Bali - mean machines

Traditional Balinese Pande (blacksmith) usually produce knives, kris, swords, and metal-based ritual paraphernalia. A pande from Denpasar, however, has expanded his skills to also produce various simple machines, such as a meat grinder, coconut shredder and pandanus leaf mincer.

His motorized machines are in high demand because they provide the Balinese with a cost-cutting and time-saving solution to their daily chores. For instance, the meat grinder and coconut shredder are critical instruments for the villagers when they have to prepare a major temple festival. In the preparation stages of the festival, the villagers would have to process a large quantity of meat and coconut, both for the offerings, as well as for the communal feasts.

The pandanus leaf mincer will brighten the days of the female members of the village. Balinese Hindu offerings need a large amount of fragrant shredded pandanus leaves. In the past, the women would have to produce this material manually, by slicing and chopping the pandanus leaves for hours before mixing the shredded leaves with fragrant oil. With the presence of the new machine, all they have to do is feed the leaves into the machine.

Several hotels in Bali have purchased his machines, in particular the machine that mixes different ingredients into lawar (a Balinese traditional delicacy). He recalled that most of his inventions were borne out of necessity. He designed a machine to chop water spinach in the early 1980s after witnessing the arduous work his wife had to prepare water spinach to feed their family’s 20 pigs.

His earliest design used a manually operated set of gears as the primary source of power, while his latest designs have used electric generators.

Tweet