Tombak Opinions Wanted

[nechesh]

This seems like a somewhat awkward set up to me Tim. Is there some reason why you didn't just remove the hilt and immerse the blade totally in something like pineapple juice. I wouldn't think the citrus is all that helpful to the hilt anyway. With total immersion you wouldn't have to worry about moving the blade in and out all the time. The cleaning would be more even. I'm also not sure you will get a "white" blade this way. If your photos are any indication it looks like the citrus has re-activated some of the old warangan. At least it appears that the iron is darkening in some areas, especially around the edges and lightening where there may be pamor. But perhaps that is just a photographic illusion. If you plan on re-staining this one you might need to employ a bit of scrubbing to get this tombak "white". Of course, if you don't plan on restaining, the lemon treatment might just bring out the pamor to your satisfaction. Either way, be sure to neutralize the citrus with something like a slurry of baking soda to stop the action of the etch.

[Tim Simmons]

I felt urged into this, it is a live experiment. The handle does not want come off and I am not going to pull it off. Now I have started I think I should go all the way, with guidance I hope . I hope my pictures will be good enough.

I can already see that the blade is quite old and more pitted than I thought. The juice does seem to be reacting and making darker looking areas. If I wipe off the juice, it is at the moment a little more difficult to see the pamor/forging. However when I inspect the blade with a glass I think more interesting patterns are being revealed. I will carry on for a day or two, then come back with more pictures and attempt staining.

[Tim Simmons]

look at this now, hard to believe it is the same blade.
It has no patina and although interesting rather harsh. I do not know how I feel about this .
One side appears more patterned but this may change with staining. As it is now apart from the silver coloured patterns there seems three shades in the metal. I am glad this blade was no bigger, picking with a x10 loop and a dental probe is not the best way to pass time.
I am at you keris fans mercy where do I go from here? how long does the stain affect last?

[Tim Simmons]

Is that it then? Just oil it once in a while. I thought there was a special staining yet to do.

[Rick]

Oiling would be good unless you want to play with *arsenic* .

* which reminds me of an old joke about how the Barber killed his Wife with a rusty razor ...










/are you reading this Jose ?

[A. G. Maisey]

Tim, this blade is well on the way to being clean, but it is not yet clean enough to stain.

Every bit of rust must be removed.

If you go ahead and stain in this half clean condition you may not get a satisfactory finish.

A 10X loupe is too high a magnification for the job of picking out the rust from the pits. I suggest you try a 2.5X, or 3X, machinists loupe. I find I can work with one of these for very extended periods. Another way to go is an illuminated magnifier, or a pair of magnifying glasses.

You can also attack those tiny remaining bits of rust with hydrochloric acid. Just a drop at a time, and wait while it works, then wash off, and possibly kill it. If you use the hydrochloric, follow with another day or so in the pineapple juice.

Do not be in a hurry to get this job done.

Seven to ten days in pineapple juice is about usual for a blade in the condition your blade was in before you started.

I once spent over six months, working most week nights for an hour or so at picking the rust out of the pits in a Bali blade. If you want a job you can be proud of, you must work slowly and carefully.

When you do get this blade clean, and if you decide to go ahead with the arsenic stain, give it a really good polish with steel wool and a powder sink cleaner before you start. The blade must be white before you commence to stain.

Regarding the metuk.
As a generality, a lower quality tombak will have a metuk that is forged as a part of the blade, not a separately made and mechanically attached metuk. A village quality metuk will nearly always have this type of one piece construction, or sometimes with no metuk at all.
It is not necessarily related to age, although most recently made tombak do seem to have the integral metuk.
Note that I am talking in generalities. It is entirely possible for an old, good quality tombak to have an integral metuk, however, this is rare.

[Tim Simmons]

Listen to me talking like an expert . If I remember correctly from my old metalwork days, I was always told to keep the iron tongs out of the pickle as iron slowly neutralises the acid. Each day of the cleaning of this blade I changed the juice. I dare say one could take this further, but for the time being I am happy the way it is now. My conclusion on all this is that, as this sort of treatment is accepted and indeed expected in the objects cultural origins, it is okay to do so but to fiddle like this with old blades just because they are "East Asian" might make you a vandal!!!

[A. G. Maisey]

Tim, its your blade, and if you are happy with it as it is, please forgive me my previous comments.

Changing the pineapple juice every day is unnecessary. I use the same juice from day one to day ten. In warm weather you can get some very interesting cultures on the surface of the juice. I have sometimes wondered if they might get up and walk away overnight.

I`m sorry, but I do not understand your "vandal" remark.

Can you elucidate?

[A. G. Maisey]

Henk, I apologise if this may seem to be a silly question, but do you think you could define for me exactly what you consider "pamor" to be?

Thank you.

Tim Simmons, you will find that gentle heat at the blade base , just in front of the metuk, will allow you free the handle. Use aluminium jaws, or wood blocks, in a vice, gently heat the blade base---you use a small kerosene lamp, or a candle, or if you have a delicate touch, a propane torch---twist and pull the handle, it will come free. To clean and stain this blade properly you must remove the handle. You cannot do the job properly with the handle still in place, and you will finish up damaging the handle.

Repeated application of the cleaning agent without soaking will clean a blade, but it will take a very, very long time to get an acceptable result.

[Tim Simmons]

This is the state of the blade right now. With a loop I can see there are still some lumps to come off.

The handle? On inspection this has been in place some time, there are signs of threads or cloth at the join. How much of a can of worms will taking the handle off be? how to put it back? with what?

Am I just telling myself there are patterns emerging in this blade? poor pictures but you people know more what you are looking at. Is it worth continuing or shall I stop now?

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, it looks like you might have some pamor there.

Now you`ve started there is no question of stopping. You now continue through to perfection.

The little hard bits of rust can be dug out with something like saddlers awl. Dig and soak, dig and soak. Hard old rust can take a long time to get rid of, but it is necessary.

Looking at that blade before you started, I reckon it would have taken me about a week to ten days to get it clean using a pineapple juice soak.

I feel that this handle has not been in place for more than perhaps 30-40 years at the outside. In keris terms, only yesterday. A bit of rust may have built up through the cloth and be causing it to stick a bit, but the heat trick will allow you to move it. Its just a gently-gently, patience-patience thing. Heat it, twist the handle back and forth at the same time pulling---doesn`t want let go? Let it cool right down, and repeat----and repeat and repeat until it comes loose.

There`s no can of worms involved. What you`ve got is a simple pressure fit. Even if you discover something a little unfortunate like rotten tang that has been bodgied up with araldite or something, its no big deal, getting the handle off will give you the opportunity to repair it properly. Everything is fixable.

When you put the handle back you use knitting wool to give a pressure fit.

Its all easy Tim. Just take gently and slowly.

[Tim Simmons]

Easy, handle off. I can even reuse the piece of cloth. Now for a long bath in pineapple juice. I hope the staining materials are cheap and easy to get hold of. Back in a few days, stay tuned in .

[Henk]

Tim,

If you continue to use lemon juice you can soak the blade in the juice and scrub the blade with the lemon a few times a day. Works excellent with keris to get them clean before the etching with warangan. I don't do it myself but I've seen how it is done.

A. G. Maisey,

At school where I work we use to say, you never can ask a silly question because questions are not silly, you only can get a silly answer.

Pamor is the contrast between the iron and the nickle after etching with the warangang. The black iron and the white lines of the nickle. The lines you see on the blade made by forging is not the pamor. As I wrote above, I saw how a keris was etched with warangan. When I looked at the blade I saw the lines of forging on the white blade, just the metal color as Tim's tombak. According to these lines I thought the pamor would be of an adeg type. I told that to the guy who did the etching and he replied "just watch and get surprised" When the warangan was brought up, the pamor raised and the iron colored black. Result: pamor beras wutah with those fanciful spots and circlelike lines. I couldn't discover a single adeg pamor line on the blade.

[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.