The ultimate meteorite Keris!
 

There is one thing I would love to try with regards to keris. Have you ever tried to make a keris from just Meteorite steel. Now remember the difference between steel and Iron, I know it is common to make a keris using Meteorite Iron but what about meteorite steel? First you would need a furnace which can produce very high temperatures. Get a large good quality meteorite and sand blast the surface to remove all the outer impurity's until the meteorite is shiny. Now you need to find out what percentage of the meteorite is Iron. Melt the meteorite down and add a calculated quantity of black carbon to the melt and cap it. All the impurity's will come to the top, remove it and what you will have left at the bottom is pure Meteorite steel, not Iron.
Take this steel and make a keris with it adding nothing else. As far as I know this has not been done before because you will need a special vacuum furnace to de-gas the melt but I have been talking to western metal experts and they say it is possible as long as you select the correct Meteorite to start with.
Imagine that, a pure meteorite blade :-) I would love to make it, want to help me!!! lol

Here is how they did it in the old days.
Arms and Jewellery of the Indian Mughuls, Lahor 1947, written by Abdul Aziz.
In the book he tells about Shah Jahangir, and about a falling meteor. The meteor fell around 10 April 1621 close to a village called Jalandhar. The meteor was dug up and presented to Shah Jahangir:
I ordered Master (Ustad) Daud to make a sword, a dagger and a knife out of it, and bring them to me. He represented that it would not stand below the hammer, and fell too pieces. I told him in that case to mix it with other iron and make use of it. As I had told him, he mixed three parts of lightening-iron and one of other iron, and having made two swords, one dagger, and one knife, brought them to me. From the mixing of other iron he had brought out its quality (watering). According to the manner of the excellent swords of Yaman and [the swords of] the South, it could be bent, and became straight again. I ordered him to test it in my presence. It cut very well, equal to true swords. I called one the Shamshir-I-qati (keen sword) and the other Barq-sirisht (lightening-natured).

Sounds very interesting but the idea of a meteorite blade with nothing added to it but a pinch of carbon appeals to me more :D

Lightning steel...hmm..you are talking about a steel lightning rod which has been struck with lightning several times? I like that idea too :D

Maybe we can make the meteorite blade and then fix it to the top of a lightning rod and then we will have Lightning Meteorite steel, this is getting better by the second :D :D :D

As much as i hate to get on to this same ol' bend, it was hardly "common" to make keris out of meteoric iron. It was more the exception, reserved for important keris of the day. Meteorite in itself is a rare commodity and the proper nickelous iron that was used on these special keris is even rarer.
Don't know how i could help you on your quest Pusaka, but when you finish i would love to see it posted here. :)
I can tell you that you will have an extremely hard time finding a keris smith who could actually pull this off and the cost to you will be quite extravagant. But by all means, have at it, mate! :D

Who wants to hold the ladder while I go up with a hacksaw to remove my bit of Lightning steel from the local Church, Its old and I bet it been struck several times :D :D :eek: LOL

Hey Pusaka, before you get busted stealing the local church's lightning rod, i think the reference to "lightning iron" in Jens quote is to the meteorite itself, not iron struck by lightning. ;)

Its ok I don’t like heights anyway so I changed my mind about going up there LOL

All this joking has reminded me of something though. Tibetan phurba daggers were made from meteorite iron and then fixed to a lightning conductor at the temple so they would get struck by lightning, so the idea is not new after all :eek:

Sorry to be such a stickler on these subjects, but it is the rare and most powerful of phurbas that would be made of meteorite. Certainly not all or even most. I only make this comment because someone with no knowledge of these might take your comment and pass it on as a general fact. This is why so many people think all keris were made with meteoric metals as well. :)

Apart from the Indonesians and the Tibetans which other cultures used Meteorite to make blades?

As per Jens provided quote the Indians obviously did some experimenting with the material as well. Again, not in any common practice as far as i know. There are a few modern bladesmiths who have used meteorite in purely contemporary creations.

Just realised that if you made meteorite steel from two different types of meteorite, one with a high nickel content and one with a lower nickel content you could forge them together and still have a pamor because of the contrast between the two different meteorites. The keris blade would still be 100% meteorite steel ;)

Well I think that Chinge meteorite (16%Ni) steel would be good for the pamor and perhaps Gibeon meteorite steel (6%Ni) for the rest of the blade. There should be a good contrast between these two meteorite steels so pamor will be very visible.
For all those who think that the symbolism of union, meteorite from above and iron from earth below will be lost. Carbon from Earth (below) and meteorite from above, the symbolism would be the same but I bet the keris would be extremely beautiful. Its possible but difficult. Anybody who succeeded in producing it would certainly be remembered in Keris history, with me the inventor ;)

Yes Pusaka, you would certainly become a legend. :rolleyes:

You don’t think it’s possible ? I was talking to a material scientist who said its very possible!

Is it possible? Of course! Never even hinted it wasn't. My comment was in reference to the size of the ego that might be needed to claim it as their invention. ;)
Would it be costly? Most certainly. The amount of meterorite to accomplish this feat alone would come to a small fortune. Then the cost of an extremely skilled pande or empu (if you could find one) would also be extravagant. Meteorite is a VERY difficult material to work with just as pamor, but to create an entire keris from it would require a keris maker of the highest order. Besides, you would only want the best to be working with such high priced material. So who is going to make this keris for you. Not your material scientist.
Would it be any more beautiful than the best of keris made from terrestial metals. I do not see why it would. The elements are the elements, after all. There are no elements in meteorite that do not already exist here on Earth. But i guess that for some the grass is always greemer on the other side of the asteriod. :) And you know, you will still need to treat it with arsenic and lime to blacken the iron and raise the pamor just like other keris. ;)
So by all means, acquire the meteorite, find the empu, make your keris, make history! I would, in all sincerity, love to see you do it. I am sure many others would too. As i stated before, have at it boy. We wait with bated breath!
:)

Actually the meteorite Iron would have to be converted into meteorite steel first and then sent to the keris worker as meteorite steel. There is no empu who has a furnace capable of doing this as they use very basic charcoal furnaces. Luckily a friend of mine has such a furnace so I intend to let him convert the Iron to steel. After all it’s only a matter of de-gassing the meteorite and adding the correct amount of carbon black, and then the impurities can be removed.
So you see it’s not as difficult as you make out. The reason why keris workers find it so hard to work with meteorites is because they are full of impurity’s, they are Iron not steel and they tend to break up when heated and are very difficult to forge. However if I gave the keris worker a lump of purified meteorite steel which will be easy to work he should have no more problems forging it then he would a common keris. So you see it not as complicated as you make out. Yes the meteorite would be expensive but that’s about all you got right ;)

Pusaka
 

I'm starting to believe you are trolling this forum .......... Don't .

This one is going no where fast.

Pusaka, if you are genuinely interested in the use of meteoric metal, feel free to search the archives. I recall some excellent discussions over on SFI (www.swordforum.com) which might interest you as well.

Thread closed.