New Balinese Kersi got

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I would encourage people to not be afraid to try. Start on little things, work carefully, work slowly, do the research. If one does not live in Indonesia or visit regularly, it can be quite difficult to get decent restoration work done, & I believe that for most people, it is not such a difficult thing to learn how to do things oneself.

Thanks for posting this encouragement. I was going to post something similar in response to Milandro's warnings, but you have stated my unshared points very well.
I believe that what we, as collectors have a responsibility to practice in this regard is to "do no harm". In other words, don't do any restorations that are not reversible. Regarding redressing a keris, if i do so i surely keep the old parts that i replace and do my best not to damage anything, even parts i am replacing. If i got something wrong, i can always return to the where i began.
If a keris has no dress i do feel somewhat obligated to dress it. As Milandro rightly points out, this can be difficult for people that don't live in Indonesia. I have even a greater challenge living in North America than Milandro has in the Netherland, where at least there is a strong and direct history and connection to Indonesia and more access to keris collections. Most people over here have never even heard of keris.
My most successful restoration of a keris was probably this one. I received it just as an unstained blade with just a hilt. I washed the blade and stained it with warangan i made with lab grade arsenic trioxide. This was a fairly early staining experiment for me and i could probably do a better job today. But the perspective i adopted here was, is it an improvement over how the blade looked previous to the process and the answer here was definitely yes. The thing about staining blades is that it is indeed something that i believe we get better at with practice. If you don't try it you will never get any good at it. It is probably wise to start out trying it on relatively unimportant blades in your collection. But if we don't get good results we have not ruined the blade. Simply bring the blade back to "white" and try again. Of course we must be careful about the strength of acids we use as you don't want to damage the blade. But the fruit juice acids i was using at the time are pretty safe in this regard.
After staining i located a mendhak for the ensemble. This was perhaps the easiest part and they are easily available on the internet. The more difficult part was, of course, the wrongko. I did not want to risk sending the blade back to Indonesia for fitting. A kind member and mentor here was able to source an unfitted and unfinished wrongko with a brass pendok. Basically this means that it had merely a small round hole drilled through the atasan and it was up to me to fit the blade, attach the gandar and finish the wood. I did NOT do a perfect job on this fitting. I will admit that this is not really my strongest skillset. But i did manage something that i felt was acceptable and now i had a fully dressed blade where before i did not. Lastly i wanted to give the ensemble a little bit more class so i had a thick silver plating added to the pendok.
So i stated this project out as a collector with very few skills doing this kind of thing and ended up with a completed ensemble that while not perfect, is at least acceptable to me. I also learned a great deal in the process and feel much better prepared to do an even better job next time if i were to undertake such a project again. Most importantly, i have done no harm to the keris itself in the process, unlike that idiot kid Alec Steele, who destroyed what little was left of a relic keris blade after doing no real accurate research on what he was undertaking.
All this to say that while i appreciate that we must indeed be cautious when embarking on DIY restoration projects, we also must be careful not to completely discourage collectors from such work where it is needed and appropriate.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...highlight=Kebo