Keris for comments

[A. G. Maisey]

Nothing written here below is intended in any way to be advice or instruction, and I caution most strongly against the use of any of the methods that are detailed herein.


There are many ways to stain a keris blade.

All will produce some sort of result.

However, there is only one way to produce a quality result, and that involves massaging into the blade the lime juice into which the arsenic or warangan has been stirred.

The suspension is brushed onto the blade, and then it is massaged with a pinching action until the blade becomes very sticky; more suspension is applied and the procedure is repeated time and time again until the desired colour is achieved. The blade is then rinsed with water, dried with a lint free cloth, and then dried in direct sunlight. Then the complete procedure is repeated again however many times required, until the blade is the correct colour.

If this procedure is carried out on a dull, cloudy day, the resulting stain will lack life; it will be a fair stain, but it will not lift and sparkle. The same, but more so applies if it is done inside.

If the suspension dries too quickly the result will take too long to achieve, and because of this length of time involved, the result will be dull. It is best not to carry out the procedure on a very hot day, and neither the blade, nor the suspension should be heated. When I have done this job in Solo, I have found that the best time is about 8am to 11am during the dry season. That means low relative humidity and a temperature of around 25 to 30 degrees celsius.

If the suspension dries too slowly it will generate yellowish green spots under the black.

The two factors that principally affect drying speed are temperature and humidity.

Excellence of the final result also depends very strongly upon the blade being absolutely white and free of any rust prior to commencement.

Here is a photo of me staining a blade, this shows clearly the way in which the suspension is massaged into the metal.

[Marcokeris]

Mr. Maisey i agree with your traditional way to stain a blade....but with some old blades sometimes for me it is really very very difficult to have a good result.

About temperature... some years ago during winter (where i live the temperature is not far from zero) i tried to stain an old bugis keris. I remenber it was very cold and i used warangan (mixed some days before together lemon juice )by a tooth brush on the blade. Well... it was so cold that i used always my fingers to dry the solution (with the help of a electric phone).
When i finished to stain the result was, with my great surprise, very good

[A. G. Maisey]

Marco, it is never easy to guarantee a good result when you stain a blade.

One blade that I made myself took me days to stain well. Truly days. I did it again and again and again until I was satisfied. When I took this blade to Solo to have a wrongko made for it, I received some very, very extravagant compliments on the quality of the stain, which was pretty gratifying, but the time involved in getting this result was unbelieveable.

There is a difference between a "good result", and a "great result".
If you see a keris that has been stained really well, there is depth to the colour, and the whole thing seems alive, it lifts, it sparkles, even if its an old blade with ,say, Pajajaran pamor, it still seems to have life. A "good job" will give you the contrast , but it fails to "fly". Most commercial stainers do the stain by soaking, and in the right weather conditions this method gives a fairly consistent OK result, but it is never great. Its cheap, its affordable, its OK, but its not great.

Probably the biggest single flaw in any stain job is the failure to prepare the blade properly:- it must be really, really clean. If it is not, it is virtually certain that you will find small areas of discolouration under the black; you can find these by inspecting the blade at an angle in strong, direct sunlight.

You can certainly get some sort of a result under almost any conditions---inside, outside , early morning, midnight---whenever.You can also get some sort of a result with a number of different substances. For instance, Marco, you mention "lemon juice". If you are using true lemons, and not Tahitian limes, then although you will get a result, you will not get the best result possible.

In extremely cold conditions you can get quite good results, simply by using much less of the suspension on the blade, and working it constantly. I work it by pinching, but it can also be worked by continual brushing. However, its as I say:- although you will get a result, it will not be the best result possible.

In general, old blades are much, much easier to stain than new blades. At times I have soaked an old blade in pineapple juice to clean it, and when the cleaning has been completed, all it needed was a once over brush with lime juice to bring the stain back to acceptable---not really good, but good enough.

It takes a long time to gain the experience needed to get consistently good results from staining, not only do you need to understand the process, but you need to understand tangguh, so that you will know the colour that is most likely to be achieved with a good stain job. It is a pointless exercise to try to extract the colours of a Surakarta blade from a Tuban blade.

[Marcokeris]

Mr. Maisey thanks for your exhaustive reply. Please only a question: after washing (from warangan solution) the blade with water can i repeat again the warangan treatment ?

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Marco, most definitely, in fact it is usually necessary to repeat the procedure many times.

Here is what I wrote in my post of yesterday:-

"The suspension is brushed onto the blade, and then it is massaged with a pinching action until the blade becomes very sticky; more suspension is applied and the procedure is repeated time and time again until the desired colour is achieved. The blade is then rinsed with water, dried with a lint free cloth, and then dried in direct sunlight. Then the complete procedure is repeated again however many times required, until the blade is the correct colour."

[Marcokeris]

[QUOTE=A. G. Maisey]Yes Marco, most definitely, in fact it is usually necessary to repeat the procedure many times.

Next time (summer) I'll do in this way