By a collector, for collectors

[kai]

What about "The Javanese Kris" by Groneman? I see that it has some 20 pages dedicated to the process of forging Javanese weapons. Between the two books, which has the most comprehensive detail on forging?

What you're looking for regarding the keris forging process? There are also a bunch of videos online which may help to piecing together the puzzle...

Solyom & Solyom is a must-have for keris aficionados and you should be able to obtain it via an interlibrary loan. However, their section on forging is only 31 pics squeezed on 2 pages and less than 2 pages of text; valuable to get a basic idea of the process but little more I'm afraid.

Groneman set out to document the whole keris-making process and did so in quite some detail. There is apparently one step missing in the forging process which the empu managed to hide from Groneman. Maybe Alan could point that out if not sworn to secrecy? The English translation of Groneman is quite expensive (with lots of additional keris shown though); the original in German (Der Kris der Javaner; published as a series in 1910 to 1913) should also be readily available via libraries.

Regards,
Kai