Add'l Photo
A. G. Maisey,
I understand your concern about the heat gun but, after having dismantled and stripped all the woodwork in our Victorian house (including the stairway), I can say without boasting, that I am rather expert in the use of a heat gun. There are attachments for my gun that can concentrate the heat on a very small area. Setting the gun on low heat and directing that heat onto the selut/tang/ganja area will loosen any native cutler’s resin. I know that I can do this without damaging the blade or hilt. My main concern is with the paint. It doesn’t take much heat to pop paint off of a substrate. If more than a minimal amount of heat travels from the ganja to the blade proper, the paint could be compromised (either discolored or loosened from the metal). The strategy of wrapping the blade with a wet towel is (hopefully) my take on the Japanese method for differentially heat treating a blade edge. I would use wet clay but I don’t have any. My other fear is that someone used a modern glue or (worse yet) epoxy to secure the hilt. In that case, the amount of heat I will be using will likely be insufficient to loosen the hilt.
David,
In my initial post I had mentioned the possibility of the wranka having a stem on the bottom that would attach to the gandar (like some Bugis sheaths). I have never seen this feature on a Bali sheath but I’m no keris expert. My problem with the wranka is that it is far deeper than on any Bali sheath I have ever seen. The deep warnka is needed because, if it were not so deep, the gandar would have to be much longer than it is now. I have taken a new picture that shows this. I also mentioned in my first post that the fabric hilt wrap may be friction tape. This is something I have seen on a number of Philippine sheaths. In my second post, I mentioned that I thought it unlikely that, if the piece had wound up in the Philippines, the paint was added there unless it had some non-Hindu meaning.
Sincerely,
RobT
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