keris for comment..
 

here is my other tajong for comments.. anyone??

Nice piece! Are the mounts swassa?

That would be my guess from the looks of them Jose.

Zartane,

Very nice complete tajong. If I'm not mistaken, it's quite a high end piece. Where did you get it?

well, i manage to bargain it from a friend of mine.. didn't have the chance to polish the swasa.. maybe i will n post some pics after polishing..

I think the swasa accents (except maybe for the side eye-lashes) on this hilt are attached using adhesives instead of swasa pegs. So be careful when you polish the swasa accents. Depending on the age of the work, the adhesive securing the swasa pieces to the hilt may have become weakened and may drop off. And if that happens, please don't use superglue to reglue the pieces. Wood glue may not be the best to hold the swasa onto the wood, but it certainly is very safe and reversible, and will last for a while.

BluErf, where can i find this swasa pegs?? are there any particular product?? and yes, i did polish the swasa accents, and yes, one of them came off.. i should have read your post before doing so.. at least i did not use the super glue (i was planning to use super glue tomorow, luckily your comment was on time!!)

Therefore I thank you very much for your kind advice!!

Actually, swassa has to be made from scratch - it is a mixture of gold and copper for the most part, but must be played with and mixed specifically to match the color of the original swassa. It is expensive, but a friend and I have made it in the past.

I reckon that if was going to use an adhesive to put those pieces of metal back in place, I'd be using either damar or shellac. Button shellac would be the easiest to obtain, and to use. Just heat the piece of shellac over a candle, smear a little bit onto the wood, then have two candles burning at the same time, heat the shellac on the wood over one candle, and the metal fitting over the other, and press the metal into place.To make sure the metal went fully into its correct position, you heat the metal over the candle when it is on the wood, and then press it into place. The excess of squeezed out shellac can normally just be scraped off with a thumbnail, or a little piece of pointed wood, the candle soot can be wiped off with turps.

The swasa pegs were used in the past to nail the accent pieces to the hilt. They're made by the goldsmith commissioned to put the accent on the hilt. As such, they're not made for sale. I suppose it could always be commissioned now.

Anyhow, no one has used swasa pegs to secure the accents on tajong hilts in recent years, as far as we know. Swasa pegs are thin like needle, and hammered into the hilt. How the goldsmith did it is a bit of a mystery, as you could imagine, the needle-thin peg would bend quite easily if hammered slightly off-centre.

what does a peice of button shellac looks like? can i get it from any hardware store?

Zartane, I live in Australia, and in this country you cannot buy button shellac from an ordinary hardware store.

However, it is available from cabinet makers supply stores.It is shellac, but instead of being in flake form, it comes in a button form. The buttons are about 1.25 to 1.5 inches across, and about three sixteenths of an inch thick.

I've just done a quick google on button shellac, and there are many entries for button shellac. If you are unable to buy locally, it is certainly available over the net.

Actually BluErf, swaasa is very hard compared to gold or even silver. I have made swaasa nails before and they are very tough. I think it is the copper content.

thanks for all the replies.. how old do you guys think this keris is??

Yes, swasa is very hard because of the copper content, but the swasa pegs we've seen in tajong hilts are very thin. Considering that it has to be hammered into hard wood like kemuning or kenaung is still quite a feat.

I think this tajong is a early 20th century example judging from the form. I think there should have been an earlier thread on the evolution of the tajong hilt through the ages...

I do not know how these craftsmen placed pins of relatively soft metal into relatively hard wood. In fact, until I read it here, I had no idea that these swasa fittings were sometimes pinned into place, however, I do know how this is done in the European tradition.

Basically, there are two ways of doing this, or a combination of those two ways.

You drill a "pipe hole" into the wood, of marginally smaller diameter than the pin you wish to insert, or you drill as small a hole as you are able, even though this hole may be bigger than the pin, and you then use an adhesive in the hole to grip the pin; a hotmix adhesive such as damar, shellac, or jewellers wax is suitable.

It would surprise me if the craftsmen who fixed these swasa fittings in place did not use similar methods to those used by the European tradition.

Thank you Maisy, this is how I would (and have) done it. :)

Battara, A.G.Maisey is not a nickname, nor a nom de plume, it is my actual name.

My first name is Alan, and I would prefer that you used this part of my name to address me. Thanks for your consideration.

here is the keris with the swasa polished..

I think I love it!!!!!

My humble apologies Alan. :o

Thank you for your apology, Battara, but "humble" is unnecessary. Most people here use nicknames, and pen names. Unless you knew me personally it would be quite reasonable to think that the name I am using is not my actual name.