Thoughts on this Keris

[Athanase]

I think that the only way to know the presence or not of meteoritic materials in a blade is by a very thorough analysis of the chemical composition (mass spectrometry). The meteorite still contains elements that are very rare on earth (like Iridium for example). The detection of its trace elements much greater proportion than for terrestrial materials could provide evidence.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Athanase

I think that the only way to know the presence or not of meteoritic materials in a blade is by a very thorough analysis of the chemical composition (mass spectrometry). The meteorite still contains elements that are very rare on earth (like Iridium for example). The detection of its trace elements much greater proportion than for terrestrial materials could provide evidence.

Actually, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) would probably be the best analytical method as it is non-destructive, and would indicate the nature and amount of various metals detected at the surface of the blade. Small portable and hand-held devices are now available.

[A. G. Maisey]

Even though I have worked iron-nickel meteoric material in the forge I know almost nothing about meteors, as I commented earlier, I have never studied this material, I have only used it.

So this is a question, it is not a statement of opinion nor is it an attempt at debate, I simply want somebody who does truly understand the study of iron-nickel meteorites to give me an answer that can be supported with evidence.

I assisted Prof. Jerzy Piaskowski of Poland in his examination of S.E. Asian blade materials, over a period of more than 15 years. Jerzy was a noted historical metallurgist who worked at the Institute of Metallurgy in Krakow. Jerzy passed away in 2013, and he was about 90 when he left this world. His methods of examination were dated, and he did not have the benefit during his working life of the technology that is now available to us for the examination of minerals.

Jerzy's opinion was that it was not possible to identify with any certainty any iron-nickel material that had a meteoric origin after it had been through the process of multiple forge welds and heavy forging. All the minerals that can be found in an iron-nickel meteorite can be found on Earth.

Last year I heard from a friend who is a noted collector of minerals, that scientists in the USA had found a new mineral in an Australian meteorite (Wedderburn meteorite) that had not previously been found in nature on Earth, this mineral is called something like edscoti, it can be found in iron that has been through high temperature processing on Earth, but not in nature.

So even if we now do have a mineral that is unique to some meteorites and is not found in nature on Earth, will that assist in identifying meteoric material after that material has been through multiple forge welds and heavy forging? Personally, I rather think not.

Based upon what little I know about meteoric material, I feel that it would be a total impossibility to determine with certainty that material which has been repeatedly forge welded for up to perhaps ten times, and that has also been heavily forged could with certainty be identified as being of meteoric origin.

It might perhaps be possible to determine with a degree of possibility that a piece of material as described above could be of meteoric origin, but can such a determination be made with certainty?

As stated above, I am not opening a debate here, all I would like to see is an answer that can be supported with evidence from somebody who does truly understand the study of iron-nickel meteorites.

There has been ongoing discussion of this matter over many years in the keris community, and in other areas of study, such as archaeology , and some of the conclusions and opinions put forward have been utterly ridiculous.

It would be very nice to be able to put this matter to one side and either forget about it, or to be able to know that we can state with certainty that a piece of material that has been through extensive high temperature processing here on Earth can indeed be positively identified as being meteoric in origin.

[Gustav]

"When an iron meteorite is forged into a tool or weapon, the Widmanstätten patterns remain, but become stretched and distorted. The patterns usually cannot be fully eliminated by blacksmithing, even through extensive working. When a knife or tool is forged from meteoric iron and then polished, the patterns appear in the surface of the metal, albeit distorted, but they tend to retain some of the original octahedral shape and the appearance of thin lamellae criss-crossing each other."

Iron and Steel in Ancient Times by Vagn Fabritius Buchwald -- Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2005, Page 26.

I absolutely cannot guarantee the truthfulness of this statement.

In Weihrauch's thesis there are pictures of a polished and etched weld sample consisting of 13 different alloys in layers, one of them is Gibeon meteorite. I don't know about the specifics of forge work involved. There are (among others) 100:1 and 500:1 enlargements of the Gibeon layer, and in 500:1 remains of Widmannstätten-pattern are quite well recognisable.

This is all I can say about it.

Of course the search for W-pattern in a Keris blade would mean gradually turning it into dust for the search of couple of grams of meteorite.

[A. G. Maisey]

Where we have ferric material with a carbon content that is below 0.5% we can use cold forging techniques to form it, when we move the material into the black heat to low red those low heats are not going to have much, if any effect on grain structure, and it is not unusual to use low heats on low volume iron smithing work because of the cost savings.

I can quite believe that under this sort of forging the W pattern would still be discernible after working the material.

But at welding temperatures where the surface of the metal is liquefing, or at the very least beginning to liquefy and is then subjected to heavy forging I find it more than difficult to believe that any trace of a W pattern will remain when the work is cold, most especially so after the firescale has been removed.

I still find Weihrauch's reported results very difficult to understand when the observations of smiths who have worked with meteorite all point to the fact that the W pattern disappears under conditions of high heat and heavy forging.

But really, all this discussion of W patterns is a bit beside the point, yes, if we can see a W pattern on a piece of etched ferric material we can probably be reasonably certain that the material is meteoric in origin.

But my question is this:-

is it possible to identify with certainty that iron-nickel material that has been through the process of multiple forge welds and heavy forging is of meteoric origin?

[Ian]

Hi Alan,

I'm no expert on meteoritic iron-nickel content, but I think we need to focus your question a little bit. Perhaps it would help to consider if one could identify confidently objects made solely from meteoritic iron. If so, then one could ask whether such identification can be extended to objects that are made partly of meteoritic iron.

Sideritic meteorites are reported to have greater fractions of nickel than seen in terrestrial iron deposits. This would seem to be one distinguishing feature that might be helpful. Sideritic meteorites are also likely to contain Cobalt, while terrestrial deposits are not. There are also the "rare earth metals" of the Lanthanum series that are more likely to be present in meteorites. Based on the metallic elements known to occur in various forms of sideritic meteorites, one could build up an elemental profile that would help identify a meteoritic origin.

The real problem comes, I think, when meteoritic iron is used in combination with terrestrial iron to forge an object. Diluting and contaminating the meteoritic metals with terrestrial metals would probably make it much more difficult to identify the meteoritic elements.

Ian

[Ian]

From Wikipedia:

The Wedderburn meteorite is an iron meteorite discovered in 1951 near the town of Wedderburn in the state of Victoria, Australia.

In 2019 it was announced that edscottite, a mineral previously not found in nature, had been identified in a sample of the Wedderburn meteorite. It is believed the mineral was created in the core of another planet.

Dockrill, Peter. "Scientists Confirm The Discovery of a Mineral Never Before Seen in Nature". ScienceAlert. Retrieved 2019-09-02.

A very interesting small meteorite from my home state. See also here.

Ed Scott was a pioneering cosmochemist at the University of Hawaii.

[David]

Originally Posted by Ian

Hi Alan,

I'm no expert on meteoritic iron-nickel content, but I think we need to focus your question a little bit. Perhaps it would help to consider if one could identify confidently objects made solely from meteoritic iron. If so, then one could ask whether such identification can be extended to objects that are made partly of meteoritic iron.

Sideritic meteorites are reported to have greater fractions of nickel than seen in terrestrial iron deposits. This would seem to be one distinguishing feature that might be helpful. Sideritic meteorites are also likely to contain Cobalt, while terrestrial deposits are not. There are also the "rare earth metals" of the Lanthanum series that are more likely to be present in meteorites. Based on the metallic elements known to occur in various forms of sideritic meteorites, one could build up an elemental profile that would help identify a meteoritic origin.

The real problem comes, I think, when meteoritic iron is used in combination with terrestrial iron to forge an object. Diluting and contaminating the meteoritic metals with terrestrial metals would probably make it much more difficult to identify the meteoritic elements.

Ian

I think it is important to put this question into context Ian. We are discussing this on the keris forum after all. Meteorite, in the relatively rare cases when it is actually present in Indonesian keris, is ALWAYS used in small amounts as part of the mix of metals used to create pamor. I am unaware of any keris that have ever been created using just pure meteoric material. In a general forum perhaps the question needs to be more specific, but in the keris forum we are, by definition, discussing keris. While specific mention of keris is not made in Alan's proposed question, given the parameters of our discussion topics here i consider it implied.