A different Pamor which is not folded but pasted

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Gustav, I did misunderstand the part of the blade and the characteristic you were referring to.

Those diagonal lines shown in the post #12 pic can easily be created by surface manipulation, or even by irregular striking on a native style anvil, or where stones were used instead of an anvil & hammer, or by use of an old & abused European anvil. We are not dealing with European standards.

As recently as the early 1990's, I saw a pande besi who was working on the outskirts of Karangpandan --- slopes of Mt. Lawu --- who was using stones as both hammer & anvil, his wife & daughter were his strikers.

The technology that existed & still exists in some parts of Jawa & Bali, & certainly in other parts of Indonesia, can be pretty primitive, & very often the results are not predictable. When I visited Pande Made Wija ( Pande Ketut Mudra's father) in 1982 his forge was just a shallow depression in the ground, & side blown from an ububan, his fire bed was no more than 5 or 6 inches deep.

In your post #21, the pic of the sorsoran that has a square enclosing some circles and some wavy lines that run across the blade. The lines across the blade can be created by upsetting & also by addition of extra material during the forging process, if for example we add that extra material at about fold 2 or 3 or 4, there will be no weld joint seen in the finished job.

The circles can be created by punch work.

The blade section enclosed by the square & directly above the poyuhan displays characteristics that can most definitely be created in a m'lumah base by manipulation.

These things that I have mentioned, I myself have done, not working in pamor, but working in damascus.

We can hypothesise as much as we like, but Gustav, I've done this sort of work, & I've seen it done, and based upon what I can see, and ignoring what I cannot see, there is nothing in this pamor motif that cannot be done by manipulation & addition. But still, I have no problem with you continuing to hold your own opinion.

I said some time back, that I do understand why you or somebody else might think that the motif is the result of miring work, but when I see something that has the characteristics of work that I've done myself, its a bit difficult for me to accept that it was not done in a similar way. Having said that, I do acknowledge that there could be a number of different approaches to creating the same finished job from a m'lumah billet, without going to the expense of miring work --- & the creation of pamor miring is very expensive.

With a lot of the pamor work & keris work that still comes out of Jawa & Madura --- I am not mentioning Bali & this is intentional --- it is not really possible to understand how something has been done unless we have observed it being done.