Yet another project that sat on my shelf far too long! The
Windlass Hewing Spear is inexpensive and it looks good from 10 feet away. The historical inaccuracies are obvious and far too numerous to mention here, but that’s not the point of this post.
The point is I had $20 burning a hole in my pouch at the War of the Lilies (SCA - Calontir, Kansas City) two years ago and this shiny object caught my eye. Fast forward to last week when I picked up a 6 foot long 1.5 inch diameter pole at the local hardware store.
The pine pole was nothing fancy, but it was straight and the grain was true. I clamped it to my workbench and used an old school hand plane to give it a gentle octagonal shape with an average finished diameter of 1.25 inches.
The business end of the pole was further planed to accommodate the spear socket. Most of my time was spent test fitting the spearhead then planning a little bit more. Repeat. Once satisfied with a snug fit, I hand rubbed three coats of boiled linseed oil into the shaft allowing a day drying time between each coat.
The spearhead had two little holes at the base of the socket. I made two little arming nails from carpeting nails I had laying around. The nails were placed in a vice and the heads gently shaped with a small ball peen hammer to appear handmade.
The spear head had rusted a bit after two years on my shelf. I used 1000 grit sandpaper to remove the rust and a buffing wheel with metal (black) compound to bring it back to life.
I applied slow-cure epoxy to the tapered end of the shaft and firmly seated the spear head. The two arming nails were added to ensure this was never coming apart.
The final tally is $25 in materials and 2 full hours of labor spread over several days. Not bad for a spear that looks good from 10 feet away!
