i wonder why mr maisey would not want to comment on the blade whilst he probably had done so on other occasions on non javanese blades ? . it's not for lack of knowledge i am v sure!
as for me, in terms of keris knowledge I'm admittedly somewhere between mt stupid and the valley of despair on the dunning-kruger effect graph (as someone previously posted somehere in this forum before) , however in the interest and benefit of us keris lovers here, I would like to mention the following:-
In April this year I attended a keris exhibition in Bone, Sulawesi. This is the heart of Bugis keris culture and what I noticed was this. Not one blade exhibited (among probably 200 or so ) showed clean shiny surface as the keris owned by Johan here. Admittedly I also have quite a few kerisses that are cleaned as Johan's (and they were ALL bought from western dealers/collectors!).
I managed to purchase one from the exhibition (see pic) and since this one was rusty at the base the seller (who happened to be one of the main organizers of the exhibition) volunteered to clean it for me. And he did so right in front of me simply by using lime juice and rubbing with the thumb and fore finger to get rid of the rust.
He maintined that this is the only method the Bugis clean their blades and Bugis do not warang the blades unlike the Javanese. (Pics below show the cleaned keris with the sheath newly covered with silverwork done in Kelantan Malaysia. The hilt is from kayu kemuning.
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