Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Rick · 13th November 2006, 03:20 PM

Welcome aboard Vogan.

So many questions and many of them are pretty subjective.

I would think that if you wanted to do any thing more to a hilt than perhaps using a little 0000 steel wool on it the art of French polishing would be a good skill to have.

Switching out pendoks can be problematic sometimes because no two keris scabbards are exactly the same diameter and length; a pendok that fits one keris may have to be trimmed or altered in some way to fit another.

Swapping out handles and mendaks is fine provided that the hilt and mendak are reasonably in the same cultural area as the blade i.e. a Surakarta planar hilt would look kind of strange on a Bali blade and visa versa.

As for re-staining blades; one of our American members has been learning how to do this and makes his own warangan. I suppose that you yourself could also experiment with this process providing you can obtain a quantity of white arsenic trioxide or purchase it in mineral (realgar?) form from ebay.
With a little searching of the forums you will find threads on this subject.
Please remember when doing searches for keris info to look in all the forums as the Warung is a fairly new venture here and older threads on keris will be in the Ethno forum archives.

I hope you find your participation here a most rewarding experience.

Rick

13th November 2006, 03:20 PM	#2
Rick Vikingsword Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 6,333	Nothing Is Cut And Dried Welcome aboard Vogan. So many questions and many of them are pretty subjective. I would think that if you wanted to do any thing more to a hilt than perhaps using a little 0000 steel wool on it the art of French polishing would be a good skill to have. Switching out pendoks can be problematic sometimes because no two keris scabbards are exactly the same diameter and length; a pendok that fits one keris may have to be trimmed or altered in some way to fit another. Swapping out handles and mendaks is fine provided that the hilt and mendak are reasonably in the same cultural area as the blade i.e. a Surakarta planar hilt would look kind of strange on a Bali blade and visa versa. As for re-staining blades; one of our American members has been learning how to do this and makes his own warangan. I suppose that you yourself could also experiment with this process providing you can obtain a quantity of white arsenic trioxide or purchase it in mineral (realgar?) form from ebay. With a little searching of the forums you will find threads on this subject. Please remember when doing searches for keris info to look in all the forums as the Warung is a fairly new venture here and older threads on keris will be in the Ethno forum archives. I hope you find your participation here a most rewarding experience. Rick Last edited by Rick; 13th November 2006 at 03:43 PM.