A different Pamor which is not folded but pasted

[A. G. Maisey]

Thank you for your further comments Gustav, & I'm pleased that you have mentioned this. I had considered putting up something like the below images previously, but I did not, because I thought it would not be fitting if you did not have the background to understand what you were looking at, but I now understand that you are familiar with Sache so I think others might benefit from this present post.

I'm still not interested in trying to convince you that my opinion is correct & that yours is not, I respect your unfettered right to hold your own opinion, & I do understand how you have come to hold this opinion, however, I feel that others who are perhaps not as well informed as you are might benefit from what I have posted here.

The drawings of a twisted bar at various stages of its reduction to its center, & the caption that goes with the drawings, are from Sache's book "Damascus steel", you would be familiar with this, but many other keris people would not be.

I started doing forge work in about 1978-1980, by 1982 I had found a teacher, I first made a dagger with pamor construction in about 1983, & immediately after the dagger I made a pretty funny looking little keris. By 1988-1990 I was doing the sort of pattern welding that is demonstrated in the Sache drawings, it was all damascus work. I did try several times to apply twisted bar as pamor, but I was never very successful, however, my twisted bar damascus blades were more than acceptable. I sold most of my damascus work to other makers to be turned into knives & daggers.

The teacher I found in 1982 was Gordon Blackwell, he taught me to forge weld, but I taught myself to forge weld high carbon steel & nickel & to combine these materials into a single billet.

I found another couple of teachers in Solo, my principle teacher was Empu Suparman Supowijoyo, my long-time friend Empu Pauzan Pusposukadgo also taught me, but only by observation & his explanations, I never worked under Pak Pauzan's instruction. In addition to this I have observed the work of four or five other pande keris in Central Jawa, and four or five pande keris in Bali.

All of this Javanese/Balinese teaching & observation was between 1980 & 2023. I stopped doing forge work in about 1995 when I moved to a new house and got so busy with other things that I never got back to serious forging. I currently have only a small hand blown farrier's forge, & the only forge work I have done in recent years is heat treatment of blades I made in the past, and teaching of a few people who wanted to learn basic forge procedures.

The big difference in working with damascus & working with pamor blades that have a laminated steel core, is that with the pamor blade you have only a comparatively thin layer of contrasting material and you need to forge out the entire blade to its intended length without deforming the pamor pattern, then when you are doing the cold work, you need to be extremely careful not to cut all the way through the pamor and expose the solid black of the core. If we use the construction method of an inserted edge, rather than an enclosed core we can avoid that core exposure problem, but I don't think Javanese makers have used the inserted edge since about 1700, & not all makers used it then.

If we look at the Sache drawings we can see that only a very few layers of contrasting material have been used, & enclosed by thicker layers of homogeneous material. By the time that we have reduced the fully twisted bar to somewhere near its center we have removed all the closely spaced outer layers, & come down to the more widely spaced inner layers, as can be seen in illustrations J & K of the Sache drawings. In these J & K illustrations we can see an almost straight line of homogeneous material running through the center of the bar, in damascus with few layers in the original material, it is possible to achieve something more or less like this, but in pamor where we begin with only a tiny amount of contrasting material it is virtually impossible to produce a continuous line of the white contrasting nickelous material.

These illustrations are related to European working capabilities, they do not reflect the capabilities & technology of Javanese and Balinese smiths. Nor do they reflect my own capabilities. All the forge work I did in Australia was done without a striker & without a machine hammer, and on a relatively small forge. In Jawa & Bali the forges are even smaller & more limited than what I used.

In reality this beautifully crafted twisted bar in the illustrations is not representative of what can be produced by the vast bulk of smiths in Jawa & Bali. In addition, working with pamor we use very thin pieces of contrasting material ie, nickel or meteoritic material, a piece of the contrasting material used in most keris would be no thicker than a piece of newspaper, I used to forge out the nickel or cleaned meteor until holes appeared in it. The traditional method of welding meteorite used in Jawa is to enclose tiny pieces of meteorite in an iron envelope & then run that envelope through anything up to 7 or 8 folds, the number depending upon the number of welds needed to clean the material, this envelope process results in extremely thin layers of contrasting material.

So with the Sache illustrations we have an example that is entirely different to what we work with in pamor production for a keris, with pamor we have a greater number of layers, and those layers are much thinner.

Now have a look at the photos of keris blade section. The blade I have used for an example is one that was made by Pande Keris Yohannes Yantono, I prepared the meteoritic material for use in this blade and it was given to Yantono as a very small billet, he forged it to paper thinness before combining with iron and producing a pamor billet that contained a nominal 128 layers of contrasting material. The pamor motif is Wiji Timun, & this was produced by surface manipulation.

If we look at indentations that form the motif we can see the same flow pattern in the pamor that can also be observed in the Sache illustrations J & K, but the flow pattern in the keris pamor is comprised of very many more layers than in the J & K illustrations.

In the keris blade we can also see in the image of the sorsoran where the pamor has been totally cut through during the carving & the black core has been exposed. If we look at the other image of blade section we can see a small section of blade where the top of the odo-odo has come very close to exposure but still retains a few specks of contrasting meteoritic material. Looking closely at the continuity of contrasting material in this keris blade it is not difficult to see where the layers continue from one side of the odo-odo to the other. These layers are much finer than in the illustrations, or in the keris shown in post #2, but the flow is quite easy to see.

The major indicator of a blade that has been made using a twisted bar is that close examination will almost invariably reveal some weld joints where the twists have united during production. I have run the photos of the keris under discussion through Photoshop examination & I cannot find any of these weld joints, however, weld joints might be present and only detectable under microscopic examination, if this were proven to be so, then my opinion that this blade under discussion is a mlumah pamor would be wrong.

[HughChen]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The big difference in working with damascus & working with pamor blades that have a laminated steel core, is that with the pamor blade you have only a comparatively thin layer of contrasting material and you need to forge out the entire blade to its intended length without deforming the pamor pattern, then when you are doing the cold work, you need to be extremely careful not to cut all the way through the pamor and expose the solid black of the core. If we use the construction method of an inserted edge, rather than an enclosed core we can avoid that core exposure problem, but I don't think Javanese makers have used the inserted edge since about 1700, & not all makers used it then.

Hello，Alan. I think maybe that's what we mean. My friend hold the belief that this keris's pamor represent some old craftsmanship which should be from 17th-18th century.

[JustYS]

Thank you Alan and Gustav for your ongoing discussion, very appreciate it.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The major indicator of a blade that has been made using a twisted bar is that close examination will almost invariably reveal some weld joints where the twists have united during production. I have run the photos of the keris under discussion through Photoshop examination & I cannot find any of these weld joints, however, weld joints might be present and only detectable under microscopic examination, if this were proven to be so, then my opinion that this blade under discussion is a mlumah pamor would be wrong.

Hi Alan,

I apologize in advance for my simplistic (probably ignorant) question:

Is this an example of the evidence of weld joints.
If yes does this mean that the pamor of this keris has been made using a twisted bar?

Thank you.

[Gustav]

This is not a joint between two twists, this is a joint line between two twisted bars.

[Gustav]

Just a few observations using one picture.

In the overall view picture of the blade I have marked 4 places, where we see, how the frequencies of segments (defined by gedhegan work or by twists, or by whatewer) are becoming wider towards the middle (and afterwards even more wider toward the tip, outside this picture).

This is not a picture we would expect to have of a Gedhegan work, which is done on a cold blade already forged out, and where the frequency between places, where surface is manupulated, is kept more even,- or would be even reversed - with bigger spacings on Sorsoran, becoming narrower up the blade.

On a blade made with a Pamor of twisted bar(s) we would normally have that, what is the case here - narrow frequency on Sorsoran, which becomes bigger and bigger up the blade - because the Pamor is forged out together with the hot blade. Of course an experienced smith, or let's say, smith, who cares about an "as eaven as possible" appearance of a twisted bar Pamor, works against this occurence - to have a pattern with more eaven frequencies.

I also don't see classic twist joint features on this blade, but there are at least two places in this one picture, where it comes quite close to these (marked by blue arrows in the cutout pictures; the pictures with blue marked areas show the borders between possible twists, in this case the narrow frequencies close the base of blade). As I have said, Odo-Odo can disturb the appearance of a twisted bar heavily, as does Sangling here and there - the thinness of Pamor layers in this case goes into a small part of a millimeter at some places.

[A. G. Maisey]

Gustav before I try to understand how to respond to your most recent post I need to know what you mean by "gedhegan work". The root is "gedheg", or "gedeg", or "gedek". In Bahasa Indonesia this is a panel of woven bambu, in Javanese it also means this, but it also means to shake your head when you disagree with something, and it means to collaborate. The meanings are of course contextual.

I have looked at Haryoguritno and he gives "gedhagen" a meaning that agrees with what JustYS has said some salesmen use to refer to "nginden" work. However, this is not a usage I have encountered in Solo.

So could you please confirm that by "gedhagen" you mean what I know as "nginden" and what I refer to in English as "chatoyant", that is that a basic but dense wos wutah pamor is indented or cut in a series of straight lines and then forged flat, the result being to create a series of lines in the pamor that are shadow-like?

Thanks.

[A. G. Maisey]

JustYS, it is as Gustav has said, two twisted bars welded together.

[A. G. Maisey]

HughChen, in your post #17 the pattern in the blade shown was made in the same way that the pattern in my example of the Yantono blade was made, and how the pattern in the blade under discussion was made --- although Gustav disagrees with this.

The difference is in the number of contrasting layers, the blade geometry, the craftsman. In all blade work there can be very many variables, and each variable can affect the finished result, things that have been created in essentially the same way can finish with a totally different appearance.

In most cases the craftsmen who work in the field understand the variables & the results, but in the absence of lengthy specialised training the untrained observer will almost invariably be confused. I guess the same is true in many fields.

In respect of your post #18, do you mean that your friend thought that the Bali blade could have has an inserted edge? I don't believe this blade does have an inserted edge, & I have not yet encountered a Balinese blade that has used this method of construction. The only blades i have found this inserted edge in have been Javanese, mostly from Mataram.

In post #17 you have proposed an impossible method of manufacture, absolutely, totally impossible. The layers in pamor & in damascus are always there, but they vary in number, style, placement, thickness, execution, style, material. Very many variations, & really, I doubt that it is even possible for an untrained person to understand the variations. It is difficult enough for a trained person to understand them sometimes.