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Old 4th August 2014, 01:47 PM   #25
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 6,675
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Thanks Pusaka.

Yes, at the moment there are more than a few people who have used meteoritic material, or who claim to have used meteoritic material to make keris. Frankly, I have difficulty in understanding why everybody thinks its so special, because its not --- apart from the mystical belief thing.

I was welding meteoritic material --- actually, consolidating small pieces of Arizona meteorite --- back around 1987 or '88, and then I worked with Pandai Keris Yantono in producing a couple of keris with meteoritic pamor. It is possible these may have been the first keris of the modern era that used meteoritic material as the pamor. Its not difficult to weld, not much different to welding ordinary iron and nickel, but it does require more than 7 welds before its clean enough to use.

In any case, I don't have any problem with accepting that Bp. Basuki may have used meteoritic material --- Pandai Keris Yantono was very probably his teacher so he would have had the basics. My only question is where the video commentary says that meteoritic material was used in the keris in the video.

There may be a word that sounds similar to the word "meteor", but what we would need to hear is something like "sela asal langit", or maybe "sela saking langit". Don't forget, this is not Bahasa Indonesia, it is Krama Inggil.

I have had two native speakers of Javanese listen to the section of the commentary between 1.50 and 1.60 several times each to see if they can identify mention of anything that we might be able to interpret as "meteor", but regrettably neither are speakers of Krama Inggil so although they understand the commentary better than I do, their understanding is far from perfect. My son-in-law can speak Krama Inggil, but he's in Solo and I'm in Australia, and I won't be seeing him until December.

Since none of us can understand perfectly what is being said, why not just ignore the commentary and accept the video for what it is:- a very entertaining essay on forge work, certainly incomplete, and leaving a lot to the imagination, but entertaining none the less.

Additional comment:-

just read this:-

http://teknologi.news.viva.co.id/new...ra-deteksinya-


and found something interesting --- well, interesting to me, anyway ---


at the end of this article are two little pictures of five keris in a ploncon.

That picture has been lifted from my site.

Not the first time my site has been pirated by people in Indonesia, Solo tourist office lifted something I wrote and included it in their blurb. I don't really mind this, but it would be nice if people asked first, before just taking.

Anyway, here is the pic in full:-
Attached Images
 

Last edited by A. G. Maisey; 4th August 2014 at 02:14 PM. Reason: something amusing + image added
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