Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Difficulty’s in working with meteorite as a pamor material

nechesh · 12th March 2006, 06:51 PM

Thanks Jim, and thanks Rick for passing that on. A very informative post, but it is my suspicion that Pusaka is more interested in how difficult the process would be today than in the past. I could be wrong, but from past postings i got the impression that he was looking for someone to forge a new keris with meteoric pamor for himself. Still, your post shows how difficult (though certainly do-able) the process is.
I would disagree with Jim on one passage:

Now if you have a bone-fide "pre western world" contact Keris, and it shows a high contrast pamor, I would venture to say that it is probably extraterrestrial material. Simply due to the fact that Ni is present in such "large amounts."

It seems probable that much of the nickelous pamor material used was pamor luwu from Sulawesi. Though Groneman's studies show Ni content of that material at only 0.4%, Bronson, in his paper "Terrestial and meteoritic nickel in the Indonesian Kris" shows that there are deposits of ore on that island with at least 2.2% nickel content. I could be mistaken, but i believe that this level of Ni content would be sufficient to produce fairly high contrast patterns in pamor. Contrasting pamor, though not always nickelous in nature, where reported as early as 1433 in the descriptions of the knives carried by all Javanese men written by the Ma Haun. It is doubtful, IMO, that these early pamors were the product of meteoric Ni.

12th March 2006, 06:51 PM	#6
nechesh Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 940	Thanks Jim, and thanks Rick for passing that on. A very informative post, but it is my suspicion that Pusaka is more interested in how difficult the process would be today than in the past. I could be wrong, but from past postings i got the impression that he was looking for someone to forge a new keris with meteoric pamor for himself. Still, your post shows how difficult (though certainly do-able) the process is. I would disagree with Jim on one passage: Now if you have a bone-fide "pre western world" contact Keris, and it shows a high contrast pamor, I would venture to say that it is probably extraterrestrial material. Simply due to the fact that Ni is present in such "large amounts." It seems probable that much of the nickelous pamor material used was pamor luwu from Sulawesi. Though Groneman's studies show Ni content of that material at only 0.4%, Bronson, in his paper "Terrestial and meteoritic nickel in the Indonesian Kris" shows that there are deposits of ore on that island with at least 2.2% nickel content. I could be mistaken, but i believe that this level of Ni content would be sufficient to produce fairly high contrast patterns in pamor. Contrasting pamor, though not always nickelous in nature, where reported as early as 1433 in the descriptions of the knives carried by all Javanese men written by the Ma Haun. It is doubtful, IMO, that these early pamors were the product of meteoric Ni.