Cleaning blade of a Javanese keris

A. G. Maisey · 13th March 2022, 06:12 AM

Conduit, I agree with David in that there are numerous threads that address this cleaning issue.

However, both David and I have been looking at these threads & contributing to them over a number of years, for a new comer to extract exactly the right advice for his particular keris could be a rather confusing exercise.

At least, I've just looked at a few of the old threads on this subject, including advice that I have given in the past, and without any prior knowledge I do think it could be difficult to decide exactly what I needed to do.

So I'm going to make a couple of recommendations that are intended to apply to the keris of which you have posted some pics.

Firstly, this keris is already in pretty fair stain, I would avoid a complete clean & stain, it is not necessary.

What I would try first with this keris is to take it into the kitchen with a hard toothbrush and give it a good scrub with ordinary dishwash liquid, use hot water, rinse thoroughly, dry with a lint free cloth & then a hairdryer.

You might find that this is all that is needed, but if there is still visible rust, buy a couple of tahitian limes, squeeze the juice, strain it, with a hard toothbrush scrub the rusted areas well with the strained juice, rinse well, dry and inspect. You might find you need to do this a few times, but light rust such as is on this blade will usually disappear under lime juice & scrubbing.

When you have it satisfactorily clean, thoroughly rinse & scrub with the dishwash liquid, dry again as before, then drench with WD40, allow to dry & finish with light oil --- as you will find mentioned several thousand times in the previous threads here.

For me, "satisfactorily clean" is not 100% absolutely free of all blemishes, sometimes a little bit of rust can remain in the open pores of the metal, sometimes there might be a bit of old, inactive rust somewhere. These things I normally leave alone on the first attempt but might --- or might not --- try to remove at a later time. The important thing is to preserve the blade and to be able to read the pamor, if you can achieve these two objectives without a harsh in depth clean & stain, you are doing all you need to do.

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13th March 2022, 06:12 AM	#3
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,017	Conduit, I agree with David in that there are numerous threads that address this cleaning issue. However, both David and I have been looking at these threads & contributing to them over a number of years, for a new comer to extract exactly the right advice for his particular keris could be a rather confusing exercise. At least, I've just looked at a few of the old threads on this subject, including advice that I have given in the past, and without any prior knowledge I do think it could be difficult to decide exactly what I needed to do. So I'm going to make a couple of recommendations that are intended to apply to the keris of which you have posted some pics. Firstly, this keris is already in pretty fair stain, I would avoid a complete clean & stain, it is not necessary. What I would try first with this keris is to take it into the kitchen with a hard toothbrush and give it a good scrub with ordinary dishwash liquid, use hot water, rinse thoroughly, dry with a lint free cloth & then a hairdryer. You might find that this is all that is needed, but if there is still visible rust, buy a couple of tahitian limes, squeeze the juice, strain it, with a hard toothbrush scrub the rusted areas well with the strained juice, rinse well, dry and inspect. You might find you need to do this a few times, but light rust such as is on this blade will usually disappear under lime juice & scrubbing. When you have it satisfactorily clean, thoroughly rinse & scrub with the dishwash liquid, dry again as before, then drench with WD40, allow to dry & finish with light oil --- as you will find mentioned several thousand times in the previous threads here. For me, "satisfactorily clean" is not 100% absolutely free of all blemishes, sometimes a little bit of rust can remain in the open pores of the metal, sometimes there might be a bit of old, inactive rust somewhere. These things I normally leave alone on the first attempt but might --- or might not --- try to remove at a later time. The important thing is to preserve the blade and to be able to read the pamor, if you can achieve these two objectives without a harsh in depth clean & stain, you are doing all you need to do.