What is Wesi Malelo?

[ganjawulung]

Originally Posted by Greybeard

In an older thread (May 2008) I read that

" ... the iron used is called `besi malela`that originates from beach sand"


and

" ... besi malela is the type of iron that had a lot of impurities ... and considered as less preferable choice in making keris".

Very interesting indeed!

Furthermore, I found a very interesting post by Empu Kumis (thread "What constitutes a `good` keris?", June 2001), describing "the melting of iron from ironsand".
" ... These black sands are used in history by dayaks for traditional ironmaking also. The name of this sand is in Bali bias malalo and in Java pasir malelo like the besi malelo in the older literature of Java ... " " ... for using as material for kerisses its a real good iron." (Quote Empu Kumis)

Fascinating: Keris iron made from beach sand!

These pictures below are experiments of our German keris man Dietrich Drescher (hopefully Empu Kumis will respond this post). I took these photos at the besalen of Subandi Supaningrat -- one of Surakartan keris maker in the eastern part of Solo, Jawa Tengah (Central Java) medio last year.

As long as I know (I hope Empu Kumis will respond it too), he had made some experiments with Pak Subandi and Boedhi Adhitya (Yogyakartan keris connoisseur) to make blocks or "iron" of Cilacap sands. Cilacap located in the southern coast of Central Jawa. Why did he choose Cilacap? I think Dietrich has a certain reason on this. He selected the Cilacap "iron sand" material with magnetic piece of iron (see picture below) and then melt the iron sand, before being forged in block forms (please correct the right English term) as you see in the picture below ...

And I remember, Dietrich had shown me a newly made "wedung" with this kind of "iron sand" pamor couple of years ago, to prove his 'thesis' on "wesi malela".... I hope this info would help you

GANJAWULUNG (Guangzhou June 15, 2009)

[lemmythesmith]

Hi all, this ironsand is called satetsu in Japan and is used to smelt tamahagane (jewel metal) which is used to make Japanese swords from, its a very good iron ore, with very little sulphur or phosphorus content so makes for a real good steel, with less carbon and added meteorite it would make most excellent keris pamor, "washed" high carbon tamahagane would be ideal for the core (very hard and tough steel) Costs about £60 a kilo in Japan though.

[Greybeard]

Hi Ganjawulung, hi Lemmythesmith

Many thanks for the info/pictures which I highly appreciate. I do learn a lot here. This is a really great forum with great members!

Regards,

Heinz

[ganjawulung]

This is more picture of 'iron stones' that probably contained iron ore at Subandi's besalen in eastern Surakarta.

GANJAWULUNG (Guangzhou, June 16, 2009)

[Greybeard]

Many thanks for the picture, Ganjawulung! The stones look interesting.

Regards, Heinz

[ganjawulung]

Ok Dear Heinz,

I tried quite a couple of times to portrait the "glittering" or "sparkling" effect of the blade that you probably meant to. But I don't think I can show you the good photo of it.

These two blades -- one (supposed to be) Pajajaran or Cirebon trisula, and one keris of dhapur "gumbeng" (quite similar to "kebo lajer" but not to thick) -- also supposed to be a Pajajaran gumbeng, with "sparkling" or "crystaline" grains in the blade...

GANJAWULUNG

[Greybeard]

Dear Ganjawulung

Thank you very much for taking the time and making the effort to portray wesi malelo. It`s difficult to describe the "glittering/sparkling" effect by word and it`s not easy to illustrate this by photos as well. One must have seen it on the object in hand! But the pictures you posted are very informative to me, and they are much appreciated!

Wesi malelo is a fascinating but rather confusing matter, and much of the knowledge of it seems to be lost in the past ...

You show a Pajajaran or Cirebon trisula. That`s interesting as my keris in question is attributed to Cirebon. What`s the period of tangguh Cirebon (16th century?).

Best regards,

Heinz