Tombak Opinions Wanted

Henk · 15th May 2006, 07:11 PM

Tim,

If you continue to use lemon juice you can soak the blade in the juice and scrub the blade with the lemon a few times a day. Works excellent with keris to get them clean before the etching with warangan. I don't do it myself but I've seen how it is done.

A. G. Maisey,

At school where I work we use to say, you never can ask a silly question because questions are not silly, you only can get a silly answer.

Pamor is the contrast between the iron and the nickle after etching with the warangang. The black iron and the white lines of the nickle. The lines you see on the blade made by forging is not the pamor. As I wrote above, I saw how a keris was etched with warangan. When I looked at the blade I saw the lines of forging on the white blade, just the metal color as Tim's tombak. According to these lines I thought the pamor would be of an adeg type. I told that to the guy who did the etching and he replied "just watch and get surprised" When the warangan was brought up, the pamor raised and the iron colored black. Result: pamor beras wutah with those fanciful spots and circlelike lines. I couldn't discover a single adeg pamor line on the blade.

A. G. Maisey · 16th May 2006, 01:04 AM

Glad you are progressing with this, Tim.
If you go ahead with the pineapple juice, be sure to check the blade and give it a brushing with a hard toothbrush, under running water, morning and evening. You may well find that as the cleaning progresses you will reach a stage where the blade is clean, and the pattern can be seen well enough so that you do not need to go all the way with the arsenic. This is an old blade, and I have often seen this reaction from an old blade.

Thanks for your response, Henk.
I raised the question because I had already said that weld joints can sometimes mislead somebody into believing that there is pamor present in a blade when in fact there is not.
Even weathered wrought iron can sometimes show lines that could mislead into believing that one is looking at something that carries pamor, or has been pattern welded. However, you seemed to be quite certain that the presence of lines indicated pamor, so I asked myself if possibly you may have had a different understanding of the nature of pamor to my own understanding of it. I could not see anything indicating either pamor, or weld joints in Tim`s original picture, so I guess you either have a better screen, or better eyes than I do.

There has been quite a lot written on pamor. Perhaps the most valuable investigations have been carried out by Piaskowski and Bronson. The word pamor comes from the Javanese "blend or alloy", and pamor in the sense it is used for wesi aji need not contain nickel, nor does it need to be stained for it to exist. Old Javanese pamor in wesi aji actually obtains its contrast by the combining of high and low phosphorus irons. Pamor that is virtually without contrast can also be encountered, and this is referred to as "pamor sanak", "sanak" meaning "related", and indicating that the pamor has been produced from related material.

15th May 2006, 07:11 PM	#1
Henk Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 1,209	Tim, If you continue to use lemon juice you can soak the blade in the juice and scrub the blade with the lemon a few times a day. Works excellent with keris to get them clean before the etching with warangan. I don't do it myself but I've seen how it is done. A. G. Maisey, At school where I work we use to say, you never can ask a silly question because questions are not silly, you only can get a silly answer. Pamor is the contrast between the iron and the nickle after etching with the warangang. The black iron and the white lines of the nickle. The lines you see on the blade made by forging is not the pamor. As I wrote above, I saw how a keris was etched with warangan. When I looked at the blade I saw the lines of forging on the white blade, just the metal color as Tim's tombak. According to these lines I thought the pamor would be of an adeg type. I told that to the guy who did the etching and he replied "just watch and get surprised" When the warangan was brought up, the pamor raised and the iron colored black. Result: pamor beras wutah with those fanciful spots and circlelike lines. I couldn't discover a single adeg pamor line on the blade.

16th May 2006, 01:04 AM	#2
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,015	Glad you are progressing with this, Tim. If you go ahead with the pineapple juice, be sure to check the blade and give it a brushing with a hard toothbrush, under running water, morning and evening. You may well find that as the cleaning progresses you will reach a stage where the blade is clean, and the pattern can be seen well enough so that you do not need to go all the way with the arsenic. This is an old blade, and I have often seen this reaction from an old blade. Thanks for your response, Henk. I raised the question because I had already said that weld joints can sometimes mislead somebody into believing that there is pamor present in a blade when in fact there is not. Even weathered wrought iron can sometimes show lines that could mislead into believing that one is looking at something that carries pamor, or has been pattern welded. However, you seemed to be quite certain that the presence of lines indicated pamor, so I asked myself if possibly you may have had a different understanding of the nature of pamor to my own understanding of it. I could not see anything indicating either pamor, or weld joints in Tim`s original picture, so I guess you either have a better screen, or better eyes than I do. There has been quite a lot written on pamor. Perhaps the most valuable investigations have been carried out by Piaskowski and Bronson. The word pamor comes from the Javanese "blend or alloy", and pamor in the sense it is used for wesi aji need not contain nickel, nor does it need to be stained for it to exist. Old Javanese pamor in wesi aji actually obtains its contrast by the combining of high and low phosphorus irons. Pamor that is virtually without contrast can also be encountered, and this is referred to as "pamor sanak", "sanak" meaning "related", and indicating that the pamor has been produced from related material.