Welcome to myArmoury Hank! It's great to have you around.

Welcome, Hank!

This reminds me to make my regular declaration that we need more polearms from MRL/Windlass! Complete weapons, heads only, halberds, bills, awl-pikes, ...everything and all periods (it's a small request :lol: ). I think this is our best hope for affordable reproductions of these vitally important weapons.

Sean I take it you're volounteering a large portion of your income to MRL's R&D department? ;)

:D

Well...I could be persuaded to purchase a nice German halberd of, say, 1500. I'd love to have a good English bill of the early colonial period as well-1600-1625. Sell me the heads for $125 and $75, respectively, and I'll haft 'em myself. Or, with nice, quadragonal or octagonal hafts (and inletted langets on the halberd) I'd be willing to spend $225 and $150. They'd have to be of historically appropriate length, though. Or, heck, just about anything in the Waldman book would be welcome!

I may still get MRL's German Halberd this year.

On the topic of treated spikes on pole arms, there is a good reason for not having them TOO finely tempered. Some years back at an event we decided to do a bit of "barn razing" with a dilapidated chicken coop. I took issue with the building and gave it a good smack with my poleaxe (which I had gotten from Jeff Schroeter some months beforehand). The axe blade did just fine, but in sinking in to the wood, I imposed too much upon the tinsile strength of the spike, where upon it simply snapped off at the base, much to my chagrin. I still had a wonderful axe to grind on and smack things with, but it just wasn't the same without the spike. I had a friend weld it back on, and eventually said poleaxe disappeared into the bowels of the National Park Service due to my forgetfullness, but it was still an object lesson in such things. Far, far better to bend such an item and be able to pound it back into place than to have it snap off at a critical time! A bent spike is still of some service, a missing one is not... unless you pick it up and use it as a rondel dagger or something! :\

Cheers!

Gordon