“Pulen” Iron

[Jean]

Hello,
I frankly do not know this term but may be Alan will be aware about it.
Could you please show us a picture of a blade with such a pamor?
Regards

[David]

Hi gckaeng, welcome to the forum.
Like Jean i am also not familiar with the term "pulen" or . I have not seen the term “lempungan” in regards to keris, though i can see how the word could be used as a reference to describe a quality of pamor. I have seen the name "Sedayu" before, but as a place, not a pamor.
The closest i seem to be able to come to understand what you mean is pamor kelengan. Is this the same as what you mean?

[Jean]

Originally Posted by David

Hi gckaeng, welcome to the forum.
I have seen the name "Sedayu" before, but as a place, not a pamor.

AFAIK Pangeran (Prince) Sendang Sedayu (also called empu Supa?) was a famous empu from the Majapahit period.
Regards

[A. G. Maisey]

My understanding of "wesi pulen" is that it is very finely grained iron, it is not open grain, it is not porous, the surface presents as well packed and smooth.

In keris belief there is whole range of names for supposedly different types of iron, I have yet to meet anybody who can give a consistent opinion on all these various presentations of iron.

The problem is this:- iron can have varying appearances or presentations depending on a number of factors:- a piece of iron can be open pored and yellowish if treated in one way, but if treated in a different way it can be tightly packed, smooth and a prestigious blue-black. In fact, depending on how it is stained, it can even display green or red tones.

In my opinion, the various names given to iron in keris belief refer to the visual perception, and sometimes the tonal (sound) perception, or even the feel of the surface, they cannot refer to the composition or analysis or origin of the iron.

So, in the case of wesi pulen, I feel it is rather unwise to attribute this name on the basis of colour, rather, it might be wiser to use only the tightness of perceived grain as the indicator.

However, it might be even more wise to forget about the names altogether and learn the appearance of iron that is likely to be of good quality, well worked, well preserved.

If we take modern mild steel and work it well in the forge, and pack it well, it will present a smooth, tightly packed surface.

If we take good quality 200 year old wrought iron --- often this type of iron was used in carriage strapping --- fold it 8 or 10 times, pack it well, that 200 year old wrought iron will also present a smooth tightly packed surface.

The colour of both can be varied according to the staining process.

The only way to really know what an iron is, is by using laboratory analysis.

I have not mentioned the "Name Game" for a long time. I was being accused of having a fixation on this propensity of collectors to want to stick a name on everything. However, knowing a lot of names and strange words is not a substitute for being able to recognise quality. To my mind it is not particularly important what we name something, it is much more important that we can recognise it for what it truly is.

[gckaeng]

Thanks Alan for the note.
In regard to the Pulen characteristic, it appears that my physical understanding of it is close, except around the color. I always consider black pulen is mesmerizing, somehow it is sticks to my head. Lets take color out of the equation.

To re-emphasize your points, my understanding of Pulen is also attributed to the visual and feel perception, not composition.
Thanks for your note which states that different compositions and ages can result in the same look.

I might understand the reason you are trying to stay away from the name game as the community is surrounded by names/terms/jargon as a result of traditional javanese's classifications which tend to be subjective of the Empu/elite, then became standard of Keraton, then often confused modern people, including myself. However, pardon my stubborn amateur reasoning, I still need name to mention the wesi indicators being discussed.

lets agree on the indicators you mentioned, at least we have an agreeable basis to continue the discussion.

1. On your note, there's probably a hint of quality, but you have not clearly mentioned whether or not Pulen signifies quality. I might just ask you now. So next time I see one, I can glorify it.

2. Pardon my stubbornness: in the local community Pulen has never been attributed to anything new (never heard for kamardikan, but not sure of nom-noman). May be because of the characteristic of lempung/liat which might be a sign of antiquity. I kind of agree, because in my amateur eyes, tightly-packed irons between antique and modern can still be distinguished. The later is just smooth and shiny missing the lempung look. I used to enter a museum and scanned it between tightly-packed olds and news, I could tell the difference. This is something I need to understand more, does Pulen bears antiquity indication to it or not, which might help me to identify good old kerises.

Let me share my discussion with Empu Sungkowo Harumbrodjo, and see what you think. For those who know him he doesnt talk much, so I am not sure whether I understood his opinion precisely.
In his besalen in Yogyakarta, there's a framed table chart on the wall about number of folds between different old tangguhs (I hope the picture shows up below). There mentioned that Majapahit has 2048 layers and Sedayu has 4098 layers, both with the highest amount of iron compared to other tangguhs. It intrigued me to ask him whether such high number of folds partly responsible to the amazing pulen look of Sedayu, so people often indicates Sedayu by such look? He said may be.
I then asked whether he can produce the same look by using similar folding with as close iron type as possible? His answer was No. Not only the failure rate is high, he can not produce the look because pulen has antiquity character. He said "niku mung ngentek-enteki wesi mawon" (it's a waste of iron) yet produce the same look and feel as 256 layers.

Your thought?

[A. G. Maisey]

My thoughts?

However much I write in response to this question, the answer will be inconclusive, and insufficient to satisfy anybody who is a part of a keris network or group in Indonesia, and probably Malaysia. But I will respond.
Let us consider the question of "layers".

2048> 1024> 512 > 256 > 128 > 64 > 32 > 16 > 8 >4 >2 = 11 folds, 11 welds, if I start with only two pieces of material.

Working by myself, using a 10 pound and a 4 pound hammer, this is about one day's work for me. If I have a striker, or better, two strikers, or better again some sort of mechanical hammer, the time is correspondingly less. If I have a striker I will not start with a stack of two pieces , I will start with four pieces, or more, depending on the thickness of the material.

Now, as I work that material, and subject it to stretching, folding and welding, I will lose some material, by the time I finish those 11 welds I will not have 2048 layers in the billet, I will have less, I do not know how many less, but definitely less layers than 2048, the rest are laying on the floor of the workshop as scale.

Let us say I then take that billet, forge it to shape, take it to the bench and make a something from it.

I have lost even more material.

How many layers of material do I have left?

Short of putting a saw through the thickest part of the finished job and then subjecting it to microscopic examination, I have no idea how many layers are left in the completed product.

So when we start talking "layers of material" the reality is that we simply do not know how many layers of material remain after the forging/welding process, and the cold work process.

But we are talking keris. This much is certain, however many layers of material remain after the billet is turned into some sort of product, after a few hundred years of use, neglect and cleaning, there will be less than there were when I finished work on the product, be it a keris or something else.

Lets get back to numbers of layers. If I had folded that little stack of two layers one more time, that is 12 folds, I would have 2048 X 2 = 4096. Frankly, to get a nominal 4098 layers I would need to sit down with a calculator and work out exactly how to do this.

This mystique of the number of layers is myth. It is a myth that some smiths like to perpetuate because for somebody who does not understand forge work it sounds pretty impressive. Another thing:- those final few welds are very easy to take, and to take perfectly. The most difficult welds are the first few, if the material is hot short as well as dirty, it can be exceedingly difficult to take the first few welds. So, why stop at even 12 welds, we can very easily raise the number of layers to stratospheric numbers with only a few more welds.

Now let us look at keris again. In truly old keris, and I guess in some younger ones too, if we look closely at the edge of the gandhik we can count the number of layers remaining, and it never comes anywhere near the thousands.

But then there is the washing process that we need to use to process dirty iron before it can be used. In the days when most Javanese iron was coming from China, some was coming from Borneo, and nickelous iron was coming from Luwu, that cleaning process could well have used many more folds & welds than became necessary later. In my experience it takes about 7 or 8 welds to get good quality European wrought iron clean enough to use for a blade skin, going back to when iron was coming out of China it would have taken many more welds to get the iron clean, because although that Chinese iron was cheap, it was also very dirty and required a lot of additional processing.

As to the appearance of old keris. It is close to totally useless to try to visualise what a keris that is several hundred years old, and that has never left Jawa looked like when it was new, that is, one day old, off the bench yesterday.

In 2012 I was fortunate to have the opportunity to handle a great number of very old keris in several European museums. The oldest of those keris were pre-1600. They looked as if they had been made yesterday. If they had been stripped of fittings, cleaned and stained, and then mixed with other keris made in the current era, I doubt very much that I could distinguish the pre-1600 keris from the post-1980 keris.

We cannot tell how old a blade is based upon appearance of material alone.

So, before modern mild steel became available, and most forge work was carried out with varying qualities of iron from various sources, it can be taken as read that extensive working of that iron was necessary in order to produce material of weapon or tool quality.

When we see an old blade with close grain material, it indicates that the iron was thoroughly worked, and thoroughly packed. When we see an old blade where the iron displays an open grain that may or may not be more or less porous, it indicates that the smith did not work the material sufficiently well.

Why did he cut short the cleaning process? For the simple reason of cost, not only do more welds cost more time and fuel, you also lose more material, so if you need to work to a price, rather than work to a quality, you do the bare minimum necessary to produce a product that is saleable.

There is no mystery about any of this, if we go to the old textbooks on blacksmithing, it is all there. I learnt from hands on experience, not because I wanted to be a blacksmith, nor a maker of keris, but so that I could better understand exactly how a keris was made. I began amateur forge work in the late 1970's, then I was taught by a working, traditional blacksmith, Mr Gordon Blackwell, from 1980, and I worked with Empu Suparman from 1982. After I had this practical experience I found out about the re-prints of old blacksmithing text books.

We do not learn about keris by reading keris books, we need to widen our horizons to encompass many more fields than just the object of our interest.

Now we come back to "pulen" again.

GC, the best advice I can give you in this respect is to learn well what the members of your keris community regard as "pulen", if you vary from what these people believe to be so, you will never be regarded as knowledgeable. To be a member of the group you must learn the same beliefs as the group. It is that simple.

If your group regards wesi pulen as an indicator of quality, then you must also, but bear in mind, this indicator of quality refers only to one part of the material, if we are to consider the entire wilah, we must introduce other indicators of quality. Again, you must learn what the members of your group believe, and follow those beliefs.

Is the presence of wesi pulen an indicator of quality?

Well, I do not think in terms of the old Javanese names applied to various visual presentations of ferric material, but if I see tightly grained, smooth iron in an old blade that has been subjected to some degree of erosion, I consider that material to have been properly worked, and thus, the blade that it is in was very likely forged by a competent smith.

It goes without saying that wesi pulen will never be identified in any blade other than one that appears to be old.

Why?

Because everybody knows that wesi pulen is old material, if the blade presents as recent, how can it possibly be named as wesi pulen?

There is more than a little circular reasoning in Javanese keris belief, as well as a very large dose of emotion.

For keris there is no universal standard, depending on where you are, and who you are with, and what sort of impression you wish to make, you adjust your self-presentation to suit.

Want to be a member of a Javanese keris group?
Identify the top man and agree with him, no matter what you may think.
It is all about belief and fitting in with the group, it has very little to do with reality.

[Jean]

Alan and GC,
Thank you for the very interesting discussion! In order to illustrate the subject for the non-specialists, are you able to show us a specimen of a blade with wesi pulen, although I realize that it may be difficult?
Regards

[gckaeng]

Thanks Alan for your kind response. So rich with insights.

I do feel embarrassed with my own circular reasoning, but as you have pointed out, it pretty much represents the indigenous keris worldview. I kept mentioning "local community" on my notes exactly so that this group knew where I was coming from. I do agree with you that the Javanese school curriculum often full of things detached from reality, as keris in indonesia and for indonesians is first and foremost anthropological than technical. Jakarta is probably more open. There the Museum Pusaka has just erected a Besalen dedicated to study the technical aspects of keris making and open for public scrutiny.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Well, I do not think in terms of the old Javanese names applied to various visual presentations of ferric material, but if I see tightly grained, smooth iron in an old blade that has been subjected to some degree of erosion, I consider that material to have been properly worked, and thus, the blade that it is in was very likely forged by a competent smith.

I think that's my missing link. I think the degree of erosion what makes a tightly-grained-smooth-iron blades look different from the new ones of similar quality (assuming I know quality, or pointed out by museum curators). I was wondering how erosion by maintenance effects appearances.
I was wondering if that's where the 'Pulen' got its unique attribution from: very fine grain, well packed, smooth iron, with some degree of erosion.

As inferred from your notes, these attributes can still be objectively identified, thus can be objectively classified. The glorification of good old blade irons might have naturally motivated indigenous experts to make such identification, though I don't know when it exactly started, as most likely experts tastes changes from time to time.
Though I do agree that indigenous experts can vary their opinions on many different things, I have noticed when it comes to this subject I do not remember a memorable disagreements, of course within my limited exposure and experience.

Back to erosion, your story about pre-1600 kerises in european museum were indistinguishable from modern ones is because they had not gone through regular cleaning and staining.

Now my question, how erosion effects appearances, especially on irons characters being discussed?

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

This mystique of the number of layers is myth. It is a myth that some smiths like to perpetuate because for somebody who does not understand forge work it sounds pretty impressive. Another thing:- those final few welds are very easy to take, and to take perfectly. The most difficult welds are the first few, if the material is hot short as well as dirty, it can be exceedingly difficult to take the first few welds. So, why stop at even 12 welds, we can very easily raise the number of layers to stratospheric numbers with only a few more welds.

Your notes around welding and layering are so insightful, I thank you for that. In my mind it challenges the existing belief about old-masters layering. Though the indigenous belief about Majapahit/Sedayu layers as hung on the wall might have come from oral tradition on how old empus welded (how many folds thus number of layers, instead of actually counting of the layers), it might not signify anything important. I have too seen many allegedly Majapahit kerises with poor quality, thus drives your points home.
Probably as you said, it's just a myth.