Where can we get Cold Blue? Attn Alan Maisey or anyone who lives in Australia

[A. G. Maisey]

David, I am not presuming to answer on behalf of Silkreeler, and I hope that he will give you his own response, however, getting a blade stained well, and correctly, is no longer easy in Jawa, and I doubt it has ever been easy in other places in Indonesia.

For many years the primary source of quality warangan was Toko Vera in Pasar Gede, Solo. They used to supply re-sellers all over Jawa, and further afield, however, a few years ago the old stock that they had been relying on for many years ran out, and they obtained some more from India, which was not much good at all and caused the users a lot of problems. Now that has run out as well and apart from the difficulty of locating satisfactory material, government regulation now prohibits the import of warangan, which is, of course, a form of arsenic. Toko Vera is owned by members of my wife's extended family and is run by her nephew and his wife.

The cost of getting a poor warangan job done in Solo has escalated. It is now extremely expensive to get a job done that 5 years ago I would not have accepted, but now you cannot get a better job done. Decent short-term work is still being done in Surabaya and other places in East Jawa, but the operative word is "short-term". It looks pretty OK directly after it has been done but it will not last for many years, as the old jobs used to. I've seen these current jobs, both from Surabaya and from Solo go bad within 2 or 3 years.

I believe that this problem will sort itself out sooner or later, people will begin to use lab quality white arsenic, but those people will be educated, qualified people who have the required govt. qualifications to be in possession of and use, this hazardous chemical, and because of this required certification + the cost of the material, a blade stain will no longer be a nice, comparatively cheap little addition to a blade, but will cost as much as or more than the blade itself.

Blades have not been stained in Bali for as long as I've been going to Indonesia --- dealers there say they are stained there, but they are not, Bali blades are sent to Surabaya.

Those of us who live in the western world and who do understand how to correctly stain a blade now carry knowledge that could well disappear in Jawa.

[David]

Thanks Alan for that detailed response.

[silkreeler]

Precisely!! It is quite a headache to get a properly done warangan job in Indonesia. Besides, in my case, I only want to get a portion of my blade re stained (the pesi, or some areas of the blade where I just rubbed off the rust along with some stain) ... I don't want to remove the entire coating from the blade, so I don't mind having a portion of the blade having a different color hue from the rest ... From what I know no warangan guy would like to immerse a partially whitened keris into their warangan solution.

By the way, Alan, when you said the solution can do the entire blade, does it mean it would still give color contrast between pamor and the iron?

[silkreeler]

It is not an overkill to say that it is a dying art. A friend quoted me a Chinese guy who passed away couple years ago. He was a Chinese warangan expert in Surabaya who was a stickler to tradition. He said according to the traditional method, you would have to watch for the climate and observe the clouds, among many other factors, to ensure your warangan job would do well. A guy once didn't observe this requirement, and his keris didn't get the optimum color, it was "not properly dried because the weather was more humid than it was supposed to be".

Heck, I'm not sure if I'm quoting stuffs right, anyone who knows better please correct me ...

[silkreeler]

Is it this one?

http://www.amazon.com/Birchwood-Case...ood+Casey+cold

[A. G. Maisey]

When you do a stain job, the first thing you must do if you want an acceptable job is to get the entire blade back to a bright, clean white. In other words you strip the entire blade of whatever is on it, whether that is rust, or whether it is part of an old , worn previous stain.

With cold blue you can spot little bits of a worn stain job, and if you're careful, you can blend the touched up spots carefully so you can't really see where the spotting has been done.

On the art of staining, a normal commercial job is done by soaking. In my opinion this usually results in a pretty lousy job. The only way to get a good job is to do each blade individually, and whether you do it with the brush on method, or the massage method you do need to have a fine understanding of climatic conditions to get a good job, and also be prepared to go back to a white blade again and again until you get it right. Experience does help, but no matter how experienced somebody is, not every blade comes out perfect every time, and with a good blade, perfection is the only acceptable result.

You can get some sort of a result under almost any conditions, even inside in the middle of winter, but for a truly good result you need a clear sky with no clouds --- clouds cause a less than brilliant, sparkling finish --- middle range humidity so that the drying time between applications is neither too long nor too short, and a temperature that is neither too hot nor too cool. In Jawa, probably early morning in the dry season is about the best time to do a stain job. Whenever you do the job, wherever you do it, the weather is vital for perfection.

Yeah, that link looks like the stuff I'm talking about. My bottle looks a bit different because I bought it a long time ago, but its probably the same stuff.

[silkreeler]

Ah yess!!! I recall him also saying something about clouds ...
Anyway, thanks for the answer, I will get that solution and try my luck. I guess I should avoid the pamor areas as it will stain the nickel part just the same?