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Old 18th May 2018, 01:13 AM   #2
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 6,675
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Kai, as I remarked in the opening post to this thread, I consider this post of yours to be quite valuable, however I would like to comment upon it, and I will do that following this post.

Firstly I am going to give a little bit of my own history that relates to keris, and some blade cleaning instructions that I wrote for distribution to people who were on my mailing list. These instructions were written in about 1992 and at that time these instructions were an accurate reflection of the way in which I cleaned blades. Not only keris blades, but all sorts of blades.

In 1992 I had been collecting keris and other edged weapons for about 37 years. I had begun my collecting with the gift of a small collection at age 12, and I had started adding to that collection a couple of years later. By the age of thirty I had something like 3000 keris and other edged weapons in my collection. My objective way back then was to possess every keris ever made. I knew very little in those days, and I understood even less. But I did have a lot of sharp pointy things. Many were incomplete, many were damaged. Most of them required cleaning and restoration, which I did, and which became a permanent hobby.

In my late twenties I began to learn a little bit more about edged weaponry, most especially about keris, and that massive accumulation of junk that I had put together over 15 years or so was gradually fed into auctions and sold by advertisements in the Saturday morning papers. No EBAY in those days.

In the early 1970's I met the man who was later to become Empu Pauzan Pusposukadgo, I also met another Javanese gentleman who was responsible for the maintenance of the edged weapons held by the Yogyakarta Karaton. I knew him as Romo Murdo. From these men I learnt the basics of the way in which Javanese edged weapons were cleaned and stained.


By the age of about 40 my accumulation of edged weapons had been reduced to no more than 40 keris, two very good wakazashis, one extremely good naginata, and an assortment of other odds and ends.

In 1982 at the age of 41 I was accepted by Empu Suparman of the Karaton Surakarta as his pupil. This was when my understanding of keris began, prior to this I had known almost nothing, well, nothing that had much value in any case.

So by a rough reckoning, I have been playing with keris and other edged weapons for at least 65 years. Prior to 1971, when I was 30 years old, I had cleaned a couple of thousand blades, mostly keris. Some of these I had stained, others I had not. In the 47 years since 1971 I think I've probably cleaned at least ten keris blades every year, as well as a few other blades.

Even when I have a blade stained in Solo, I prefer to clean it myself, because most of the people in Solo who stain blades as a job do not clean the blades properly. They do the bare minimum, and often when a newly stained blade is examined under direct sunlight patches of green or yellow will be seen under the black stain. This is the beginning of new rust. If I find this beginning corrosion the blade goes back to the tukang to do again. Usually in a batch of blades that I have not cleaned myself this return rate is around 20% of the first attempt at stain, and 10% of the second attempt, and there will always be a couple of blades after the second attempt that I will need to clean and stain myself.

So these instructions below are a brief and simple explanation of how I clean keris blades. The vinegar that I mention in these instructions, and that I now use instead of pineapple juice is ordinary white cooking vinegar. According to the manufacturer of the brand I usually use, it has an acetic acid concentration of between 4% and 6%, it costs me about $1 for a bottle. I do not use industrial acetic acid, nor do I use imported Italian balsamic vinegar, just ordinary old white cooking vinegar that I can buy in any supermarket.






To clean a rusty old keris blade:-

Actually any mildly acidic agent will do the job. In Jawa the traditional agent is coconut water, but in recent years people have used other acids such as citric, and very dilute sulphuric.

I prefer pineapple juice, which I can buy in 5 litre tins.

Vinegar works well too.

Scrub the blade with detergent and a hard toothbrush under warm running water, to get rid of any surface dirt and oil. Lay the blade in a trough and cover with the cleaning agent.

A plastic wall paper hanging trough is good for this.

Remove the blade each day and scrub it under running water with a hard tooth brush, to remove the rust that the cleaning agent has freed up.

I usually do this twice a day-morning and evening.

After a few days you will find that most of the rust has washed off, but there will probably be still a few small areas that have little bits of hard rust stuck to them. Carefully chip these pieces of rust off with a sharp tool. A small sharp pocket knife blade, or a saddler's needle works well.

Most blades come clean in under a week, but it could take longer.

My experience with pineapple juice is that longer periods in the soak do the blade no harm at all.

Sometimes during hot weather a culture will grow on top of the pineapple juice, and it will start to smell bad. Ignore this, it does no harm---except maybe to your marriage if you have left the trough in the bathroom.

When all the rust is off, wash the blade thoroughly, and if you do not intend to stain it, kill residual acid with bi-carbonate of soda. Paint on a slurry, leave for a few minutes ,thoroughly rinse off. Pat the blade dry, and then leave in hot sunlight, or use a hairdryer to ensure totally dry.

This completes the cleaning process.
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