Meteoric Patrem-Made In England...

[ferrylaki]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Forget grinders and dremels and such like.

The blade features---sogokan, greneng, blumbangan etc---are most easily and most quickly done by (sogokan) roughing out with a small cold chisel, refining with a scraper, and finishing with jewellers files and rifflers. Greneng is most easily cut with jewellers files. The easiest way to get the right contours in the blade is with a scraper.

Yeah, yeah---I know almost everybody working today uses grinders, but have a close look at the detail sometime, and then look at something that is attributed to Kinom, or one of the other past greats. There is only so much flexibility in a grinder, and it is impossible to cut the correct contours in sogokan with a grinder.

Of course, using non mechanical tools increases working time, and thus increases price, and 99.9% of buyers cannot tell you what the correct contours are anyway, so who is going to pay 5 or 6 times as much for something, if they cannot see any difference between it and something made with a grinder?

It takes about 40 hours for a skilled craftsman to cut correct sogokan to only one side of a blade.

I'm planning to buy a grinder for my keris project, but as Alan mention before about grinder fact, I guess a cold steel chisel would be just fine. spending more hours for the ricikan is the best way to make keris just like the old times.

people nowdays use grinder to shape the " odo odo" and the " gigir sapi"
and the result is more damage for biginers .
"It takes about 40 hours for a skilled craftsman to cut correct sogokan to only one side of a blade" as Alan said...than I must practice my patience first before I start working on my sogokan...couse if dont have patience you could destroy an entirely job on the ricikan. I found "no way back" on the ricikan job.

As an information Michel. I'm also trying a small mendak for my keris, it's not a patrem but its smaller than a normal keris...hope a manage to find two or three so I can offfer my spare for you... good day every body...

FERRYLAKI
JAKARTA