How pikes/lances were made 500 years ago

[Matchlock]

Is this the one that you are referring to, Fernando?

As the rest of that illustration pictures parts of handguns, and telling from the relative proportions, I should say that these are ramrods, belonging to the heaps of barrels and stocked guns.

Michael

[fernando]

Quite right, thanks.
... and quite a lot of them, too
Fernando

[Matchlock]

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

[kronckew]

that last woodcut above reminds me of the jigs used to straighten bamboo mongolian/korean arrows, where a bend would be heated then bent opposite like shown to straighten it as it cooled. i've seen a film clip of the aboriginies in australia similarly heating a spear shaft in a fire, then bending it under foot to straighten it, a little bit at a time and working their way around till it was acceptably straightened,

[Matchlock]

Highly interesting information - thank you, kronckew!

It shows that all people in the world think alike in technical things.

Michael

[Matchlock]

From Christie's, September 19, 1990, lots 47 and 48, an image from their showroom attached. There was three of those, so I chose the better two. Originally they came from the arsenal of the Fortress of Hohensalzburg; an image of a pile of those in the reserve collection there attached.
I never saw any other of these again. Apart from these, and the Historic Museum Basel, Switzerland, I have never seen pikes with their irons still blued!

Both retaining their original blued irons and straps (!), as well as their oiriginal ash hafts (one slightly bent).
Overall lengths 4.66 and 4.57 m respectively. They might even have been a bit longer originally.

The only way to display them in my showroom was to suspend them crossed from the ceiling.

Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

For more material please see

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=13180

m

[Shakethetrees]

Originally Posted by Matchlock

Highly interesting information - thank you, kronckew!

It shows that all people in the world think alike in technical things.

Michael

Around the world, no matter what we hold important or what the driving philosophy behind each culture may be, we are all bound by the laws of nature as far as the materials we need to shape into weapons or everyday items.

Mastery depends on the understanding and obeying these rules!

[Matchlock]

Generally, all items of manufacture, of arts and crafts alike including weapons, convey the basic style of the respective period.

Between ca. 1480 and 1520, Landsknecht's long pikes measured more than 6 meters overall – reflecting the “Hyper Gothic” period sense of style when churches got built with lofty steeples seemingly touching the sky and humans, too, were pictured to be very tall and slender.

While newly made spike heads from the Early Renaissance period, ca. 1520-50, were often decorated with a roped ornament and brass inlays, the complete pikes were about 5 meters long, and the hafts of surviving Late Gothic specimens got cut back to that length.
Consequently, by the mid 16th c. spike heads became rectangular in shape, and the whole pike now measured ca. 4.5 - 4.7 meters. Cf. two samples suspended below the ceiling in The Michael Trömner Collection (see post # ... above).

In the 1620's, after the beginning of the Thirty Years War, they got cut back again to ca. 3.5-3.7 m, until most surviving specimens finally got reduced in length to about 2 m in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Discussed here is a truly singular South German Landsknecht's long pike still retaining its original length of ca. 6 meters.
The two brass friezes of the iron head, characteristically decorated with a punched roped ornament, together with the notches, all denote that it was made in ca. 1520-30.
Its ash wood haft is decorated in an incredibly profuse manner, with what must be hundreds of knobs.
My skilled friend Armin König copied it. It took him many hours to get that knobbing done effectively on the hard ash wood that he told me he would never submit to such a toil again ..

The attached photos depict the original pike in the collections of the historic armory at the Veste (fortress) Coburg.
Also attached are three similarly early spike heads the author photographed in the reserve collection/depot of the Historisches Museum Luzern, Switzerland.


Best,
Michael

The first three photos copyrighted by Armin König,
the bottom image copyrighted by Michael Trömner.