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steel on an anvil produces a grain in the metal, much like wood, which gives it great strength and rigidity. The best traditional kris were made of Damascus steel, produced through a demanding process whereby the steel is hammered into ribbon-like layers, the layers then heated red-hot, folded back on one another, and laminated together with blows of the hammer. Like the edge of a piece of plywood, Damascus steel has visible layers that follow the ramp a curve of the blade. The more layers, the stronger the blade.
If a smith alternates layers of carbon steel and layers of nickel alloy steel, the pattern formed by the laminations becomes particularly distinct. An alloy of nickel produces a lighter-colored steel, which brings out the pattern of laminations, called pamor. At first, the only source of nickel steels was meteoric iron. Later, nickel was imported by Chinese and Buginese traders who obtained the metal in the Celebese...where large deposits of nickel are still mined today. Eventually Europe supplied some of this material."
((These passages seem full of inaccuracies to me, including the following:
1. was smelters, not smiths, who produced iron ingots from ore by reducing the ore and releasing the oxygen
2. I have never heard that Balinese smiths or other smiths melted wrought iron in crucibles - rather the conversion from iron to steel was affected by forging
3. the term Damascus steel seems to imply that the steel was imported from the West, which it never was; does Eiseman just use the term Damascus steel for mixed metal forging?
4. the steel not hammered into ribbon-like layers before the metals are mixed; rather the thick metal sandwich is hammered out flat
ask Garrett about all this))
continuing with Eiseman:
smith manipulates the pamor pattern by filing cuts at intervals across the blade to reveal the later of steel underneath, and then hammering out this cuts to produce a series of islands and saddles down the blade
finished the blade with a treatment of citrus juice and an arsenic containing substance; corroded the ordinary carbon steel and turned it black, whereas the corrosion resistant nickel alloy remained silvery
pamor designs have symbolic meaning and are over a hundred standardized designs
a kris designed to do harm must not be seen by its intended victim, for example, or he will know from the pamor and take precautions
in order to insure the power of the kris, the smith who makes it must observe the auspicious days and make offerings to his furnace and to the kris itself - while the work is being performed and after it is completed
most kris are straight, but some do have curves, called luk, symbolic of a snake; on these curved kris the head of a snake is usually engraved on the top of the blade, just below the hilt 
Balinese society is heavily influenced by numerology and number symbolism, and the kris is no exception


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