David, I believe that the non-lis repair would make this wrongko look better than it does now, and it has the advantage of no cost and simplicity, it is something that I believe most people could do with very little skill, and a great degree of patience, but it would not be as good as a new infill collar.
The amount of money that I consider to be too much for a repair that I need to pay for is the amount that I cannot recoup if I wish to sell the restored object.
It is the same with anything that you invest money in:- you want to get back the money you have invested + opportunity cost as a bare minimum, if you can make a small profit, that's good too, but it is not essential. What you do not want is to have more money invested in something than you can sell it for.
In respect of this keris, just for the sake of argument, let's say I bought this in Jawa from a dealer. If I were to add $US100 to the purchase price I would need to pay, and I sold it fairly quickly, so that opportunity cost was not significant, the price I would need to ask would make it impossible to sell on the market I sell in.
However, if had bought it cheaply at a weekend market, or from somebody who did not know its value, then maybe $US100 would not be too much.
The cost that makes a repair unreasonable is the cost that causes you to lose money when you sell the object, and that applies to anything at all that you invest money in.
Athanase
I'm away from home for about 9 or 10 days, when I get home I'll post pics of a pendoks with lis, but for your pendok, the lis would be a little bit different because it would need to cover all the open space. It would be a separate part from the pendok, but once in place it would look as if it was a part of the pendok.
However, I believe the difficulty would be finding a silver smith who would be prepared to accept the job and could do a neat job and not charge too much. I know two manufacturing jewelers as long time friends, I have asked them in the past to do small jobs for me and they refuse on the basis that such a job interrupts work flow, it probably needs two attempts to get it right, and the cost would be too high for what it is.
I do not know any Australian silver smiths, I think they would be few and far between here. I do know a number of Javanese and Balinese silver smiths, but I do not know any there whom I would trust with work like this, my experience is that they can do very good new work, but will not spend time on neat repair work.
David has said that he knows a silver smith who could do this job at a reasonable cost, but I do not.
As for the size of gambar foot, you simply scrape this back so that the pendok can move up. This is absolutely normal, basic work that is done frequently. You do not need to force it, you just take a small sharp blade and scrape a little bit of wood away until the pendok will move up. In fact, you will probably need to scrape some wood off the gandar as well as the gambar foot, and maybe take a little off the tip of the gandar. Its all very easy, straightforward stuff.
The pesi is very likely to able to be bent by finger pressure alone, even if you need to use a vice, this adjustment takes about 40 seconds.
Everything that needs to be done is in my opinion capable of being done by somebody who knows what end of a hammer to hold on to. But it will require care and patience.
|