Interesting subject.
I've tried it by wetting my hand and very quickly punching my finger tip into a paper thin strip of red hot iron. You can get an indentation like this. I did it a few times and I burnt myself once. I reckon a smith with hardened hands could probably squeeze a similar paper thin piece of iron between his finger tips.
I have seen a dukun (shaman) kissing the cutting edge of a small red hot pedang , which left half moon marks on the blade edge. I felt at the time I was watching stage magic.
In Jawa there are consistent legends about forging a blade by use of hands alone. I think these are legends, but the legend comes close to reality with the talismanic keris pijit, usually these are keris sombro with paper thin blades and they show indentations where supposedly they have been squeezed and indented by finger pressure. As I just said:- this is possible, but I believe that most of these that I've seen, and I've seen a lot, were indented by a hammer.
These pijit marks do not, in my experience, occur on keris buda or keris majapahit (keris sajen) forms, they occur most times in keris sombro, and very, very occasionally in normal keris.
I cannot recall having seen picit marks in anything other than keris.
An after thought:- nothing to do with pijit marks in keris, but a smith who understands fire control can boil water in a paper bag on top of his forge. The bag is filled with water and allowed to get just sufficiently wet to prevent it from catching fire, by controlling the fire at a constant temperature, the water boils, the bag remains unburnt. Its all about balancing heat against moisture. The same sort of logic applies to wet fingers and hot metal.
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