Tombak Opinions Wanted

[A. G. Maisey]

Glad you are progressing with this, Tim.
If you go ahead with the pineapple juice, be sure to check the blade and give it a brushing with a hard toothbrush, under running water, morning and evening. You may well find that as the cleaning progresses you will reach a stage where the blade is clean, and the pattern can be seen well enough so that you do not need to go all the way with the arsenic. This is an old blade, and I have often seen this reaction from an old blade.

Thanks for your response, Henk.
I raised the question because I had already said that weld joints can sometimes mislead somebody into believing that there is pamor present in a blade when in fact there is not.
Even weathered wrought iron can sometimes show lines that could mislead into believing that one is looking at something that carries pamor, or has been pattern welded. However, you seemed to be quite certain that the presence of lines indicated pamor, so I asked myself if possibly you may have had a different understanding of the nature of pamor to my own understanding of it. I could not see anything indicating either pamor, or weld joints in Tim`s original picture, so I guess you either have a better screen, or better eyes than I do.

There has been quite a lot written on pamor. Perhaps the most valuable investigations have been carried out by Piaskowski and Bronson. The word pamor comes from the Javanese "blend or alloy", and pamor in the sense it is used for wesi aji need not contain nickel, nor does it need to be stained for it to exist. Old Javanese pamor in wesi aji actually obtains its contrast by the combining of high and low phosphorus irons. Pamor that is virtually without contrast can also be encountered, and this is referred to as "pamor sanak", "sanak" meaning "related", and indicating that the pamor has been produced from related material.