Shahnizam Ibrahim and his apprentices Iman, Ehsan and Daniel. Photos: Hasnah Hariri
The next morning, they started again, this time divided into groups, the Malaysian cousins busy whispering translations of the instructions to the cousin from Canberra. Their masters, calm and collected, guided them along, step by step. There’s no rushing in this type of work.
The pandai besi use the old method of forging steel by heating a steel bar in a charcoal furnace until it is partially melted and malleable, and then shaping it using hammer and anvil. The metal is lengthened by beating it against the anvil. This flattens and widens the piece, thereby drawing it out. A technique called “upsetting” is used to increase the thickness of the metal in one dimension through hammering the cold end of the object with the hammer to make the malleable hot end shorter and thicker.
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