[Johan van Zyl]

Just when I thought this thread was in the process of petering out, there suddenly came an explosion of contributions. Thank you, Jean, Alan, Kai & Green. I am taking note of all your comments. Green, you'll have to change your name to something else, indicating that you are not "green" anymore. You have certainly progressed along the Keris learning curve, as have I. I could expand on your Dunning-Kruger graph, but then I would be seriously off-topic.

Having learnt such a lot about my two kerisses, the Javanese one and this Bugis, I plan to draw up a summary of all your comments, and then ruminate on them for a few days. (The mind works while you sleep, rearranging files in your head, discarding notions, comparing impressions and flicking on a light bulb if you're lucky.) Then I want to arrange the facts logically for each keris, print it out and insert the documents into the two special, identical lidded boxes I have already made for them, in which each keris is made to lie, with its sheath, but separate from it. (I still have to home-make a wrongko and buntut for my Bugis keris, of which you will recall that the original is missing.)

It has been a pleasure to engage with you all in this fashion, around that mystical object, the keris! But things happen in threes, like bad luck, and books are sometimes written in a trilogy, and that's why I plan to embark on a third thread in this fine forum, if you will have me.
Johan