Javanese Keris ID

[JustYS]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

That's a good video, gives a real good idea of the forge work involved in producing the billet from which a keris is made, but this part of the process, although hot & heavy work, is the easy part, and the part that many makers are happy enough to farm out to somebody else.

Sometimes they supervise the smith & the strikers, sometimes not, just give instructions and pay for the end result.

The really difficult part of making a keris is the cold work, the carving.

I've made a few keris, the longest time it took me to produce a keris blade was 49 man-days, 8 & 10 hour working days.

Of those 49 days, there were 9 days spent on forge work, three men, a smith and two strikers, working for three days.

The balance of the time was spent on carving the keris.

It could have been carved more quickly if I had used electric tools, but I used all traditional tools, not electric.

There really is a lot of work in making a keris.

Hi Alan,

Based on your above example you’ve spent ~20% of the time on forge work and ~80% on carving the keris.

My question is is it the time spent on carving always greater than on forge?

How about for example a keris with simple dhapur (Brojol/Tilam Upih) but with complex pamor (Ron genduru/wengkon)? In this case is the time spent on carving still greater than on forge?

Thank you.