The Gong Factory in Bogor

This past Monday we took a family trip about 1 1/2 hours out of Jakarta to a city called Bogor. Hidden within the hundreds of tiny street of this city there is the Sukarna Gong Factory. A small Indonesian cultural treasure. Though the word 'factory' doesn't quite suite. American safety people would have a field day with this place! There were probably 8 workers in this small sooty room. It was completely dark except for the light coming in from the one doorway we entered through and the fire burning in the middle of the room. There are tools and bags and random things just lying everywhere in this room. There is no real floor that can be seen just dirt and layers upon layers of soot and ash. Most of the gong makers in this room wear flip flops or are barefoot. What happens is they take a piece of brass and throw it into the fire. A man with enourmous tongs sits by the fire and when the brass has reached a very high temperature and is burning red hot he takes it out with the tongs and the 4 other men gather in a circle with huge hammers and bang the metal into shape a little at a time while the metal is red hot. As soon as the redness fades to grayish-black, the tong man puts it back into the fire and the process continues. Not much visibly happens with the metal each time it comes out but after about 1 hour, you start to see the metal flatten and get wider forming th gong. The nice men let us all hold the heavy hammers, they even let Mike hit the brass a couple times when it was red hot. Be sure to watch the video at the end...you can hear the interesting sounds of the metal as each man hits it. And they're rhythm was an incredible sight!

This was a very small room in the back where they do the finishing work on the gamelan instruments. All various kinds of gongs. One man below is carefully chiseling the intricate design work into the wood and another man is polishing the gong on a very fast spinning wheel. Then of course there is Mike with the ginormous gong we bought, and a video of the men hammering the red hot brass into shape.