Citric soak

[A. G. Maisey]

Something has occurred to me with all this talk about "gold on blade" business.

We haven't said how the gold is attached to the blade.

Without straining the brain cells too hard I can think of 4 ways that gold is put onto a blade:-

old fashioned fire gilding

attached with natural resin --- or in the modern age with a commercial adhesive

mechanical attachment by roughening the surface and hammering the gold over the design set out by roughening (koftgari)

mechanical attachment where an undercut cavity is cut into the blade surface, a lump of gold is hammered into the cavity so that the gold enters the undercuts, and leaves a large lump of gold above the surface of the blade, then that gold is carved. Effectively this is inlay, in the case of Indonesian blades, inlay that is sometimes very exaggerated.

If the gold is old fashioned fire gilding it is not a good idea ever to soak the rusty blade in an acidic medium

If the gold is attached by resin or other adhesive the decision to soak or not depends upon the degree of corrosion:- if there is a good chance that the rust has penetrated beneath the surface of the adhesive, you do not soak; if the rust is just a light surface dusting you brush with acid. In between these two extremes your experience guides you with the right way to go.

With typical Indian koftgari gold attachment I would never, ever soak, nor try to remove rust with an acidic medium in any way. Far better to conserve and live with the russetted surface. However, with good quality kinatah work, which is similar to koftgari work, the gold is often quite heavy and the attachment is robust. I would always think a number of times before I soaked a blade like this, even though it might not lose any gold, but I would not hesitate to clean by brushing with an acidic medium.

Where the gold has been attached by hammering into a dove-tailed hole in the blade, cautious soaking and careful brushing are both possible. Even if the gold carving works loose from the cavity, modern adhesives permit undetectable replacement.

In fact, I personally regard soaking as a "lazy-man's" way of cleaning blades. Yeah, sure I've used it and used it many times, but I do not believe it is the best way to clean any blade, including keris. I do believe that painstaking mechanical cleaning followed by careful acidic brushing is probably the best way to clean the blades of S.E.Asia.

I have read of other methods where electric current is used, but I have no knowledge nor experience of these methods. From what I have heard, cleaning in this way might well be superior to the traditional methods that I know.