As I write this I am looking at a keris that I made the pamor material for. It was made from meteoritic material from Arizona, and the concentration of this material is pretty rich. About the largest area of this pamor that I could definitely identify as solid, uninterrupted meteoritic material, is approx. 1.5 mm. That`s near enough to the 1/8 inch we were talking about, so if the size of the keris itself doesn`t rule it out, and taking into account the other factors that have been addressed, it would seem to be physically possible to analyse a keris blade and determine if meteoritic material had been used in its manufacture.
The "what can I make from it" factor is not a part of this discussion.
As I have already stated, my interest in this purely academic, as has been my continuing interest since 1988 in the metallurgical analysis of old and archaic keris in order to determine composition and techniques used in manufacture.
The market value of any keris, even those at the top of the market, would not be sufficiently increased by a positive ID of meteoritic material to come anywhere near covering what would appear to be the cost of testing.
The whole thing is simply an interesting question that has grown out of a folk belief, or perhaps we should say "item of faith" that has entered the Javanese keris belief system since the Prambanan meteorite was used in the manufacture of keris in Central Jawa, in the early 1800's. This was addressed by Bronson in his 1987 paper:- "Terrestrial and Meteoritic Nickel in the Indonesian Keris".
However, technology has moved along a bit in the last 20 years, and it seems that we now have the means that Bronson did not have to be able to provide definite ID . Now all we need is somebody with access to equipment, interest, funding, and of course, access to samples. Bring all these things together, and somebody could produce a landmark paper.
Actually, Haryono Arumbinang carried out an analysis on some old keris, in Jogja, in , I think, 1983. I do not have the results of this analysis to hand, but I have got them around somewhere. Regretably the interpretation of his analysis has been badly distorted by people not equipped to interpret it.
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