Cleaning blade of a Javanese keris

[A. G. Maisey]

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.

[David]

Thanks Alan, for taking to time to directly address the blade at hand. I also agree that this is probably not a blade that needs new warangan. I don't believe this blade has a high contrast pamor and the stain looks fairly good as is. But everything you mention will indeed make the existing stain look better without resorting to a full wash that would remove the original warangan.
One question i have. Will the final wash with dish detergent eliminate all the acids brought to the blade with the limes, or would it still be wise to use a slurry of baking soda to neutralize these acids?

[A. G. Maisey]

That dishwash final clean that I'm now using does seem to get rid of any acid residue.

I used to use the bicarb slurry & then thoroughly rinse in warm running water with a toothbrush scrub. This is what I did with damascus ( I made a lot of damascus) after an etch with anything at all.

Then i ran out of bicarb one day and just did the dishwash scrub & rinse, it seemed to be just as effective.

In Solo they never use bicarb after any blade process, and with a blade that might be just a bit dirty dirty and hungry looking, the dishwash scrub is what most people start with.

What I do now works just as well as anything I've done in the past.

In fact, in practice I never just go with any set down process, I look at the thing to be cleaned up and then decide what I'll try first, this can be a soak in oil, soap and water, mineral turps, metho, light acids, hydrochloric acid, just about anything I think might make the object look better. When I write instructions I try to make it as easy to follow as possible. For instance, the very best way to do a full warangan job I don't think I've ever written down and given to anybody, the reason being that it is more than a little bit dangerous.

[David]

Thanks Alan!