Thoughts on this Keris

[mross]

here's the page from Blade Magazine October 2020

[Seerp Visser]

The Empu Karja di Kromo forged five Kerisblades in 1904. The forging of these blades is described by Dr. Groneman. His articles are published in the Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographie in 1910 and 1913.
I made a replica of the first blade Karja di Kromo forged. I tried to make the pamor material just as it was executed by the kraton of Surakarta. I used Campo del Cielo meteoriet and adjusted the quantities a bit to approach the properties of the Prambanan meteorite.

From each stage in the forging process I kept material samples.
By modern spectrometric analyzing methods the meteorite could be detected from the beginning of the forging process till the completed blade and during all the stages.

Below a picture with a part of the photo of the original keris published in the IAfE, showing the original pamor of Keris number I, forged by Karja di Krama and below that, the pamor in the replica forged by me. I think I am getting close.

So these days it is possible to trace meteorite in Keris, probably as long as the quantities are not extremely low.
(As example, Djeno Harumbrodjo mentioned, he used one gram of meteorite starting the forging of a Keris (on two kgs or more of iron and steel?).

[mross]

That is cool. Keep at it. Lots of meteor material available these days and not overly expensive. Love this stuff.

[David]

Originally Posted by mross

here's the page from Blade Magazine October 2020

Thanks for the article. What there is of it. Frankly it is not at all in depth and everything in it is prefaced with "according to Tristan". Far be it from me to doubt the word of a 17 yr. old boy, but i can't help but be just a little bit suspicious of his claims. That said, it is still beautiful blade, but if that is indeed the original Widmanstätten pattern and he didn't heat it beyond the temperatures that would eliminate such patterns, did he indeed make a structurally sound weapon, or simply a beautiful art object? Did he mix his meteorite with iron and a steel core or is his blade 100% meteorite that was heated, beaten a bit and than shaped? There are no answers to be found in this article unfortunately.
Regardless, my original point was that you will never find such a pattern in an Indonesian keris that could serve as proof of meteoric content. Though, of course, one should never say never when it comes to keris i have learned.

[A. G. Maisey]

Seerp, I think what David is looking for is that unique Widmanstätten pattern, and what I used to be looking for was concrete evidence that the contrasting material in a blade did indeed come from a meteor.

In your photos I can see contrasting material, but how do we know that this came from a meteor unless we saw it included in the forging when the material was still in the forge?

That is problem. We cannot pick up something that we have no previous knowledge of and carry out any testing that will definitely confirm that the item contains meteor.

During the 1980's and 1990's I made a lot of pamor and nickel damascus. I made pamor using several different types of nickelous material, including pure nickel and Arizona meteorite. I made a lot of damascus using pure nickel, and few pieces of damascus using meteorite.

If you presented me with a mix of various pieces of pamor, polished, etched & stained, I doubt that I could tell what material had been used to create the pamor. If I had a piece of meteoritic material in my hand, that is pure meteorite, nothing else, that had been folded and welded 8 or 10 times, then polished, etched, stained, I could not tell if it was meteorite or not.

If I use the traditional "touch test" on a blade that contains meteorite, I can detect a very tiny, almost imperceptible difference between the meteorite blade and a blade that has used commercial nickel, or some nickel alloy.

But then this might just be my imagination, because the blades that I do this sort of test with are only blades that it might be expected could contain meteorite.

The point is this:- we cannot confirm the presence of meteoritic material in a blade after that material has been through the forge welding process.

Actually, I don't consider meteoritic material to be anything special, the cleaning process requires great care and a delicate touch if you wish the resultant billet to be pure meteorite, but once you get to using it as a component part of a blade it is no more nor less difficult than any other nickelous material, and when the blade is finished --- well, I've already commented on that.

The photos are of a keris that I commissioned from a maker in Solo, I will not name him as he is a very private man and I do not have his permission to use his name, enough to say that I considered him to be very talented. He retired from keris work some years ago.

This blade definitely does contain meteor. I made a billet of pure Arizona meteorite that I gave to this maker and it was used in this blade.

This is the only keris that I know of that unquestionably contains meteoritic material.

[A. G. Maisey]

Mr. Ross

Yeah, I've got a little WWI farriers forge with a hand blower, not much good for serious work, fire bed too shallow, cannot get it to welding heat, alright for little light work.

The forge I used for blade work with coke had a 12" deep firebed, about 5" wide and 15" long. It was built in an old truck wheel and used a vacuum cleaner as the blower. Bottom blown.

The sort of thing you are talking about I never got involved in, if I lit up the forge I had a specific job in mind, I never played with things, coke was too hard to get, and now is close to impossible to get.

With charcoal I used a more shallow forge and much wider, side blown. You tend to use a lot more charcoal to get a job done than you do coke.

Coal is OK for general work, but its filthy stuff and I dislike intensely using it.

[Anthony G.]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Seerp, I think what David is looking for is that unique Widmanstätten pattern, and what I used to be looking for was concrete evidence that the contrasting material in a blade did indeed come from a meteor.

In your photos I can see contrasting material, but how do we know that this came from a meteor unless we saw it included in the forging when the material was still in the forge?

That is problem. We cannot pick up something that we have no previous knowledge of and carry out any testing that will definitely confirm that the item contains meteor.

During the 1980's and 1990's I made a lot of pamor and nickel damascus. I made pamor using several different types of nickelous material, including pure nickel and Arizona meteorite. I made a lot of damascus using pure nickel, and few pieces of damascus using meteorite.

If you presented me with a mix of various pieces of pamor, polished, etched & stained, I doubt that I could tell what material had been used to create the pamor. If I had a piece of meteoritic material in my hand, that is pure meteorite, nothing else, that had been folded and welded 8 or 10 times, then polished, etched, stained, I could not tell if it was meteorite or not.

If I use the traditional "touch test" on a blade that contains meteorite, I can detect a very tiny, almost imperceptible difference between the meteorite blade and a blade that has used commercial nickel, or some nickel alloy.

But then this might just be my imagination, because the blades that I do this sort of test with are only blades that it might be expected could contain meteorite.

The point is this:- we cannot confirm the presence of meteoritic material in a blade after that material has been through the forge welding process.

Actually, I don't consider meteoritic material to be anything special, the cleaning process requires great care and a delicate touch if you wish the resultant billet to be pure meteorite, but once you get to using it as a component part of a blade it is no more nor less difficult than any other nickelous material, and when the blade is finished --- well, I've already commented on that.

The photos are of a keris that I commissioned from a maker in Solo, I will not name him as he is a very private man and I do not have his permission to use his name, enough to say that I considered him to be very talented. He retired from keris work some years ago.

This blade definitely does contain meteor. I made a billet of pure Arizona meteorite that I gave to this maker and it was used in this blade.

This is the only keris that I know of that unquestionably contains meteoritic material.

Beautiful awesome piece.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks Anthony, yes, at his best --- which was most definitely not always --- I consider this man to have been the best exponent of his generation of the classic Surakarta keris.

Here it is in full dress.

[David]

Thanks for showing that beautiful keris.
You haven't yet, and that is probably by intent, but are you willing to make any comments about the push dagger this young smith claims has retained the Widmanstätten pattern from the meteorite he used. It has always been my understanding that is not possible once forged, but my experience with actual forging is limited to a few simple projects done with old railroad spikes so i have no expertise to go on here. But it sure seems like a spurious claim to me.

[Seerp Visser]

To my knowlegde, the Widmanstatten structure disappeares at a temperature of about or some over 700 degrees C.
The materials for forging the dagger are too cold to forgeweld at that temperature.
Widmanstatten structures are formed by extremely slow cooling of the material during millions of years.
So the meteoritic material has been inserted in te dagger cold, or at least on a temperature lower than 700 degrees C.

[Anthony G.]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Thanks Anthony, yes, at his best --- which was most definitely not always --- I consider this man to have been the best exponent of his generation of the classic Surakarta keris.

Here it is in full dress.

I am lost for word. Even the dress is awesome.

[Gustav]

In A. Weihrauch's thesis there is a dokumentation of an experiment - they made a weld sample with different ferric materials, and one of them was an iron meteorite.

Even after forging and welding the Widmanstätten pattern is still recognisable in enlargement 500:1.

There is a remark "after a longer glow they (the W-patterns) disappear completely.".