Features of this keris.

[Battara]

I must say I like those new keris that are posted here. Nice work. The art is still alive and well to some degree.

[Tim Simmons]

Please excuse me but I have to join in here. Some of you know that I make some decorative fittings amongst other art works. People often try to scare the pants off me by saying my skills will be replaced by a computer. This is rubbish! the computer guided tool does not do craft or art, it does machining. I am already finding customers dissatisfied with the finish and inflexability of CAD ? CAM ? what ever it is called, let alone the cost when prototypes are needed quickly. Sorry , as it is my livelihood I just had to rant. Tim

[Rick]

I think that it's an appropriate rant Tim .

No offense meant Alam Shah sincerely ; but when I look at your newly made auto(?) folder I get no feeling of 'soul' or artistry from it . All I see is laminated steels and faceting ; a very machine age piece .
Functional beauty yes .

Here is a site with many contemporary art knives .
http://www.miaminiceknife.com/

[nechesh]

Wow! I can get a whole lotta keris for the price of one of them fancy modern art folders. I mean, they're nice, but.....

[Rick]

Very pricey ?

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by Rick

Very pricey ?

Which comes back to the Mcusta, precison machine custom knife.
This is a low-cost mass production knife, assembly and finished by hand. All I'm implying is, it's possible to make one by using CAM. I'm not saying that CAM can do everything, either. As Tim had mentioned, it has it's limitations.

I love custom knives too.
Tim, do not worry. Craftsmen like yourself are always in demand. The work done by skilled craftmen cannot be matched by machines, the human element are alway required (even in the mcusta case).

Rick, it's not an auto. It's a liner-lock folder. For more info...
http://www.knifeworks.com/index.asp?...&Category=1261

Of course there are those eye-popping beauties...
http://www.nordicknives.com/knife_ty...y_folders.html

(Er...I think I've posted in the wrong forum...should be in bladeforum.com instead).

[Emanuel]

Alam Shah, Rick and Tim Simmons,

Since I opened the machinist's box, and I acknowledge the unbelievable advances in technology of this century, I'm trying to understand the feasability of machined keris...The knives presented above don't have complex surfaces like keris. They consist of many machined components, cutting and removal from a "damascus" billet -or granted, a fully forged blade- and manual assembly, no?
I guess the wilah could be mold-injected molten material, but then it's all wrong and you would get some sort of alloy/fused steel, not pamor. You could try using combinations of press and rollers but...how?? There's no automatic/mechanical process to my knowledge that could duplicate the manual shaping of the blade. Assuming a pre-forged shaped blade, how to carve the prabot? CAM milling could easily duplicate the ricikan of these nice keris in aluminium alloy, but if the machines were put to work on the low laminate keris blades, how would they fare? Wouldn't this irreparably mangle the pamor layers?
Having more or less broken down the work involved, are CAM keris possible?
Next time I'm around a shop, I'll ask .

Regards,
Manolo