Prambanan meteorite

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The Prambanan meteorite has somewhere between 5% and 10% nickel content, depending upon which analysis we refer to.

10% of 220grams is 22 grams, so 22gm. of nickel. This is not too much for a normal size keris.

The way that meteorite is welded in Jawa is by putting little lumps of it into an iron envelope, you weld the envelope, fold and weld a number of times, in my experience 8 or 10 times is about enough, you know when the material is clean because the billet at weld heat does not give off sparks. The meteoritic iron combines with the other iron and there is a more or less even distribution of nickel throughout the billet.

If we want to weld a simple mlumah pamor, like wos wutah we can then go ahead, split the pamor billet and put the steel core into it, however, if we want to weld a more complex pamor that involves either billet manipulation in the forge, or surface manipulation of the finished billet for the keris, we will use more material, depending on the pamor, perhaps vastly more material, and this will call for a much larger basic billet of pamor to be forged, which means we need to use more of the contrasting material:- nickel.

If we were to weld, say, a ganggeng kanyut pamor, I personally doubt that 220grams of meteoritic material would be sufficient.

Thank you Alan, for this more experienced answer. That would be quite a bit of meteorite then. Just to out that into perspective in today's world, given that chucks of iron/nickel meteorite average for about $10 a gram, that would mean that if you wanted someone to create such a keris the cost of just the pamor material alone could be well over $2000.
Would i be correct to assume that one could use smaller amounts of meteorite and make up the rest of the pamor with a more terrestrial metal just to be able to get a "taste" of meteorite into your blade? Would it be likely that this happened in many cases since the material was not easy to come?

[A. G. Maisey]

David, I've used meteoritic material a number of times to make both pamor and nickel damascus. The stuff I used was Arizona material, and I bought it as a lot of small lumps.

Most of it I did not weld the way they do in Central Jawa, but I welded it in a gas forge. This means that the finished billet of meteoritic material was pure meteor, not mixed with iron. Welding in the way I did, it would be possible to make all of the pamor in a keris blade from meteor.

I did use charcoal to weld the largest lump of material that I had, but this was exceptionally wasteful, and very , very difficult, I finished up with only a sliver of material ready to use. The major problem was that when the lump of meteor got to weld heat a whole lot of cracks opened up and it was almost impossible to keep it together in order to get it out of the fire and hit it.

I did not weigh it at any time, but when I finished welding it into a useable piece of meteoritic material it was usually about 4 or 5 inches long, 1.5 inches wide and something less than 1/4 inch thick.

This was then welded into a sandwich of wrought iron that had already been cleaned by folding and welding up to about ten times. So, nice clean nickel bearing meteoritic material, plus nice clean wrought iron, into a sandwich, welded, then welded and folded again to produce 128 nominal layers of nickel bearing material. Making each weld only a single weld, rather than a a double or triple weld, this means you weld 7 times:- 2>4>8>16>32>64>128. Stacked welds where you create two or three joints with each weld mean that you take less welds, and you lose less material, but you run a risk of creating a cold shut.

Yes, meteoritic material is combined with iron from another source to produce the finished billet of pamor. I did this by preparing the two types of material separately and then combining them. The way it was done in Jawa was to put bits of meteorite into an iron envelope and weld the two types of material at the same time.

The Javanese way is undoubtedly more economical but when I was playing with meteor I had the objective of producing pure meteoritic pamor. By welding the meteoritic material by itself I proved that it could be done and that if I had sufficient meteoritic material I could, if I so desired, make an entire blade from only meteor.

I have no idea of the weights of the material used, I simply estimated what I would need in order to produce what I wanted to produce. Bit like an experienced cook when they make a cake:- no scales, just experience.

I bought the bits of meteorite in about 1986, I forget what I paid for it, but it was very expensive.

Just a footnote on the reason I preferred to take only single welds instead of stacked welds. I worked alone,I did not normally use even one striker, let alone two, which is normal in Jawa. I most certainly did not use a power hammer. I used a four pound hammer to take a weld, and a ten or twelve pound hammer to draw the billet out. With the heavier hammers I used a hold-down tool fixed into the pritchel hole. I am 5'8" tall and weigh around 80 kilos. I am simply not big enough, nor strong enough to weld a stack with two or three joints in it, and get perfect welds. Never was strong enough, and certainly never will be now.