Odd
 

Probably nothing; but I picked up this keris for a couple of reasons.
It cost very little, I liked the form, and I am a bit puzzled by the kembang kacang. :confused:
It is quite a heavy blade; fifteen inches long.
Anyone care to comment? :)

I think what you're seeing is just a lot of wear and possibly some damage to the kembang kecang, IMHO.

Johan

Hello Rick,

I am curious with this keris after the warang process.
I used to buy some keris and tombak in dirty condition. Then, after I clean (warang) them, most of them gave unexpected "surprise" :D :D :(

Best regards,

Joe

I understand why you picked this one up. Great shape. Hard to comment on this single picture.
It has a javanese ukiran but it wouldn't surprise me if we had to look at the Sumatran region.

I just can't recall ever seeing a kembang kacang that took this straight up configuration, Johan. :confused:
I don't think it was ever curled over; there is too much material there; and if it was an attempt to repair why was it not curled over and left straight instead?

@ Henk, yes the ukiran is poorly executed and I'm afraid attached with epoxy (or araldite as Alan calls it).
The metal has a greasy feel to it and I really wonder if a staining would reveal much contrast.
I'm not sure if I want to sink much money into this blade; I'll probably try to pass this one on in the future for someone else to rehabilitate.

As to where this keris is from, I will not disallow Henk's idea of Sumatera, maybe South Sumatera, but my own feeling is East Jawa.

The KK shape.

A KK is not at all easy to get to the right shape. You leave a lump as big as you can afford on the front of the gandhik and then either split or cut off sufficient material to carve the KK from, when it is half to shape, you heat it and then curl it in, you're usually working with core material, which is not nearly so easy to manipulate as the iron that is in the external skin, so if there is even a hint of hot shortness, or if you didn't get it hot enough or work fast enough, that little projection that will form the KK will break. It happened to me with the first full size keris I made. So then you don't have enough material to create nice elegant curl, and you need to decide what you will do to salvage the work. You can go puguk, you can go to just a gandik, or you can settle for a KK that is less than you wanted. This bloke decided he could still get a KK out of the work, but it was just going to have to be a bit under-privileged. In simple terms he did not have enough material to do a nice fat KK, maybe an accident, maybe misjudgement, but the end result is the same..

'Underprivileged' :D
I suppose it'll have to go on the dole then Alan.
Thanks Gentlemen.

Or just learn to live with its underprivileged status. It has survived a good long while already, and to me, that says its not going to put its hand out for any dole payments.