Warangan

[Adni Aljunied]

Hi Rasdan.

What's the color of your warangan? Pinkish or orange? Both when pouded will appear white powder, but the pink ones are the more purer. Maybe you can post a picture of the lump of arsenic you got to show others.
A table spoonfull of refined powdered arsenic can be enough to mix with a litre of citric acids, preferably natural lime (green ones) juices that is well filtered.
A catalyst is needed to get the reaction going, and this is done by "sacrificing" a well warangan blade in the solution for an hour or two (make sure that there's no oils or other foreign matter on the blade), and then scrubbed white inside the solution. The solution will darken a little, and be left to "fermentate" for about a week before using. A catalyst can also be a small quantity of matured warangan solution added.
A well matured warangan solution can last very long, but be carefull not to contaminate it by putting uncleaned blades, especailly oily ones or with other non-metallic substances on. A few rust spots on the blade maybe OK, but not too much of rust. As time passes, you may add more lime juices to the "shrinking" solution, but not necessary adding more arsenic.
The whole cleansing process, is very tricky and diffrent blades/metals react diffrently with the solution. Whitening of the blade is also very important to get good contrast, and one has to be a lot systematic when doing this. Even the whether may effect the results, and is best done on a sunny day, under a shade with some breeze.
And as Paul said, be carefull when handling the solution, and althoguh you had many times advise me to use a glove Paul, I still don't, but do have to advsie others to use it. I just cannot have a true feel of the blade when using a glove, as somtimes we have to "massage" the warangan in.
As I've said, it's a tricky process, and it's best to observe first hand how all the steps and done.