How long spears/pikes wre made 500 years ago
In his Schwytzer Chronica, Zurich, 1554, Johannes Stumpf points out that during the first half of the 16th century, most people in the Eschental (ash valley) in Switzerland made their living by manufacturing ash hafts for long spears. The woocut of ca. 1540, illustrating a sort of gauge in order to easily guarantee identical diameter of each haft, is taken from that book.
Moreover, the Zurich arsenal inventory of 1687 lists a "kupferner Siedkessel, 18 Schuh lang, darinnen die Spiesse gesotten wurden" (a copper tank, 18 ft long, for boiling the spear hafts in oil in order to impregnate them).
As the Langspiess (long spear) had been the Swiss foot soldier's prevailing weapon for hundreds of years, the enormous care paid to its maurfacture is not surpising.
Michael
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