Yes Henk, I do know that some lay people use raw fruit, but it is unsatisfactory for many reasons.
My use of brushes began with lessons from a gentleman named Romo Murdo who claimed to have responsibility for maintenance of the pusakas in the Jogjakarta Kraton. In fact, he would use new brushes for each batch of blades he worked on. That was in 1974.
Then a couple of years later I had the opportunity to watch Pauzan Pusposukadgo working, he was not teaching me, I only watched him work a few times. He used brushes for cleaning when the rust was only very light, never raw fruit.
From 1982 through to the mid-1990's I worked with and also watched Empu Suparman many times. For cleaning a very slightly rusted or dirty blade he used both brushes and his bare hands. Never raw fruit.
These three people were the most highly ranked of those who I have learnt from, but I've watched others in Jawa over the years, and they usually have used brushes. I've seen raw segments of fruit used at times too, but that was to rub stubborn patches, not for the base cleaning.
On the use of lemon juice. I've tried lemon juice a few times, it has not caused a brown discolouration, but it has made the stain far too dark and just about impossible to lighten satisfactorily.
A brownish yellow stain usually occurs when a blade has not been properly whitened before beginning the stain.
Sometimes this brown/yellow discolouration is not obvious in an otherwise well stained blade, but you can detect it by taking the blade into direct sunlight and slanting it so that you can see through the stain to the metal underneath.
Whenever I have blades stained commercially in Jawa I inspect them very carefully under direct sunlight, from the first attempt I usually reject somewhere between 20% and 50% of the work, from the second attempt I usually reject about 10%, any that are still unsatisfactory after the second commercial attempt I do myself, and this probably is about 2%.
Going back 60 years or so, my first attempts at staining and cleaning were picked up from a book, it might have been "In Asian Forests", or some similar title, I think the author might have been Bastin. This called for the use of salt, sulphur and water from boiled rice, wrapped in a palm leaf and left for a week or so to effect the stain. In fact, I believe now that this treatment was intended to expose the pamor topographically, but the few blades I stained in this way did come up satisfactorily, my guess is from residual warangan.
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