---before it was suitable to use for making things. All those weld joints were without residual slag, the rest of the material behind the weld joints still contained impurities, with age and erosion the impure material wastes away, leaving the pure material of the weld joint. This is the "hair", or "wire", or cable" that you see in the grain of the iron.Lots and lots of welds = lots and lots of weld joints = fine grain. A few welds = coarse grain.

The nature of the impurity was usually excess sulphur, or excess phosphorus, or---if you let the smelter get too hot and carbon melted into the iron--- carbon. Excess sulphur produced hot short material----that is, iron that breaks up under the hammer and will not weld and forge easily---- excess phosphorus produced cold short material---that is, iron that will not bend when it is cold. The combination of these two types of material was a necessary technique in order to increase the amount of available material----Jawa was iron poor---so what the smiths did was weld hot short material containing sulphur with cold short material that contained phosphorus. The two materials together produced a useable material without as much loss in the forge, which would have occurred if each had been subjected to the amount of forging and rewelding that would have been necessary to produce good, dense, pure iron. You can lose a tremendous amount of material when you go through the forge out, reweld process.

So, combination of the two different types of iron became a necessity.

Now, guess what?

Iron that has an excess of phosphorus has a much paler appearance than iron that has an excess of sulphur.It is "white iron".

By combining these two types of iron we had the beginnings of pamor.The two materials were mixed for a totally practical, economic reason, and as this technique developed, it became a virtue, and a necessary part of the keris blade.

One way you can save on work-time and charcoal in doing this sort of washing work, especially with very dirty material, is by shortcutting the process, and twisting the material instead of forging out flat and rewelding, so when you get the material clean enough to withstand a twist, you clamp one end of it at weld heat, twist it, then reweld----and repeat and repeat as necessary. The end result of this process is what we call pamor miring, a pamor type much more highly regarded than pamor mlumah, which has only been cleaned up by flat welding. Hi-tech material as against lo-tech material.

But how did these primitive smiths, working with a hole in the ground , a little bit of charcoal, and two feather dusters to bring the fire to weld heat, identify the phosphorous rich "white iron"?

They did not have access to metallurgical analysis, nor laboratories.

Phosphorus rich iron is cold short. Won't bend when cold, but shatters. Hold a lump of it firmly, whack it with a hammer, it simply breaks. Sulphur rich iron bends easy when cold. Pretty clever blokes those old smiths. They could tell with a hammer what it now takes metallurgists with millions of dollars worth of equipment and a university education to find out.

The other sort of iron impurity was carbon, but carbon rich iron has a useful property, it can be made hard.In essence, it is steel. But its a bit difficult to weld, and welds at a lower heat than iron, so to make it useable the carbon had to be burnt out by the same technique used to clean up the other impurities. We call this "washing". But a small amount of residual carbon remained after the washing, this allowed the material to be hardened. So the three types of iron from the smelter were used:- the material that was black and sulphur rich from one source, the material that was white and phosphorus rich from a different source, and the material that had got screwed up by allowing the smelter to get too hot, and had absorbed carbon and had become pig iron.

Of course, sometimes , in some specific locations, smelters were designed to deliberately produce the carbon rich material. Ever heard of wootz?

Anyway, smelter iron, or bloomery iron had pretty much disappeared by the end of the 18th century. It was replaced by iron produced from blast furnaces. Because blast furnaces ran much hotter than smelters, what they produced was pig iron, material that had an excess of carbon, but with other impurities pretty much burnt out of the ore during the process. Regretably, blast furnaces used coke, a mineral fuel, and the mineral impurities melted into the pig, along with carbon. To make the pig iron useable it had to be washed, the same as the material from a smelter. There were industrial processes developed to do this, about which I know nothing, but to a blacksmith it meant that he had to work the pig in a similar way to the way in which he worked a bloom.

If we want to relate this to keris, we can probably generalise that old period keris were made of bloomery iron, and new period keris were made of pig iron.

When this happened, the smiths had a bit of a problem. They no longer had access to the white iron produced by the smelter, except in (possibly) very small quantities from local smelters. Their customers wanted those pretty white lines on the blade that guaranteed quality---the lines and patterns made by welding sulphur rich and phosphorus rich iron together, giving a mixed material ---"pamor"---pamor means mixed.

So the smiths had to find another way of producing that white effect. This is probably when the nickel rich ores from Luwu in Sulawesi came into their own. These ores , when welded with the washed pig iron , produced a nice, contrasting effect---exactly what the customers wanted.

Old period keris = bloomery iron; new period keris (nem-neman) = pig iron.

Old period keris = pamor produced by two types of iron; new period keris = keris produced by iron + nickel.

Then there's the wild card, meteorites with nickel, but we won't talk about them, thanks. Or titanium.

When you look at the way customs, traditions, social norms develop, you can nearly always find a good, solid, practical reason at the root. All these dietary restrictions practiced by various religions had good, solid practical reasons at the time and place where they originated. Same thing with keris, all those pretty little blade patterns had a good solid reason when they first appeared.

[Rick]

Bump