Meteorite Dagger?

A. G. Maisey · 5th August 2006, 04:58 AM

Quite frankly BSM, I don`t want to do it at all.

I believe I can mostly identify meteoritic material by recognising the origin, method of construction, and probable maker of a blade, and then using the "touch test"---the stuff does feel a little bit different to other materials used as pamor.

I`ve been posing the question all these years because I`ve sometimes thought it might be a good academic exercise to put together a sampling of blades that recognised Javanese experts considered contained meteoritic material, and seeing just how good the indicators that have been used were.

The mix is not at all homogenous. Its layers upon layers upon layers. You could probably test 20 different spots before you struck a square 1/8 inch that actually had meteoritic material in it. On the types of blades that I know contain meteoritic material I could not imagine any keris fancier approving the polish of even one section of 1/8 by 1/8 inch.You probably could ID a section of material that waslikely to contain meteoritic material though. That would probably reduce the number of tests needed.

A normal Javanese keris blade is going to run about 16 inches, including the tang.

But tell me this:- those trace elements that you would be looking for:- are they still going to be there after the material has gone through many, many weld heats?

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5th August 2006, 04:58 AM	#19
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,019	Quite frankly BSM, I don`t want to do it at all. I believe I can mostly identify meteoritic material by recognising the origin, method of construction, and probable maker of a blade, and then using the "touch test"---the stuff does feel a little bit different to other materials used as pamor. I`ve been posing the question all these years because I`ve sometimes thought it might be a good academic exercise to put together a sampling of blades that recognised Javanese experts considered contained meteoritic material, and seeing just how good the indicators that have been used were. The mix is not at all homogenous. Its layers upon layers upon layers. You could probably test 20 different spots before you struck a square 1/8 inch that actually had meteoritic material in it. On the types of blades that I know contain meteoritic material I could not imagine any keris fancier approving the polish of even one section of 1/8 by 1/8 inch.You probably could ID a section of material that waslikely to contain meteoritic material though. That would probably reduce the number of tests needed. A normal Javanese keris blade is going to run about 16 inches, including the tang. But tell me this:- those trace elements that you would be looking for:- are they still going to be there after the material has gone through many, many weld heats?