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Very nice Kamidog! Love that hollow forge and shape of the blade. Bet it's a wicked chopper.
 
davidf99 said:
At the other end of the plausibility spectrum, the actor Ving Rhames, in one of his zombie movies used a sledgehammer to dispatch the creatures. Despite Rhames' massive musculature, I found that unwieldy implement just as hard to accept as when another character in the same movie makes his "weapon of choice" a golf club!
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Keep in mind that zombies are slow and they don't duck and dodge or riposte. They just stand there while you whack them in the skull so the heavier the better.

While I prefer my deadly weapons with sharp edges, there are a whole lot of cultures that sure did a great job on killing each other with varieties of wooden weapons. The gunstock clubs just look thoroughly efficient.

KamiDog, that is one heck of a beauty and pretty darn unique too. bunch of jealousy from here.
 
I bought another keris. My first 3 kerises were just tourist pieces but this one is the real deal. Unfortunately somebody painted the hilt and scabbard. Some of the paint got on the blade too. I'm pretty sure the paint isn't original or"correct" so I need to figure out how to remove it. I'm trying to get the paint off the blade first. I tried nail polish remover but it didn't make any difference. I think I'll have to use more drastic methods.... Any advice?
 
You could try Nevr Dull. It should remove some of the black rust as well but it should also work on the paint, as well as other impurities. It will leave some whitish protective coating (against rust) but what is visible can be taken off easily by rubbing it with a clean cloth. It is not abrasive and it won't patina the metal in any way.

That is, unless you want to go directly with paint thinner.
 
To be honest, I'm reluctant to use harsh chemicals because the Javanese consider kerises to be living things and dousing them in harsh chemicals is considered a no-no. They "feed" them fruits and bathe them in fragrant oils and whatnot. Stinky toxic chemicals would drive the spirit out for sure.

I don't believe any of that myself but I like to respect the customs of wherever a blade comes from. I want to try soaking the blade in hot soapy water first, but I can't remove the hilt. Usually Keris hilts slide right off. It's possible the blade is held in with some sort of resin, which I can loosen with heat, but I'm worried whoever painted the hilt /scabbard also glued or epoxied the tang.

If that doesn't work I'll just use paint thinner, tradition be damned.
 
I wonder if brake fluid would remove it? Id try a small spot first. The metal is already highly etched so doubt it would hurt it. Thats's a cool piece blue!
 
Nevr Dull is not harsh at all, I just can't guarantee 100% it will work. It really should.

Good luck!
 
Hmmm...since paint does have the bad habit of getting loose because of, I guess, changes in temperature...you could try a few cycles of heating it up using a hair dryer / place it somewhere cold? Just guessing...is the handle made out of wood, though?
 
Thanks! So far I've removed most of the black gunk from the blade with lemon juice. Traditionally you'd soak the blade in coconut water for mild cleaning and lemon juice for "harsh" cleaning so I'm hewing as closely to tradition as I can.

They etch the blades with a mixture of arsenic and lemon juice which gives a much deeper contrast than plain old acid. I have no desire to mess with such toxic stuff though.
 
Hilt is wood... That's good advice actually. Back when I collected ancient coins I used to heat them up in an oven and then drop them in ice water to try to shake off encrustations. The same thing might work for this blade if I can remove the hilt.

You need a special license to buy arsenic. Alternatively you can buy some ore from china, pulverize it, soak it in a mixture of acid and steel wool or something like that, and wait a few weeks and it'll leech the arsenic out of the ore.

Oh man, the BEST stuff for cleaning anything off of metal was this stuff they used as flux back in the 70's. I forget what it's called but I think they also used to use it in refrigerators and car A/C units. I think they banned it because of cancer or a hole in the ozone or something. The last company I worked for still had a huge drum full of the stuff, and it would just boil the rust/corrosion/whatever off an old coin and make it look like a new penny.

Next purchase has to be a good keris holder
 
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Again, I can relate :). Happens with medicines as well, although when they are used on short periods of time, they are fine...
 
keris hilts should NOT be glued or stuck on with resin. they are traditionally 'dressed' by wrapping the hilt with hair or a strip of cloth (silk) then just pressed tightly into the hilt opening. the long side of the 'guard' should be 'up' when you hold it. if it's too loose, add a layer of whatever you wrapped it in.

like mine here:
keris.jpg



and here wityh a new grip (old one next to it)


the black is where the arsenic blackens the blade, the silver is the layers of nickel forged into the blade and remain unaffected by the arsenic. the patterns have meanings, and there are hundreds. the blade is oiled with scented oil to honour the spirit of the keris. the metal bit (the mendak) is loose, and made to fit a variety of grips. they can also be interchanged, basic ones when you are down, and fancy gold jewelled ones when you are up. same with the grips and scabbards. indonesians change the dress at their pleasure. it's the blade that has the soul. not the dress.

the wavey ones always have an odd number of waves.
 
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I read on the "other site" that sometimes kerises have hilts fixed with damar, which I believe is a kind of resin.

I'm not sure if mine was affixed with damar way back in the day or if some dope threw some superglue in there, but I've applied a lot of force to the thing and it just won't budge.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=7584

edit: after re-reading that thread, it doesn't seem clear whether the keris hilt was resin'd indigenously or by a later western collector. So who knows. Interestingly, the other glued kerises have backwards hilts too.
 
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yes, the keris forum on the 'other place' is a good source of info. there were instances where they were glued in, but i gather that was/is rare. you can go into information overload in the 'other place' as the experts there will argue for pages over a tiny detail difference between one blade and another. and as i mentioned, over the hundreds of differing 'pamour' or blade patterns.
 
This keris is really atypical, that's for sure.

The hilt shape is very weird, I haven't seen any others like it I was told its a stylized version of a snake's head but I don't really see the resemblance. Even if true, I can't find a picture of a hilt that looks like mine

The hilt is backwards and glued/epoxies/resined to the blade, also unusual but not unpresidented

The blade has a dull tip. Kerises aren't really practical weapons but they almost always have a sharp point because they originally were a stabbing weapon. Again, kerises with blunt tips do exist but are very uncommon. It is a valid blade shape, not a modification by a later owner

The hilt and scabbard are painted brown, which is completely untraditional. It must be a later modification. Some later owner decided to paint it for some reason

The blade has splatters of paint on it, which implies the blade was attached to the hilt when the hilt was painted, and the painter was sloppy. This again points to the painting being a later modification. The hilt and scabbard were painted after the blade was joined to the hold, not before.

The ring at the base of the hilt, I forget the proper name, does not have ANY paint on it. If the hilt, ring, and blade were all joined together when the hilt was painted there's no way the ring wouldn't have some paint on it. Especially since the painter was sloppy and got paint on the blade. So the ring must be a later addition, after it was painted.

So somebody bought the hilt, blade, and scabbard and sloppily painted the whole thing in one piece. Then they added the ring, presumably replacing whatever ring it came with. And this ring is nice and old and heavy. It's not some recently manufactured tourist ring. Finally, they glued the hilt to the blade backwards.
 
blue lander said:
I bought another keris. My first 3 kerises were just tourist pieces but this one is the real deal. Unfortunately somebody painted the hilt and scabbard. Some of the paint got on the blade too. I'm pretty sure the paint isn't original or"correct" so I need to figure out how to remove it. I'm trying to get the paint off the blade first. I tried nail polish remover but it didn't make any difference. I think I'll have to use more drastic methods.... Any advice?
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Denatured alchohol is surprisingly effective-I've used it to remove cured epoxy... Worth a shot, and shouldn't hurt the wood
 
I soaked the hilt in hot water for about 10 minutes. It came off with a bit of a struggle. The tang is covered in some black tarry stuff, it definitely looks like a natural adhesive rather than synthetic glue or epoxy.

The tang on this thing is surprisingly thick.
 
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