Pedang restored + Warangan in Java

[Roland_M]

Some time ago i already showed this Pedang to experienced collectors in this forum with my own quite special finish, which is now a little embarrassing for me.
But now after a professional warangan treatment in Java, the blade shows its true beauty.
Just a few pictures to enjoy.


Best wishes,
Roland

[Battara]

GREAT WORK!

[Ian]

Roland,

Lovely etching in the traditional manner. It makes a huge difference.

Ian.

[kai]

Hello Roland,

Congrats, nice efforts!

Some time ago i already showed this Pedang to experienced collectors in this forum with my own quite special finish, which is now a little embarrassing for me.

Nope, not at all! While warangan will most likely be the intended, traditional etch for this blade, I do like your etch, too, since it highlights additional features! For studying the material, utilizing an assortment of etchants will yield valuable complementary information!

Did anybody note that the results shown here represent kinda negatives and positives (from those ancient days of analog B&W photography )?

Regards,
Kai

[Roland_M]

One member of the forum asked about the traces of active rust and that it is a good idea in his opinion, to remove all rust before warangan.

Ther rust came to the blade after warangan and during the transport back to Germany! They forgot to use oil after warangan! No respect for their own work!

I was pretty disappointed and angry, when i saw that poor mishap after many hours of restoring!

I will never ever again send one of my blades to Indonesia for warangan!


Roland

[kai]

Hello Roland,

IMHO it does not look too bad - will be necessary to keep this blade very well oiled and free of dust in a dry environment though. Longtime soaking in alkaline oil may help to remove most of the active rust; in the pittings there seem to be leftovers of inactive rust, too.

I do understand that it wasn't feasible to grind off all the pitted areas and agree that it was preferable to not loose too much of the material.

When going for a full blade restoration like this, I try to remove all rust (which includes tedious manual picking) before the final (or pre-final) grade of sanding; stabilizing the surface of these crevices with tannic acid and possibly hard wax will help to avoid active rust to reappear during etching and later storage. Quite difficult to achieve given the vagaries of international processing/shipping though.

Regards,
Kai

[Roland_M]

Originally Posted by kai

Hello Roland,

IMHO it does not look too bad - will be necessary to keep this blade very well oiled and free of dust in a dry environment though.

Regards,
Kai

Hi Kai,

it does not look to bad now, because i already removed 80% of the active rust. The look was horrible, when i opened the package.
It was free of any rust (deeply cleaned) before the warangan.

Now it is swimming in Ballistol as all my blades.

Roland

[A. G. Maisey]

Roland, I intended to reserve comment on this warangan job, but since you yourself now recognise that it is a very poor effort, I will comment.

I have been getting blades stained in Solo for more than 40 years. There are various qualities of staining that can be done, but for quite some time, the only quality that has been available to ordinary retail customers has been the the lowest quality. A good warangan job can take bulk time and cost a lot more than the ordinary job.

Once warangan has been done the blade should be taken into direct sunlight and the light played along the blade so that you can see through the black. If you can find patches of green or yellow this is an indication that the blade has not been cleaned properly prior to staining. The stainers who do work for the retail trade do not like to clean a blade perfectly before they do the stain, because if a blade is left with a little residue from a previous stain it will reactivate and the job is done much more quickly and easily. This is the reason that I prefer to clean my own blades before I put them in to be stained, additionally I refuse to permit my staining to be done by some people.

You mention that you had already cleaned the blade before you sent it to be cleaned, but a perfectly clean blade can grow rust overnight in Indonesia. Additionally, the person who did the stain probably paid less attention to the finish polish before staining, simply because it was clean. To get anything done acceptably in Solo you need to be there and monitor the work, if not you get an "asal jadi" job, ie, "as long as its done". Quality, pride of craftsmanship is very rare, and if you can find somebody who takes pride in his work, you will get on a queue and wait, and then pay, pay, pay.

Things like swords that have the blade firmly fixed into the hilt with jabung are a bit of a problem, because to do this job properly, the blade should be demounted and then remounted when the stain is complete. Your sword blade was not demounted.The reason that it was not demounted is that for a long time it has been almost impossible to find somebody in Solo who understands how to make and use jabung, and for that matter, how to demount a blade without causing damage.

Put as plainly as possible, in my opinion most of the people who service the trade in Solo are half educated , ham handed tinkerers. I do not know of one genuine m'ranggi who is still working.

I'm talking Solo all the time, because this is the pond I swim in, but I have no reason to believe things are better elsewhere.

If you want a good stain job on your blade you will need to learn the necessary skills to do it yourself.

[Roland_M]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

If you want a good stain job on your blade you will need to learn the necessary skills to do it yourself.

Alan,

thanks for your words and exactly this is my plan, i will learn the necessary skills. The biggest problem ist, that arsenic is forbidden in Germany. So we have to use realgar bought as a mineral for collectors and you never know, how strong this natural material is.

Except from the rust the staining has been done quite good, with an evenly deep black over the whole surface without strange spots of blue color or so.

The blade was completely red rusted, when i bought it. The surface was much too corroded and full of pitting for a good staining. I could not avoid a deep restoration.

Kai told me some weeks ago, that he is experienced with warangan. I hope we can work together in he future.


Roland

[A. G. Maisey]

Roland, I admit that it is difficult to judge from photos, but based upon what I can see in your photos I would consider this warangan job to be totally unacceptable, and not only for the rust.

It might look better in the hand, but if I got a warangan job that looks like the job in the photos, it would be sent straight back to the person who did it. Yes, you cannot do this, and neither would I, unless I was no more than a half hour drive from the bloke who had screwed the job.

As to arsenic, is there no mechanism within your country to obtain correct legal authority to use hazardous chemicals, here it is a HAZCHEM certificate that requires a minor technical course to be completed.

[Battara]

Ok so this particular piece is not from Bali then. They usually use arsenic in their etching.

If is from Java, then I can see Alan's point.

[A. G. Maisey]

Actually Jose, the art of blade staining is pretty much dead in Bali. They used to use warangan (realgar) the same as everybody else, but these days they send their blades to Surabaya for staining.

No, its not a Bali pedang.

[ariel]

A very naive question:

Since etching/staining is a controlled rusting, couldn’t one instead of a very toxic arsenic with lime juice use good old Nital?

[kai]

Hello Ariel,

Since etching/staining is a controlled rusting, couldn’t one instead of a very toxic arsenic with lime juice use good old Nital?

Controlled oxidation, not necessarily rusting.

E. g. warangan results in a surface layer of arsenate. Have a close look at the pics!

Regards,
Kai

[A. G. Maisey]

Ariel, I've never used Nital, but I understand it is comprised of nitric acid and alchohol, as such, I would expect it to be a very good etchant, but I would not expect it to stain ferric material blue-black. Arsenic stains ferric material blue-black.

[Sajen]

Originally Posted by Battara

Ok so this particular piece is not from Bali then. They usually use arsenic in their etching.

If is from Java, then I can see Alan's point.

We have here in Germany a dealer who offered the service of warangan, he take the blades with to Indonesia and let them stain there. He let them normally stained by Pak Suryono who is not with us anymore, his job was a very good one. Some years ago I used this offer but he let stain my blades on Bali, a very disappointing result! I send the blades back to him and they get stained again on Java by Pak Suryono. The result was a good one. So far I know used Roland the same service, I don't know what happened to Rolands blade that he get it back with rust but Alans point is obvious.

Regards,
Detlef

[ariel]

OK, I am digging myself in deeper and deeper:-)

What will happen if we oxidize ( essentially rust) the iron layers of the pamor with Nital, and then go over it with blueing fluid that makes iron black but doesn't touch bright nickel? Or, if we do not want 3-dimensional topography of the blade, just use blueing fluid?

Having had to read human toxicology for my medical boards ( long ago), I am deathly afraid of arsenic. This stuff is toxic like hell. If one can get good artistic results with innocuous substances, the kris community might save hell of a lot of money by not sending the blades to Indonesia and maintaining clean consciousness by not killing the locals.

Here is Wikipedia:


"If arsenic poisoning occurs over a brief period of time symptoms may include vomiting, abdominal pain, encephalopathy, and watery diarrhea that contains blood. Long-term exposure can result in thickening of the skin, darker skin, abdominal pain, diarrhea, heart disease, numbness, and cancer."

The final result of generous exposure to arsenic is coma and death.