Singular Madura Keris for comment

[Athanase]

Thank you all for your advice.

Alan: I understand the concept of "Lis" but I do not understand if it must be in the extension of the surface of the pendok or if it must be in over-thickness, a bit like a border in relief?
I have silver foil (0.5mm thick) but the pendok is brass. I don't know anything about welding, but will this difference in materials not make welding difficult?
Otherwise there is the solution of a fixation with a strong glue of Lis on the pendok (removable with acetone).

In any case, it's not the blade that hindts the advanced pendok (I try without) is the width of the base of the gambar which is too big. At maximum the pendok arrives at 1mm from the edge of the left and right side.

For the pesi this can be done by my brother who is locksmith / metaller (he manufactures and installs gates, banisters, guardrails etc ...)
For the work of silver I asked him, he never learned and his tools are too big for such fine work.

For the washing of the blade it is possible (vinegar, or citric acid), but for staining .... it's complicated to find realgar, good lemons, good dosages ... I already made 2 test on very average blades, the first did nothing (I think the indicated dose of realgar was too low). And the second made a very ugly result (the realgar had largely turned into orpiment).

[David]

Athanase, i would not solder the new collar in place. I believe Alan made the same suggestion earlier.

"If the blade is too long to allow the pendok to be moved up a few mille, and frankly, I cannot judge this from the photos, but if it is a little too long, I guess there is no alternative but to make a new collar to fill the gap, but I would not solder it in place, I'd leave it as a separate piece."

[A. G. Maisey]

David, I believe that the non-lis repair would make this wrongko look better than it does now, and it has the advantage of no cost and simplicity, it is something that I believe most people could do with very little skill, and a great degree of patience, but it would not be as good as a new infill collar.

The amount of money that I consider to be too much for a repair that I need to pay for is the amount that I cannot recoup if I wish to sell the restored object.

It is the same with anything that you invest money in:- you want to get back the money you have invested + opportunity cost as a bare minimum, if you can make a small profit, that's good too, but it is not essential. What you do not want is to have more money invested in something than you can sell it for.

In respect of this keris, just for the sake of argument, let's say I bought this in Jawa from a dealer. If I were to add $US100 to the purchase price I would need to pay, and I sold it fairly quickly, so that opportunity cost was not significant, the price I would need to ask would make it impossible to sell on the market I sell in.

However, if had bought it cheaply at a weekend market, or from somebody who did not know its value, then maybe $US100 would not be too much.

The cost that makes a repair unreasonable is the cost that causes you to lose money when you sell the object, and that applies to anything at all that you invest money in.


Athanase

I'm away from home for about 9 or 10 days, when I get home I'll post pics of a pendoks with lis, but for your pendok, the lis would be a little bit different because it would need to cover all the open space. It would be a separate part from the pendok, but once in place it would look as if it was a part of the pendok.

However, I believe the difficulty would be finding a silver smith who would be prepared to accept the job and could do a neat job and not charge too much. I know two manufacturing jewelers as long time friends, I have asked them in the past to do small jobs for me and they refuse on the basis that such a job interrupts work flow, it probably needs two attempts to get it right, and the cost would be too high for what it is.

I do not know any Australian silver smiths, I think they would be few and far between here. I do know a number of Javanese and Balinese silver smiths, but I do not know any there whom I would trust with work like this, my experience is that they can do very good new work, but will not spend time on neat repair work.

David has said that he knows a silver smith who could do this job at a reasonable cost, but I do not.

As for the size of gambar foot, you simply scrape this back so that the pendok can move up. This is absolutely normal, basic work that is done frequently. You do not need to force it, you just take a small sharp blade and scrape a little bit of wood away until the pendok will move up. In fact, you will probably need to scrape some wood off the gandar as well as the gambar foot, and maybe take a little off the tip of the gandar. Its all very easy, straightforward stuff.

The pesi is very likely to able to be bent by finger pressure alone, even if you need to use a vice, this adjustment takes about 40 seconds.

Everything that needs to be done is in my opinion capable of being done by somebody who knows what end of a hammer to hold on to. But it will require care and patience.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The amount of money that I consider to be too much for a repair that I need to pay for is the amount that I cannot recoup if I wish to sell the restored object.

It is the same with anything that you invest money in:- you want to get back the money you have invested + opportunity cost as a bare minimum, if you can make a small profit, that's good too, but it is not essential. What you do not want is to have more money invested in something than you can sell it for.

In respect of this keris, just for the sake of argument, let's say I bought this in Jawa from a dealer. If I were to add $US100 to the purchase price I would need to pay, and I sold it fairly quickly, so that opportunity cost was not significant, the price I would need to ask would make it impossible to sell on the market I sell in.

However, if had bought it cheaply at a weekend market, or from somebody who did not know its value, then maybe $US100 would not be too much.

The cost that makes a repair unreasonable is the cost that causes you to lose money when you sell the object, and that applies to anything at all that you invest money in.

Alan while i completely understand your school of thought here in regards to possible re-sale i hope you equally understand that from my own perspective the concept of resale or collecting a keris with the concern of whether i could ever recoup my investment is the furthest thing from my mind. This is not to say i have not, over the years, tired of older members of my family that perhaps no longer meet my standards as a worthy item to maintain in my collection, but i generally don't have much concern in those cases over the amount of money i am able to get when i sell those pieces. I do completely understand, however , why that would not be a viable strategy for yourself.

[A. G. Maisey]

My problem is this David:- I have spent too much time in Jawa, and the standards of the people there have influenced the way I think, this when combined with my accounting background does mean I think in a different way to that of collectors who are outside Javanese society.

The keris is really only the blade, the wilah, all the items of dress are just that:- dress. As with old clothes, keris dress should be replaced when it is shabby, damaged, or out of style.

Up until about the mid to late 1990's nobody in Solo valued older keris dress, but then keris collecting took off, some say in response to the economic woes of Indonesia at the time, and the local dealers and collectors began to realise that collectors in the rest of the world could value old keris dress much more highly than the keris itself. They did not understand this way of thinking, but they did understand that older dress, even if shabby and damaged could be worth big money. That was when the value of old or unusual keris dress escalated.

This keris we're talking about, and particularly its problematic pendok would be solved quite simply in Solo:- the old pendok would be scrapped and a new copy made. Much easier to do that than fiddle around trying to fix something that will never be like new anyway, no matter what you do to it, and in terms of respect to the keris itself, far preferable to giving it a bodgied up overcoat. One pays respect by giving a keris new dress, not by repairing old.

As regrettable as it may be to some of us, the keris is a vehicle for investment, this is the base reason for the existence of the Solonese tangguh system. As with any form of investment, it is not at all wise to over capitalise. This applies as much to a keris as it does to a house.

We can always make an emotional decision, and I've done this too, but too much emotion can cost money, objective decisions are less costly in the long run.