Keris for comments

[Bill M]

My first post in this forum. I have a few keris, mostly Java and Bali with a few others. My focus has been on Moro, but am re-developing an interest in the Indonesian varieties, particularly the Javanese and Balinese.

I have this keris on loan from a friend. She mainly collects African artifacts, but came across this keris. I am guessing Madura. Would appreciate frank comments.

The blade is in serious need of cleaning and staining. I have her permsiion to do this and may give it a try if it would be worth it.

Comments?

[Rick]

That's a pretty nice Gabilan style piece Bill .
If it's a souvenir it's a very nice one .

The blade is lovely from what I can see but as you say it needs cleaning .
A soak in pineapple juice might be called for as a starter .

The horse motif is nicely carried over to the pendok .

[Newsteel]

Yup, a madura keris it is. As Rick mentioned, you need to clean it to remove all the rust, using citrus or pineapple juice to start. The blade may not be the best workmanship but interestingly, the pamor is not common. Here you have pamor dhadung muntir (in javanese term for twisting rope?). Overall, its a nice keris. You may want to change the hilt. I prefer the hilt to be something like below.

[ferrylaki]

Originally Posted by Bill Marsh

My first post in this forum. I have a few keris, mostly Java and Bali with a few others. My focus has been on Moro, but am re-developing an interest in the Indonesian varieties, particularly the Javanese and Balinese.

I have this keris on loan from a friend. She mainly collects African artifacts, but came across this keris. I am guessing Madura. Would appreciate frank comments.

The blade is in serious need of cleaning and staining. I have her permsiion to do this and may give it a try if it would be worth it.

Comments?

warangka : maduranese
dhapur : sinom
pamor : dadung muntir ( twisted rope)

the graneng and the other ricikan like sogokan and tikel alis was not well executed. it's a new keris from madura.
how ever, recent keris from madura are also made in a traditional way.

the mendak(ring) is a low quality one, the handle shows a crack in the midle,
couse it made from sawo wood ( not a hard one). the carvings are very fine.

regards

[Bill M]

Thank you for your comments and please keep them coming.

I have a few other keris that I may be posting. I have been trying to decide the appropriateness of posting blade pictures as I believe this is considered not proper among Javanese collectors.

However, as a one poster on this forum once told me, "When these keris come to my country, they become my country subjects and not under Javanese customs."

So, maybe I'll be posting a few pictures of better pieces -- American-Javanese and American-Balinese -- for your comments.

[Henk]

Bill,

That's a lovely maduran keris. Worth cleaning and staining.
The ukiran is the cuirassier type. Very well carved. The crack is a pitty.

http://blade.japet.com/KRISS/K-Ukiran/U-madura.htm

The wrangka is very nice carved as well. The pendok has the typical maduran european influence like the lower piece of the scabbard of a sabre.
Maybe a newer keris but in my opinion a very nice one.
Wouldn´t think about changing the ukiran.

[Marcokeris]

I agree with Henk about not change ukiran. IMO the hit is right with sarong pattern and with pendok too.
.....Another similar hit...

[asomotif]

You may want to change the hilt. I prefer the hilt to be something like below.

You may what...

You may want to change your head, but your mom will say it was made just to fit with the rest of your body.

really, I wish this quaility keris came along on this side of the pond.

[brekele]

Nice keris and I think it’s in original shape, no need to change the hilt.
The warangka is in Urang Urangan/Deng Udengan style, The hilt in Ukir Topi style (hat/cap)
The flying horse carved on the warangka called Mega Remeng, this is a legend about a flying horse owned by Jokotole, a king of Sumenep.
Now, it is not easy to find original keris like this even in Madura, Well…accept going door to door to collector houses. So…nice keris and just keep it, it is worth.

[BluErf]

I love the hilt!

And the overall ensemble is good. I'm still waiting for a good old all-original Madurese keris to come my way...

[Bill M]

The blade is soaking right now. Let's see how it cleans up. Now, If I can get my hands (with gloves) on some arsenic.......

[kulbuntet]

Hi Bill,

You can buy the arsenic(waragnan) in the for as Realgar at ebay. Try to buy a as cheap as posible piece whit dark red collour. Grind it and put it in limejuice(peal off skinfirst). And let is soak(the realgar) for (IMO) 6 months in the limejuice. Use old cocos water(without the milk, it should be tranparent) to get the rust off. Soak it a hour and take a hard bursh to brush the rust off.

Regards, Michel

[Bill M]

Originally Posted by kulbuntet

Hi Bill,

You can buy the arsenic(waragnan) in the for as Realgar at ebay. Try to buy a as cheap as posible piece whit dark red collour. Grind it and put it in limejuice(peal off skinfirst). And let is soak(the realgar) for (IMO) 6 months in the limejuice. Use old cocos water(without the milk, it should be tranparent) to get the rust off. Soak it a hour and take a hard bursh to brush the rust off.

Regards, Michel

Michel,

I understand the process you say. How should I protect myself from the arsenic?

Bill

[Rick]

Avoid fumes; this work really should be done outside during the heat of Summer ... with a breeze .

I don't believe transdermal absorption is too much of a problem .
Wash hands well after or wear gloves .

The fumes IMO are the real threat .
Do this outside or with a lab grade venting fan .
Temperature is a factor also .

[A. G. Maisey]

What follows is my personal experience; it is not intended to be taken as advice or recommendation in any way .

You know, I've stained a lot of blades, and I've used a number of different ways of doing it, and I've been staining blades for about 50 years now.

For a long time I haven't concerned myself with handling the stuff when in suspension in the lime juice, nor with fumes, nor any of the other things that theoretically should be of concern.

I used to be very wary of it when I started, but after seeing the way it is used and handled in Jawa, I sort of calmed down a bit and became pretty blase about it.

Pak Parman used to crush the warangan on a piece of plastic bag placed on top of a stone dish his wife used for crushing chillies---the actual pestle didn't get covered with plastic, just rinsed off.Now don't get me wrong:- no way I'd do this myself, and I'd most strongly caution against it, however, in Jawa warangan is not treated with much respect at all.

I use arsenic trioxide, which is a fish of a different feather to warangan, and I do use reasonable caution, but that caution probably only consists of not handling the powder with my bare hands, and using untensils reserved exclusively for the job.

Temperature and humidity are both important to achieving a good result.

[kulbuntet]

I want to set my self behind the 2 others. I am learning washing now for about one year. My Teatcher (guru and dukun) usses his hands in the solution and does it inside his house and use a hair dryer to heaten the blade and the solution( THIS IS NO ADVISE!!!!). He is washing for...i dont know lots of years. He tels me that he knows when he has been to long in the arsenic, dont laugh..his balls start to tingle .

The temperature is the most important(sun light not needed, can be used to heat the blade and solution) it works as a catalist to start the reaction. The As2O3(arsenic trioxide) is more toxic than the realgar/arsenic sulfide(AsS). I use both. But always never to much safty..to less does exist..you get sick and if your realy are unlucky you can die. The LD50 dose of AsO3 is about 100mg oraly taken. Wounds on your hands and the vapor off the heated solution are the biggest dangers. Use medical gloves iff you want to be sure....and when your balls tingle...get out of there

[David]

Originally Posted by kulbuntet

Use medical gloves iff you want to be sure....and when your balls tingle...get out of there

LOL!

[A. G. Maisey]

Nothing written here below is intended in any way to be advice or instruction, and I caution most strongly against the use of any of the methods that are detailed herein.


There are many ways to stain a keris blade.

All will produce some sort of result.

However, there is only one way to produce a quality result, and that involves massaging into the blade the lime juice into which the arsenic or warangan has been stirred.

The suspension is brushed onto the blade, and then it is massaged with a pinching action until the blade becomes very sticky; more suspension is applied and the procedure is repeated time and time again until the desired colour is achieved. The blade is then rinsed with water, dried with a lint free cloth, and then dried in direct sunlight. Then the complete procedure is repeated again however many times required, until the blade is the correct colour.

If this procedure is carried out on a dull, cloudy day, the resulting stain will lack life; it will be a fair stain, but it will not lift and sparkle. The same, but more so applies if it is done inside.

If the suspension dries too quickly the result will take too long to achieve, and because of this length of time involved, the result will be dull. It is best not to carry out the procedure on a very hot day, and neither the blade, nor the suspension should be heated. When I have done this job in Solo, I have found that the best time is about 8am to 11am during the dry season. That means low relative humidity and a temperature of around 25 to 30 degrees celsius.

If the suspension dries too slowly it will generate yellowish green spots under the black.

The two factors that principally affect drying speed are temperature and humidity.

Excellence of the final result also depends very strongly upon the blade being absolutely white and free of any rust prior to commencement.

Here is a photo of me staining a blade, this shows clearly the way in which the suspension is massaged into the metal.

[Marcokeris]

Mr. Maisey i agree with your traditional way to stain a blade....but with some old blades sometimes for me it is really very very difficult to have a good result.

About temperature... some years ago during winter (where i live the temperature is not far from zero) i tried to stain an old bugis keris. I remenber it was very cold and i used warangan (mixed some days before together lemon juice )by a tooth brush on the blade. Well... it was so cold that i used always my fingers to dry the solution (with the help of a electric phone).
When i finished to stain the result was, with my great surprise, very good

[A. G. Maisey]

Marco, it is never easy to guarantee a good result when you stain a blade.

One blade that I made myself took me days to stain well. Truly days. I did it again and again and again until I was satisfied. When I took this blade to Solo to have a wrongko made for it, I received some very, very extravagant compliments on the quality of the stain, which was pretty gratifying, but the time involved in getting this result was unbelieveable.

There is a difference between a "good result", and a "great result".
If you see a keris that has been stained really well, there is depth to the colour, and the whole thing seems alive, it lifts, it sparkles, even if its an old blade with ,say, Pajajaran pamor, it still seems to have life. A "good job" will give you the contrast , but it fails to "fly". Most commercial stainers do the stain by soaking, and in the right weather conditions this method gives a fairly consistent OK result, but it is never great. Its cheap, its affordable, its OK, but its not great.

Probably the biggest single flaw in any stain job is the failure to prepare the blade properly:- it must be really, really clean. If it is not, it is virtually certain that you will find small areas of discolouration under the black; you can find these by inspecting the blade at an angle in strong, direct sunlight.

You can certainly get some sort of a result under almost any conditions---inside, outside , early morning, midnight---whenever.You can also get some sort of a result with a number of different substances. For instance, Marco, you mention "lemon juice". If you are using true lemons, and not Tahitian limes, then although you will get a result, you will not get the best result possible.

In extremely cold conditions you can get quite good results, simply by using much less of the suspension on the blade, and working it constantly. I work it by pinching, but it can also be worked by continual brushing. However, its as I say:- although you will get a result, it will not be the best result possible.

In general, old blades are much, much easier to stain than new blades. At times I have soaked an old blade in pineapple juice to clean it, and when the cleaning has been completed, all it needed was a once over brush with lime juice to bring the stain back to acceptable---not really good, but good enough.

It takes a long time to gain the experience needed to get consistently good results from staining, not only do you need to understand the process, but you need to understand tangguh, so that you will know the colour that is most likely to be achieved with a good stain job. It is a pointless exercise to try to extract the colours of a Surakarta blade from a Tuban blade.

[Marcokeris]

Mr. Maisey thanks for your exhaustive reply. Please only a question: after washing (from warangan solution) the blade with water can i repeat again the warangan treatment ?

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Marco, most definitely, in fact it is usually necessary to repeat the procedure many times.

Here is what I wrote in my post of yesterday:-

"The suspension is brushed onto the blade, and then it is massaged with a pinching action until the blade becomes very sticky; more suspension is applied and the procedure is repeated time and time again until the desired colour is achieved. The blade is then rinsed with water, dried with a lint free cloth, and then dried in direct sunlight. Then the complete procedure is repeated again however many times required, until the blade is the correct colour."

[Marcokeris]

[QUOTE=A. G. Maisey]Yes Marco, most definitely, in fact it is usually necessary to repeat the procedure many times.

Next time (summer) I'll do in this way