G`day Vogan.
As Rick has said, all of this is pretty subjective. It depends on so many factors. I'm not going to attempt to give any sort of comprehensive answer, but if we start by looking at the wood parts of a keris, a couple of drops of baby oil , an old toothbrush, and a good hard rub with the palm of your hand, will work wonders.
If you need to do a complete repolish, certainly, french polish is traditional, but it is also time consuming and requires a fair bit of skill. A better solution for an amateur is a commercial gun stock finish, such as the old Birchwood Casey stuff.Or even something like Danish Oil.
In the original cultural context, a fine blade should be accomodated in comparable dress, but a lot of western collectors have the western museum mind set, which is to hang on to old, dirty, damaged parts, because they are "original".If this suits the individual collector---fine. But he's in most cases only kidding himself if he thinks he has "original" dress. Depending on the age of the blade, it could have been changed several times during the life of each of the previous owners. All the new owner has is old dress, not necessarily original dress.If it was junk when it was made, it is still junk now---no matter how old it is.
In the long run, it mostly depends on what makes you happy:- if you want a room full of old keris in "as found" condition, and that makes you happy---go for it!
If you want to do a total restoration on everything you get your hands on, and that makes you happy, then do it. But just try to retain a little bit of integrity, stay away from the estapol. As for Araldite, well, its wonderful stuff, but in my opinion you should have to sit for an examination before you are granted a certificate that allows you to buy it.
With a metal pendok, a lot depends on what the metal is, and what technique has been used to decorate it. Sometimes just a quick rub with a brass polish cloth is all that's needed, sometimes you might have to strip it back to clean metal with a mild acid, then polish. There are probably 50 different ways to go at this, depending on what you want as a final result.
Yeah, blade stain will fade over time, but that is over a very long time for a blade that was stained correctly in the first place, and has been looked after well since. I have blades that I stained 20, 30, 40 years ago, that still look as if they were done yesterday.
Above all:- be sympathetic, and try in so far as possible to maintain cultural integrity; do not do anything that you cannot undo.
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