| Abstract: |
Pamor, the etch-resistant metal traditionally used in the blades of Southeast Asian krises, appears to have been originally a smelted iron-nickel alloy. Small amounts of a meteoritic alloy were later used by kris makers, mainly in the 1840s-1860s. Modern alloys and pure nickel have also been used since about 1900. But most pamor came from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where there are large deposits of iron-nickel ores of a type that could be smelted in simple furnaces. The evidence, though incomplete, points to this as a probable case of the regular production of an iron-nickel alloy, on a modest but commercial scale, many decades and perhaps centuries before such alloys began to be made by Western steelmakers. It is one of the few such cases known.
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