Is it a good keris ?

[milandro]

As others have said, I see this king of sarong and this kind of hilt very often . They are carved for the tourist market

As other have said too, at least you were very lucky to get what appears to be a nice , old, blade. I see all too often blades that are simply cut out pieces of iron with a some painted motief with only the suggestion of a pamor.

Your blade is forged and if properly treated will reveal some sort of pamor obtained in the forge and not with paint.

As for redressing it , I have had some succes with a German dealer on Bali, he can find a sarong maker who can fashion a dress and a hilt for this kris.

It is not easy but you neet to take accurate and extensive pictures of the kris with measurements, then , after some time, he will ship you the sarong. The hilt is not a problem.


I have done this twice and the second time I was for a Bali Kris. The fitting was a little too tight but with the help of a local dealer(who is also a woodworker) with few minutes of work with a Dremel , the fitting is now perfect



see how it came out here


http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=29008

[Marius66]

Really nice !!
Thank you Milandro !!!

[Sajen]

Hello Marius,

When you plan to give the blade a new scabbard I would use for this blade one of the two shown examples.

BTW, sometimes you have to wait much longer than a few hours for a comment!

Regards,
Detlef

[Marius66]

Here are some other photos I took of the keris,
I cleaned the blade a little with 1000 grain with WD40 (surely there's something better to do?) the Mendak, I think that's its name, doesn't look bad I think ??
What do you think ?

[Marius66]

Here a global picture,
Without picture zoom , the blade is almost black

[Sajen]

The blade looks good after your cleaning. And the uwer (mendak is the Javanese term) looks very nice, I guess that it is from silver.
But like others have said, I would look to give the blade a better handle and an other scabbard, I think the tip from Milandro is a good one.

Regards,
Detlef

[Sajen]

It's a nice blade!

[David]

Originally Posted by Sajen

The blade looks good after your cleaning. And the uwer (mendak is the Javanese term) looks very nice, I guess that it is from silver.
But like others have said, I would look to give the blade a better handle and an other scabbard, I think the tip from Milandro is a good one.

Regards,
Detlef

I agree with Detlef. Your clean-up looks pretty good. And that uwer is a nice one now that you cleaned it up. It does appear to be silver. The stones might actually be low-grade rubies, but even if they are glass it still looks like an old quality uwer.
You could take exacting measurements and trace the blade from all angles on paper and hopefully find someone in Bali to make you a new sarung if you are really keen on changing out this dress. You would undoubtedly need to do final adjustments if you did, so i would ask that they send it to you before attaching the gander.
As for warangan, you might have some difficulty finding someone who can do a good Balinese warangan job. This keris still seems to retain some of it's old Balinese stain. I might choose to simply preserve it as is considering this.
As for abrasives, i wouldn't worry too much about doing any damage with 1000 git paper or 0000 steel wool.
Looking at the cleaned up blade i would say that it is of a fairly decent quality. Competent, but not what could be considered high end. In other words, i wouldn't spend more money than the blade is worth redressing it.