Cleaning blade of a Javanese keris

[Conduit]

Hello,

Would you please recommend a cleaning method for the blade in order to better uncover pamor on this Javanese keris.

[David]

Hi Conduit. This is a topic which has been discussed many times on this forum. Rather than start another thread that simply repeats the same information i would recommend you try various key words and search our archives for threads that have discussed this topic before.
There is one thread in our "Classic" section in the Sticky threads at the top of the forum page about this, but unfortunately a glitch in the system lost a great deal of the old forum threads some years back. But thanks to the Wayback Machine i have found a link to it. This will get you started, but again, using various key words related to cleaning and staining keris your will find many threads related to the subject. Try words like "Cleaning keris" "Staining Keris" "Warangan" and so on.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160703...ML/000717.html

[A. G. Maisey]

Conduit, I agree with David in that there are numerous threads that address this cleaning issue.

However, both David and I have been looking at these threads & contributing to them over a number of years, for a new comer to extract exactly the right advice for his particular keris could be a rather confusing exercise.

At least, I've just looked at a few of the old threads on this subject, including advice that I have given in the past, and without any prior knowledge I do think it could be difficult to decide exactly what I needed to do.

So I'm going to make a couple of recommendations that are intended to apply to the keris of which you have posted some pics.

Firstly, this keris is already in pretty fair stain, I would avoid a complete clean & stain, it is not necessary.

What I would try first with this keris is to take it into the kitchen with a hard toothbrush and give it a good scrub with ordinary dishwash liquid, use hot water, rinse thoroughly, dry with a lint free cloth & then a hairdryer.

You might find that this is all that is needed, but if there is still visible rust, buy a couple of tahitian limes, squeeze the juice, strain it, with a hard toothbrush scrub the rusted areas well with the strained juice, rinse well, dry and inspect. You might find you need to do this a few times, but light rust such as is on this blade will usually disappear under lime juice & scrubbing.

When you have it satisfactorily clean, thoroughly rinse & scrub with the dishwash liquid, dry again as before, then drench with WD40, allow to dry & finish with light oil --- as you will find mentioned several thousand times in the previous threads here.

For me, "satisfactorily clean" is not 100% absolutely free of all blemishes, sometimes a little bit of rust can remain in the open pores of the metal, sometimes there might be a bit of old, inactive rust somewhere. These things I normally leave alone on the first attempt but might --- or might not --- try to remove at a later time. The important thing is to preserve the blade and to be able to read the pamor, if you can achieve these two objectives without a harsh in depth clean & stain, you are doing all you need to do.

[David]

Thanks Alan, for taking to time to directly address the blade at hand. I also agree that this is probably not a blade that needs new warangan. I don't believe this blade has a high contrast pamor and the stain looks fairly good as is. But everything you mention will indeed make the existing stain look better without resorting to a full wash that would remove the original warangan.
One question i have. Will the final wash with dish detergent eliminate all the acids brought to the blade with the limes, or would it still be wise to use a slurry of baking soda to neutralize these acids?

[A. G. Maisey]

That dishwash final clean that I'm now using does seem to get rid of any acid residue.

I used to use the bicarb slurry & then thoroughly rinse in warm running water with a toothbrush scrub. This is what I did with damascus ( I made a lot of damascus) after an etch with anything at all.

Then i ran out of bicarb one day and just did the dishwash scrub & rinse, it seemed to be just as effective.

In Solo they never use bicarb after any blade process, and with a blade that might be just a bit dirty dirty and hungry looking, the dishwash scrub is what most people start with.

What I do now works just as well as anything I've done in the past.

In fact, in practice I never just go with any set down process, I look at the thing to be cleaned up and then decide what I'll try first, this can be a soak in oil, soap and water, mineral turps, metho, light acids, hydrochloric acid, just about anything I think might make the object look better. When I write instructions I try to make it as easy to follow as possible. For instance, the very best way to do a full warangan job I don't think I've ever written down and given to anybody, the reason being that it is more than a little bit dangerous.

[David]

Thanks Alan!