Staining keris with Chinese warangan

harimauhk · 2nd July 2009, 06:50 AM

Selamat pagi all,

Bought a new keris in Jakarta a few months ago (my first) and decided to carefully sharpen it up. I know you're not supposed to do that with a keris, but being a student of Minangkabau silat and a knife aficionado of sorts, I thought it would be a good idea to give the keris a cutting edge.

I managed to scrape off a tiny amount of the black stain and decided to try and maranggi the keris again using Thai limes and red warangan, but my results have been far from satisfactory. I used a toothbrush and applied coat after coat of the mixture over the last week, and all I got was a brown liquid residue, reminiscent of rust. I also tried to slap some onto a Valiantco tumbuk lada, and it has turned grey, but the forging marks are clearly apparent. Earlier today I tried scrubbing the warangan into the keris repeatedly after washing it, and it removed the brown residue and also turned the keris more grey than the paintbrush method had.

I was hoping someone could give me some advice onto how to turn this keris back to the beautiful black it once was. Should I just keep scrubbing the warangan in? If I stop, the wilah starts to turn brown. I've read through every thread on here with any mention of warangan and arsenic, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm a little worried this keris may be composed entirely of nickel!

2nd July 2009, 06:50 AM	#1
harimauhk Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 88	Staining keris with Chinese warangan Selamat pagi all, Bought a new keris in Jakarta a few months ago (my first) and decided to carefully sharpen it up. I know you're not supposed to do that with a keris, but being a student of Minangkabau silat and a knife aficionado of sorts, I thought it would be a good idea to give the keris a cutting edge. I managed to scrape off a tiny amount of the black stain and decided to try and maranggi the keris again using Thai limes and red warangan, but my results have been far from satisfactory. I used a toothbrush and applied coat after coat of the mixture over the last week, and all I got was a brown liquid residue, reminiscent of rust. I also tried to slap some onto a Valiantco tumbuk lada, and it has turned grey, but the forging marks are clearly apparent. Earlier today I tried scrubbing the warangan into the keris repeatedly after washing it, and it removed the brown residue and also turned the keris more grey than the paintbrush method had. I was hoping someone could give me some advice onto how to turn this keris back to the beautiful black it once was. Should I just keep scrubbing the warangan in? If I stop, the wilah starts to turn brown. I've read through every thread on here with any mention of warangan and arsenic, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm a little worried this keris may be composed entirely of nickel!