Keris for comments

[A. G. Maisey]

What follows is my personal experience; it is not intended to be taken as advice or recommendation in any way .

You know, I've stained a lot of blades, and I've used a number of different ways of doing it, and I've been staining blades for about 50 years now.

For a long time I haven't concerned myself with handling the stuff when in suspension in the lime juice, nor with fumes, nor any of the other things that theoretically should be of concern.

I used to be very wary of it when I started, but after seeing the way it is used and handled in Jawa, I sort of calmed down a bit and became pretty blase about it.

Pak Parman used to crush the warangan on a piece of plastic bag placed on top of a stone dish his wife used for crushing chillies---the actual pestle didn't get covered with plastic, just rinsed off.Now don't get me wrong:- no way I'd do this myself, and I'd most strongly caution against it, however, in Jawa warangan is not treated with much respect at all.

I use arsenic trioxide, which is a fish of a different feather to warangan, and I do use reasonable caution, but that caution probably only consists of not handling the powder with my bare hands, and using untensils reserved exclusively for the job.

Temperature and humidity are both important to achieving a good result.