Prambanan meteorite

[Seerp Visser]

Being a blacksmith i am studying the forging of the keris.

My study is focused on the forging of five kerises by the empu Karyadikromo in 1904. The forging was noticed and described by Dr. Isaac Groneman.
The forging of these kerises was published in the Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographie in 1910.

I should like to know the dimensions of the part of the Prambanan meteorite still present in the kraton of Surakarta today.

Can anybody, who has access to the kraton, help me with that information?
Does anybody have recent photographs from that meteorite from different angles?
(Especially the places where parts were taken of for the forging of kerises)

This piece, now in the kraton, was part of a larger meteorite. A second piece is mentioned in the literature.

I was not able to find further information about this second part.
Does anybody have some information about that second part?

Does anybody know, or where to find information about the finding of the meteorite and how people knew, or found out, they could use the material for kerises?

The meteorite iron had a special value for the kerises. The material was not easily made available by the Susuhunan.
Does anyone have information about the policy of the Susuhunan to make this meteorite material available?
From the literature i get the impression that only small parts were given to, only very important, people in only very special occasions.

[David]

Seerp, there are 2 photographs of the meteorite in Edward Frey's book (The Kris, Third Edition), one showing the entire shrine and another more close up. Just after page 54. I can't be sure from the photo, but i would estimate that the remaining piece is perhaps nearly 2 ft. high by nearly 3 ft. across.
This book was first published in the mid-1980s, but i am not aware that pieces of this meteorite were still being used so i would imaging that the size of the piece hasn't changed much since this photo was taken.

[A. G. Maisey]

Seerp, if you have a look at Edward Frey:- "The Kris" Oxford University Press you will find a couple photos of the remnant of the meteorite, and a short commentary on it. I cannot find my copy of Frey at the moment. Sorry.

I visit the public areas of the Keraton Surakarta Hadiningrat regularly, my most recent visit was in April this year, but I've only seen the meterorite remnant once, and that was perhaps 25 years ago. Even if you could see it in person, I doubt that you would learn anything from it. There's not much of it left, from memory, its about 24 inches long, 18 inches high, less than 18 inches wide.

It fell near Prambanan in about 1740, and broke into two large pieces and an uncounted number of smaller pieces. The people around Prambanan had been finding and selling the little pieces as talismans from the time of its fall. There was no problem at all in finding the meteorite, the locals saw and heard its fall, apparently it put on quite a show.

The first large piece was taken to Surakarta in 1784, the second large piece was taken in 1797. The palace empus had started to play with the stuff by about 1820.

In theory, pieces of the meteorite were only made available to the palace empus for use for select people, however, being Jawa it was apparently not too difficult to obtain a piece for use in one's own keris, if one had the means to pay for it.

In respect of Keraton "policy" for gifting of pieces of the meteorite, I know nothing, but again, this being Jawa, the Keraton being central to Jawa, and Sinuhun being central to the Keraton, my guess is that gifts would have been made on feeling at the time, not on any set policy.

All the above is written from memory, and I will stand correction on any part of it.

Edit:- I did a google on this, seems there are more than a few entries, somebody with time to spare might be able to dredge up a bit, here is a link to one that I looked at, seems like useable info:-

http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.ed...pdf?sequence=2

[sirek]

Originally Posted by David

Seerp, there are 2 photographs of the meteorite in Edward Frey's book (The Kris, Third Edition), one showing the entire shrine and another more close up..

These pictures are from Edward Frey's book The Kris, second Edition,
(which are the same, I guess?)

[David]

Yes Sirek, those are the same photos as in the 3rd edition.

[Seerp Visser]

Sirek, thanks for the photographs.

I have put some (estimated) dimensions on them.
Left from the lines the dimensions in cm. At the right side inches.
A rough calculation, from this dimensions, estimates the weight of the meteorite remnant to be approx. 1000 kgs.

I am very interested in the true dimensions as well as the surface where parts were chiseled off?. Probably the backside of the meteorite.
When anybody visits the keraton........

Alain, you mention meteorite parts used as talisman and the use of it for forging kerises, from 1820. Do you know where to find documentation about those facts? I am very interested to read more about it.
Much of the documentation i red until this time, is constantly repeating the same story with each time a new dressing.

What i found as well is that the pieces meteorite given to representatives of museums or governments weighed (except for one 250 grams piece what went to the Netherlands) not more than 50 grams per piece.
Dr. Groneman states that for an average keris 220 grams of meteorite was used. That seems unrealistic to me.

[David]

Originally Posted by Seerp Visser

Dr. Groneman states that for an average keris 220 grams of meteorite was used. That seems unrealistic to me.

Yeah, that seems unrealistic to me as well. That is nearly 1/2 pound of meteorite. You do realize, of course, that the entire blade is not made of pure meteoric ore when meteorite was used on these special keris. It is part of the pamor material only. I suppose that the pamor could be made up of all meteorite or in part, so i'm not sure the amount need be so specific. But i don't think a half pound would be necessary.

[Bob A]

Originally Posted by David

Yeah, that seems unrealistic to me as well. That is nearly 8 pounds of meteorite. Are you sure you read that correctly. You do realize, of course, that the entire blade is not made of pure meteoric ore when meteorite was used on these special keris. It is part of the pamor material only. I suppose that the pamor could be made up of all meteorite or in part, so i'm not sure the amount need be so specific. But certain 8 lbs. would be far more than would be necessary to create a single keris.

220 grams is a bit less than 8 ounces.

[Seerp Visser]

David,
I think 220 grams is about 0.48 lbs, but still i think it is too much.

[David]

Thanks to both you gentlemen, but i actually caught my conversation error before i saw your posts in the moderation queue and corrected my post. I was reading a grams to ounces chart and thought i had clicked on pounds. But i am still willing to bare the embarrassment for my mistake.
I agree with you Seerp, that a half pound is still probably a bit much in this regard. However, i am not a keris smith and others who have involved themselves in the process might have other, more educated thoughts. Perhaps Alan will weigh in here.

[A. G. Maisey]

The Prambanan meteorite has somewhere between 5% and 10% nickel content, depending upon which analysis we refer to.

10% of 220grams is 22 grams, so 22gm. of nickel. This is not too much for a normal size keris.

The way that meteorite is welded in Jawa is by putting little lumps of it into an iron envelope, you weld the envelope, fold and weld a number of times, in my experience 8 or 10 times is about enough, you know when the material is clean because the billet at weld heat does not give off sparks. The meteoritic iron combines with the other iron and there is a more or less even distribution of nickel throughout the billet.

If we want to weld a simple mlumah pamor, like wos wutah we can then go ahead, split the pamor billet and put the steel core into it, however, if we want to weld a more complex pamor that involves either billet manipulation in the forge, or surface manipulation of the finished billet for the keris, we will use more material, depending on the pamor, perhaps vastly more material, and this will call for a much larger basic billet of pamor to be forged, which means we need to use more of the contrasting material:- nickel.

If we were to weld, say, a ganggeng kanyut pamor, I personally doubt that 220grams of meteoritic material would be sufficient.

But again, all of this depends upon the type of forge we are using. Coke and charcoal eat more of the material than does gas, which is quite economical to use, and is as easy as baking a cake, maybe easier. It is virtually impossible to make a mistake with gas, no matter how hard you try it is just about impossible to screw up a job, provided you follow the rules.

Coke and charcoal, especially with the simple side blown forge that is typically used in Jawa and Bali, is much more capricious and requires something more than mere skill to understand.

In the old black-smithing text books and hand books you will find mention that not all blacksmiths can take a good weld, apparently what developed was a system where smiths would concentrate upon the work that they did best, so sometimes you had a situation where there might be several smiths in the same area, but all the difficult welding work was done by only one smith, who sub-contracted to the other smiths.

Welding iron and nickel is not really difficult, but when we weld iron (or mild steel) + nickel + high carbon steel (something like 01), which is what we do when we make nickel damascus, the level of difficulty does increase, especially if welding in a traditional forge, rather than in gas.

Seerp, much of what I know about keris and other things Javanese, does not come complete with documentation taken from somebody else's work, it comes from having spent a lot of time in Jawa and talking with Javanese people.

In fact, I find much of the keris information in books is misleading, incomplete, or misunderstood. This applies also to Gronemann. In one part of his description of the smith's work he omits a crucial part of the process. It is my guess that the smith concealed this part of the process from him. When I was taught this part of the process I was told that it was "sufficient for Mas Halen alone" (in Jawa most people pronounce my name as "Halen").

EDIT
I've received a private email that advises me that my use of "Mas" as a form of address for myself is incorrect, because I'm married and was a mature man when the (reported) conversation referred to in my last paragraph above took place (amazing how people know more about me than I do about myself).

In order to avoid any further confusion I wish to provide the following clarification:-

the man who used to address me as "Mas" was a long-time friend, we were on very familiar terms, I also addressed him as "Mas". Seniority and age were not part of the equation, our familiarity was the factor that permitted both of us to use "Mas", rather than "Pak" as a form of address.

I trust this explanation will satisfy any more queries of this nature.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The Prambanan meteorite has somewhere between 5% and 10% nickel content, depending upon which analysis we refer to.

10% of 220grams is 22 grams, so 22gm. of nickel. This is not too much for a normal size keris.

The way that meteorite is welded in Jawa is by putting little lumps of it into an iron envelope, you weld the envelope, fold and weld a number of times, in my experience 8 or 10 times is about enough, you know when the material is clean because the billet at weld heat does not give off sparks. The meteoritic iron combines with the other iron and there is a more or less even distribution of nickel throughout the billet.

If we want to weld a simple mlumah pamor, like wos wutah we can then go ahead, split the pamor billet and put the steel core into it, however, if we want to weld a more complex pamor that involves either billet manipulation in the forge, or surface manipulation of the finished billet for the keris, we will use more material, depending on the pamor, perhaps vastly more material, and this will call for a much larger basic billet of pamor to be forged, which means we need to use more of the contrasting material:- nickel.

If we were to weld, say, a ganggeng kanyut pamor, I personally doubt that 220grams of meteoritic material would be sufficient.

Thank you Alan, for this more experienced answer. That would be quite a bit of meteorite then. Just to out that into perspective in today's world, given that chucks of iron/nickel meteorite average for about $10 a gram, that would mean that if you wanted someone to create such a keris the cost of just the pamor material alone could be well over $2000.
Would i be correct to assume that one could use smaller amounts of meteorite and make up the rest of the pamor with a more terrestrial metal just to be able to get a "taste" of meteorite into your blade? Would it be likely that this happened in many cases since the material was not easy to come?

[A. G. Maisey]

David, I've used meteoritic material a number of times to make both pamor and nickel damascus. The stuff I used was Arizona material, and I bought it as a lot of small lumps.

Most of it I did not weld the way they do in Central Jawa, but I welded it in a gas forge. This means that the finished billet of meteoritic material was pure meteor, not mixed with iron. Welding in the way I did, it would be possible to make all of the pamor in a keris blade from meteor.

I did use charcoal to weld the largest lump of material that I had, but this was exceptionally wasteful, and very , very difficult, I finished up with only a sliver of material ready to use. The major problem was that when the lump of meteor got to weld heat a whole lot of cracks opened up and it was almost impossible to keep it together in order to get it out of the fire and hit it.

I did not weigh it at any time, but when I finished welding it into a useable piece of meteoritic material it was usually about 4 or 5 inches long, 1.5 inches wide and something less than 1/4 inch thick.

This was then welded into a sandwich of wrought iron that had already been cleaned by folding and welding up to about ten times. So, nice clean nickel bearing meteoritic material, plus nice clean wrought iron, into a sandwich, welded, then welded and folded again to produce 128 nominal layers of nickel bearing material. Making each weld only a single weld, rather than a a double or triple weld, this means you weld 7 times:- 2>4>8>16>32>64>128. Stacked welds where you create two or three joints with each weld mean that you take less welds, and you lose less material, but you run a risk of creating a cold shut.

Yes, meteoritic material is combined with iron from another source to produce the finished billet of pamor. I did this by preparing the two types of material separately and then combining them. The way it was done in Jawa was to put bits of meteorite into an iron envelope and weld the two types of material at the same time.

The Javanese way is undoubtedly more economical but when I was playing with meteor I had the objective of producing pure meteoritic pamor. By welding the meteoritic material by itself I proved that it could be done and that if I had sufficient meteoritic material I could, if I so desired, make an entire blade from only meteor.

I have no idea of the weights of the material used, I simply estimated what I would need in order to produce what I wanted to produce. Bit like an experienced cook when they make a cake:- no scales, just experience.

I bought the bits of meteorite in about 1986, I forget what I paid for it, but it was very expensive.

Just a footnote on the reason I preferred to take only single welds instead of stacked welds. I worked alone,I did not normally use even one striker, let alone two, which is normal in Jawa. I most certainly did not use a power hammer. I used a four pound hammer to take a weld, and a ten or twelve pound hammer to draw the billet out. With the heavier hammers I used a hold-down tool fixed into the pritchel hole. I am 5'8" tall and weigh around 80 kilos. I am simply not big enough, nor strong enough to weld a stack with two or three joints in it, and get perfect welds. Never was strong enough, and certainly never will be now.