"How were spear shafts made in Ye Olde Days?" Topic

I assume they started with square stock. I have never seen straight branches of anything 6' to 16' long.

But what did they do then?
Did they have lathes?
Did they have planes?

I really have no idea.

Did they have lathes?

Yes.

You wouldn't use branches you'd use the main trunk.

They coppiced or pollarded the trees to get long straight thin trunks. Anything 16' long would have had a mid joint like a sarissa I would think.

As above, I suspect that anything over 8' likely was spliced with a strong glue, and then either boiled leather or a metal reinforcing band or splints placed over the splice for strength.

Yea, straight tree trunks, cut to size.

I have yet to see any evidence that that pikeshafts were made as anything but solid pieces. Given that thousands of shafts survive it would have been discovered by now not to mentioned have been recorded in period sources.

Swedish records mention the peasantry being required to turn in a number of 'raw' shafs each year which were then transported to the factories to be cut down into lenght and shaped with planes into proper shafts.

Medieval legislation in Scotland (James III I think, but I don't have notes to hand)required spears to be made of a single 'clyft' of wood, which tells us that spears made of a one piece of wood were available, but it also tells us that splinted – and therefore cheaper and inferior – spears made from two of more pieces could be found, otherwise there'd be no point to the legislation.

Working on wood is about as old as people.
Lengths of wood can be straightened through a variety of methods.
link

Smoothing & rounding wood needs tools but these too are age old.
I call them 'spoke shavers':

My dad, a Cabinet-maker, used such things to create furniture legs. Although I'm cack-handed, I inherited all Dad's tools including a wonderful set of Swedish chisels (Erik Anton Berg). These things, although over 100 years old, sharpen to an unbelievable edge. Swedish steel is the best.

Ever seen an ash tree? With judicious pruning they grow sratight as a pike staff!

Winston,

Coppiced hardwood trees would of been the main source of spear shafts rather than lathed timbers, this method is still used for shovel and axe handle production today. Many European societies would have available a number of tree types suitable for spear shaft production of straight round shafts that have inherent core strength and are easily shaped and straightened with heat.
link

Specialist metal woodworking tools were well evolved by 6th c BC. Lathes being especially noted in academic sources.

As the woodcutter's trade has fallen from use in our society a number of these secrets are lost to the common man today, luckily some surprisingly some good historical treatises are available especially roman.

PDF link

And a question I answered some time ago about pikes
TMP link

The best book I have found on the subject
"Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World" by Russell Meiggs

I think we forget in our modern world that timber was the main building block of society, everyday firewood was required for heat, charcoal for the forge, timber for tools and weapons, and as society became more advanced timber yokes, ploughs, carts, wagons for transport, fences for livestock, large trees for boats. All this requires formal agricultural foresight and long term planning, and someone to be in the field daily looking after this income producing asset. Primary sources discuss the use of forests and farmed timber species for short term and long term harvesting for both private and for sale.

I hope that helps

Cheers
Matt

I think Blue willow covered everything plus for what I was going to add, species selection and careful training is key to some societies weaponry production.

Regarding Macedonian pikes being made in two pieces:

"Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars" by Duncan Head page 105 bottom paragraph
"a find of metal fittings from a tomb at Vergina indicates that the shaft was made in two pieces joined by an iron tubular sleeve 6 1/2 inches (17cm) long."

Regards,
Bill

Well trained beavers. ok, maybe not, but it would be something to see!

Bill,

I am not convinced that the tubular sleeve found at Vergina (actually it was found in a nearby tomb of at Tumulus ) is actually a joint for a sarrissa.

There is good reason to believe the butt spike and the spear head and sleeve found with it, do not belong to the same spear as they are different sizes in circumference, so to come too a conclusion that it is a joint is a big leap. The argument that all sarissae were joined doesn't have any basis of fact, and the whole theory has been based on this one find by Andronikos and no other finds since at any other site in Greece, Macedonia or the near east.

Have you read Connolly's article on the Macedonian Sarissa, hard to find but worth it

Peter Connolly Experiments with the sarissa –- the Macedonian pike and cavalry lance – a functional view 103-12

During the First World War coppiced ash lengths were commonly grown to lengths of 32 feet in length "with straight and even grain throughout the whole length, and free from the slightest defect" were regularly grown for use in constructing aircraft.

It is possible to grow suitable straight timber be it for a pike, spear or even a aircraft if the timer is cared for and harvested.

Manual of the timbers of the world
link

My two cents

Cheers
Matt

My only comment on the joiner is that it would have been a lot easier to carry two 8 foot spears on the march than a 16 footer.
Having said that, a joint is always it's weakest point. How could one ensure that they would fit together snugly and tightly on deploying? You couldn't. I don't think a study of tolerance stack-up has been unearthed by classical scholars, but any soldier at the time could have told you that fitting them together would have been rough.

I don't believe any more myself that the Vergina sarissa tube was made to join a two-piece shaft (unless it was some sort of emergency field repair). This was originally Andronikos' theory from the 1970s, and more recent studies on the sarissa – the Connolly one that Matt mentions and Nick Sekunda's rather harder-to-find paper ("The Sarissa", Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, Folia Archaeologica 23, 2001) tend to discount it.

The Sekunda paper, incidentally, is a very good discussion of information on how spearshafts were made – pollarded wood, wedge-split lengths of trunk, and then rounded with a spokeshave – much as has already been said above.

As an alternative style of manufacture, some Eastern Zhou-era Chinese spearshafts were of composite construction, one being made of 18 narrow bamboo strips grouped round a wooden shaft acting as a core, the whole bound all over with silk string and then lacquered black.

cheers,
Duncan.

One of Macedonia's only resources were forests which made them susceptible to Athenian meddling.. why.. because as a maritime power Athens wanted those long poles for various naval uses, masts or oars.

As Duncan describes above, the Vergina "sarissa tube", has long been a matter of debate-- especially since it still seems the Vergina sleeve is a 'one-off'…. and one would. expect to have found at least a few more of these, especially when we find other butt spikes and spear points…

Sadly my own work- the Warhammer Ancients Alexander supplement- perpetuated this wargamer's myth (against my wishes-- when the illustrator showed the split sarissa being carried- like Heckel's phalangites in his Osprey Macedonian Warrior effort, plate A page 33)…

As I stated in my work, I have always felt that this kind of sleeve was a decorative adornment rather than a practical necessity-- since every wood worker and the evidence of later pikes seems to stress that single piece, properly built pikes are the best. Repair would be one use for a sleeve, but it is never going to make it stronger- always weaker. Still I often paint sleeves on my phalanx pikes, only because it adds interest… do as I say- not what I do :)

The idea that these were simply able to be unpinned somehow for easy carrying does not pass the history source test-- at some point some source would have mentioned this, and they do not. Instead sources more often state how pikes were transported by the baggage train wagons if the infantry were not going to carry them when on some kind of commando action.

The campaign of Cleomenes is of interest since the Spartans had to import their sarissae and shields from contraband arms dealers and they cost them a large sum of cash… since there are not suitable trees in the Peloponnese.

Sekunda I feel successfully has presented that sarissae were long ash, and not Cornel wood-- which is often confusedly (by ancient and modern writers) claimed as the source of the sarissa…

One other point on this topic… spears were oiled-- the Greeks used olive oil on everything, their bodies, their shields, a miracle substance (similar to windex :). This probably made things darker than the oft repeated-- light wood grain associated with Connelly's brilliant paintings. The spears on the Alexander mosaic at Pompeii are darker wood than freshly lathed. Just like a well oiled guitar…

and of course the famous mosaic does not have any sleeves on those pikes…..

One should look at the paintings of the Thracians too… many of their spears are dark, and some are burled.

Nick Sekunda's abbreviated points on the subject of sarissae can be found on page 13-17 of his Osprey:
Macedonian Armies after Alexander 323-168 BC.

As I gaze out from my desk by the window in the back hard I see at least a dozen small oak trees with trunks perfectly straight. These are about three to six inches thick with a height of 18 ft before they branch or bend significantly,. These have been left to grow naturally in a large second growth forest. Young trees can be tied, bent and shaped easily. Maple saplings will do the same, and pines of course are known for their strong straight trunks, being supple too! That's why they made the best masts for sailing ships.

The Oak right by the side of my driveway is big enough to furnish the solid sternpost for a 100 gunner.

My forest has 'limitless' quantities of straight ash, oak, maple and pine. All you need is an ax, a saw and a draw knife.

Ash were popular in Europe.

Pollarding and especially coppicing produce long, thin straight trunks.

Having coppiced a couple of oak trees the new trunks grow very quickly producing 20 foot trucks within 5 to 8 years.