Can we really accept that one day somebody woke up and said:- I reckon Pak Suwatsisnaam is trying to santet me; I'd better make sure he doesn't know what the pamor of my keris is, he might use it against me!
Then he whipped off to his friendly neighbourhood keris mechanic, and got a quick gonjo change so Pak Suwatsisnaam couldn't guess the pamor on his keris.
Probably better than 90% of Bali keris are wos wutah anyway, and those that are not are some other pretty innocuous sort of pamor. Be a real clever dukun who could use pamor wos wutah to santet somebody.
What I propose is this:-
a keris made with a plain black gonjo is cheaper to make than a keris made with a pamor gonjo.
the maker says to the customer that it will cost X quintals of beras more if he has a pamor gonjo rather than an iron gonjo.
customer says stick your pamor gonjo in a place where the sun don't shine; plain black gonjo is good enough for me.
over time plain black gonjo becomes the norm; simply a stylistic variation.
I am also thinking in terms of original cause, not developed belief.
In fact, I don't know if this "hide the pamor" game even existed in Bali. There seems to be some indication that it did exist in Jawa, but even there, I'm not too sure that it grew out of any belief that it afforded some protection against santet. Rather, I think it possibly grew as a justification by offended persons wanting to save face, when Sultan Agung decreed that only he in the kingdom of Mataram could wear a keris with a pamor gonjo.
We are talking Bali, and there is no doubt at all that in Bali up until quite recently the keris of the common man was a weapon.A plain iron gonjo serves its purpose as well as a pamor gonjo on a weapon, and its cheaper.
As to the difficulties involved in making large forgings.
In older Javanese keris I have seen a number of keris where it is obvious that the maker ran out of material to make a pesi. I've seen pesis forge welded into a drilled hole, I've see pesis forge welded over a stub, I've seen pesis welded on to the end of a blade and the external weld resulting in kul buntet of some similar pamor. These are Javanese keris, smaller keris than the typical 18-19th century Bali keris.
Remember this:- when you make a keris you cannot just make the blade and let it turn out whatever dimensions you like. No siree!! You have very strict formulas to stick to, to ensure that the measurements of the blade are not unfortunate for the specific client, or for the more general public in the case of a keris not being the subject of special order.Working within these strict parameters it is very easy to find that you do not have quite sufficient material to give the required dimensions, so you fudge a little and stick the pesi on with 18th century araldite, as an after-thought.When you measure a blade, the pesi doesn't count. In spite of how much some people might like to find the soul of the keris in its pesi, the fact of the matter is that the several systems of measurement ignore the pesi in calculations.
Now, if you do not have sufficient material to make a pesi, how can you have sufficient to make a gonjo?
Iron was expensive, pamor material was expensive, charcoal was expensive, and the work involved was expensive. A smith would work to minimums, not maximums, because those maximums would result in higher cost.
Nobody in their right mind spends more money than necessary, especially in an agrarian based society.
Still, this whole thing is something that cannot be proven. I cannot prove my argument, but I do think it is logical. If we can hear a logical argument in support of "hide the pamor", I'm more than happy to listen, but I think that before we begin we need to show that this "hide the pamor" belief did in fact exist in Bali.
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