rattan polearm question.

[Malcolm_Mor]

I am planning on making a 7 1/2 foot split rattan spear, and learning to use it with a center grip over the next couple of years.

Hopefully, with my own 7' self, this will prove annoying to people.

[Milan H]

i personally am a fan of the 2 piece split rattan construction. You can make a head that actually looks kinda spear head like for example. No padding required in the west, so it looks pretty legit from the side. Several knights and senior marshals get a big grin when they pick mine up because it balances properly and feels really nice in the hand.

One thing to help prevent getting it bounced, is read all the rules, then go read the glossary for more rules hidden in definitions. After that its easy to build stuff that looks nice and is safe.


Also, i would like to say that i absolutely HATE "polearms" that have "heads" made of foam and leather that are like an igloo cooler on a stick. They are WAY worse in my opinion than even rattan sticks with tape, since they are visually intrusive, dont handle like anything real, and are usually carried by some nitwit who thinks he can play whack a mole with them. They are always wielded the same way, Grab FAR end of the stick with both hands, lob it over head, and allow it to uncontrollably smash into the enemy line, praying someone gets hit. An unpadded stick at least requires some technique to work properly.


Cheers!

[Aaron]

I think the unpadded poles came about becuase people started claiming they couldn't register blows with padded ones, especially in melee.

Now some of the padded poles out there I feel are too padded - forcing people to swing harder. Same for maces - though clackers became the norm.

.

Yep!

I've knocked honorable, trustworthy people to the ground & they thought they tripped.

I'm in favor of NO padding. Let it hit so they can feel it.

[Kilkenny]

i personally am a fan of the 2 piece split rattan construction. You can make a head that actually looks kinda spear head like for example. No padding required in the west, so it looks pretty legit from the side. Several knights and senior marshals get a big grin when they pick mine up because it balances properly and feels really nice in the hand.

One thing to help prevent getting it bounced, is read all the rules, then go read the glossary for more rules hidden in definitions. After that its easy to build stuff that looks nice and is safe.


Also, i would like to say that i absolutely HATE "polearms" that have "heads" made of foam and leather that are like an igloo cooler on a stick. They are WAY worse in my opinion than even rattan sticks with tape, since they are visually intrusive, dont handle like anything real, and are usually carried by some nitwit who thinks he can play whack a mole with them. They are always wielded the same way, Grab FAR end of the stick with both hands, lob it over head, and allow it to uncontrollably smash into the enemy line, praying someone gets hit. An unpadded stick at least requires some technique to work properly.


Cheers!

You might want to acknowledge that you have only witnessed them used in one way. Instead of just condemning an entire universe of fighters who use polearms with padded heads with a very high degree of skill indeed.

I somehow doubt that picking up a padded pole turns a fighter into a clueless noob of the worst kind - which is the *only* category of fighter using one in the manner you describe.

[Milan H]

Gavin, i respectfully think you misread what i was talking about. Its not a padded pole i have a problem with. Its the HUGE heads that are completely unreal and unneccesary. Hence the Igloo cooler description. By no means was it an attack on the padded pole, just those particular kinds.

Edit: and you are correct, it is all in my experience.

Cheers,

[Kilkenny]

Gavin, i respectfully think you misread what i was talking about. Its not a padded pole i have a problem with. Its the HUGE heads that are completely unreal and unneccesary. Hence the Igloo cooler description. By no means was it an attack on the padded pole, just those particular kinds.

Edit: and you are correct, it is all in my experience.

Cheers,

With the penchant for hyperbole commonly found here, you can probably understand that using HUGE and "igloo cooler" didn't actually mean very much to me

Now, if you're talking about things inspired by that monster hammer in Conan and you pretty much literally meant the "igloo cooler" description -

well, then, I'll give you that most people using those things (and I've seen very, very few of them in 35 years of SCA) are - well - special. Even my own squire the man can fight with a normal polearm just fine. The Big Hammer makes him Dumb

[Ogedei]

Gavin, i respectfully think you misread what i was talking about. Its not a padded pole i have a problem with. Its the HUGE heads that are completely unreal and unneccesary. Hence the Igloo cooler description. By no means was it an attack on the padded pole, just those particular kinds.

Edit: and you are correct, it is all in my experience.

Cheers,

With the penchant for hyperbole commonly found here, you can probably understand that using HUGE and "igloo cooler" didn't actually mean very much to me

Now, if you're talking about things inspired by that monster hammer in Conan and you pretty much literally meant the "igloo cooler" description -

I built one of those back in the day.

Rattan haft. head was built of a roll of closed cell blue foam. Weight added with toilet paper rolls. Clackers on the end.

I weighed everything going into that bad boy, it was dead on max weight for the day.

Sadly it wasn't as fun to fight with as I had hoped it would be.

Thorgrim was much better with it.

[Milan H]

With the penchant for hyperbole commonly found here, you can probably understand that using HUGE and "igloo cooler" didn't actually mean very much to me

Now, if you're talking about things inspired by that monster hammer in Conan and you pretty much literally meant the "igloo cooler" description -

Yeah im a pretty literal guy I can recall one was probably 6-8 inches around, and about 1.5 feet long with a stick up the middle vaguely resembling a hammer. Its that kind of thing i was referring to. Ill just never get it


Cheers!

[Fokke]

I agree alot of polearms are EPIC FAIL in their appearance. I despise sticks with tape on them. In a similar vein, i have noticed that typically, fighters who are regular polearm fighters tend to have nicer and more realistic looking weapons. These are the guys I try and hunt down on pick up fields, I tend to avoid the foam on a stick and taped stick types. One reason for this is the war-time wannabe syndrome. You see the same thing with spears. A fighter fights sword and board all year but during war actually picks up a spear instead because they want the "UBER-killz" and thats where we get over powered, uncontrolled, face thrusts and our bridge battle cannon fodder. Poleaxe, while not my primary weapon, I still try to get in a fight or two with it every practice because, well its practice, it gives me more time to work out anti-sword and boarder stuff and my fellow groupers a chance to fight it so they have an idea what to do in war when they inevitably encounter them.
I love giant hammer types, they are fun to fight and more often than not I end up with a dagger or butt-spike kill.

[MJBlazek]

So I have a question for all those knowledgeable...

I just purchased a BMH Spear head. The hard Rubber Kind.

How do I make this an SCA legal spear?
I really want a spear, but I don't want a giant Q-Tip

[Tristan vom Schwarzwald]

Sounds good. Thanks.

mine hit a bit light at first, but with adding another block to brace the sepearation it now hits right (the testing being my friend standing still and my whacking him with a good blow.....light....ramp up and repeat)

below is the guide I used for making it

http://mattyds.com/essays2.php

Is there a reason to not fill the voids with something light, perhaps even foam, so you can tape the entire head instead of leaving the voids visible??

[AEiric Orvender]

I am planning on making a 7 1/2 foot split rattan spear, and learning to use it with a center grip over the next couple of years.

Hopefully, with my own 7' self, this will prove annoying to people.

If i'm correct in my reading of the rules, any polearm over 6' must be unpadded.. I think that would rule out a 7'+ split pole...?

[Diglach Mac Cein]

Nope, the split rattan is still considered unpadded.

Wish that rule would go away. I dislike unpadded poles. People should just learn to take blows without whining "I didn't know I was being hit!"



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[AEiric Orvender]

Nope, the split rattan is still considered unpadded.

Wish that rule would go away. I dislike unpadded poles. People should just learn to take blows without whining "I didn't know I was being hit!"



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QFT
I want weapon to look like weapons.

[Girard]

I just made this pole, in the "Sir Corby" fashion...



There's a second piece of rattan that forms the "blade" edge on this one. It's a bit tapered at the top (towards the thrusting tip) and fits into a notch on the haft. The notch is about 3/4" deep at the deepest point, and tapers at the same angle as the blade piece. There's also a small "chock" of rattan at the bottom of the blade piece. After that, everything is taped to hell and back with strapping tape, then covered with gorilla tape.

Coming from using padded head polearms for quite a few years, I had to dial way back to make sure I wasn't really clobbering folks at fighter practice. No biggie, I tend to do that every time I make a new polearm until I get the feel of that stick.

I really dislike the 7 foot stick with tape on it "polearms" that I see at war, but I'm willing to make a compromise. If we can just get rid of the ones that are excessively whippy, and the ones that have no real edge (I've seen them with spiral taping, or just no edge marked at all), I'll live with the rest of them.

Baron Girard of Windmasters' Hill
(and Sir Corby's former squire)

[cfournier]

"Quarter staff" is a term for how you hold the staff or fighting with the staff, not an actual weapon.

Interesting-- English isn't my specialty, so I'm happy to learn this... In German, so far as I can tell, halbstang describes the weapon itself.

Ok, cool, play with the unpadded pole at practice, but use a "headed" pole arm for events.

But why? The guys I'm recreating used unpadded sticks for both practice and tournament.


I should probably note that I generally agree with Leo, that most people using unpadded staves don't show any signs of justifying that choice with any kind of knowledge of history...

For my own part, I actually think that it makes MORE sense to use a headless staff, on grounds that an SCA-legal weapon will, by definition, never be weighted anything like a pole-axe or long hammer of any sort (because long-staved mass weapons are really really dangerous, even if you're wearing good armor).

So, once I accept that the weapon isn't going to be weighted like an authentic polearm, and that the techniques are going to be modified to account for that weight, I find myself looking for a way to engage the weapon that I am using (a stick, albeit maybe a stick with a tiny bit of mass stuck to one end) in a way that is authentic to what I'm recreating.

So, for me, the answer is to abandon any effort to reconstruct historical polearm fighting, and instead to choose to reconstruct historical stick-fighting!

Of course, I'm not trying to structure anyone else's experience-- just sharing my own perspective, and the thinking that went into it...

[Leo Medii]

We are stuck back at the nagging question then.

Is it war, or a grand melee?


It all comes down to that......


My weapons, and some of my household's got bounced at an event because we made them look EXACTLY like wood and painted batons for tourney. It was really annoying to not be answered if we were fighting a "war" where we would bring real looking approximations to the field, or a dismounted combat tourney, where we would use batons and bone blunts.

[Diglach Mac Cein]

If you had a marked edge, they shouldn't have bounced them. If you didn't, then I could see a too SCA mainstream marshal having a problem.

Last year I bounced a guy who had a "polearm" that was a stick with taped RINGS. No blade.

Him: "It's a testubo."

Me: "No, that would be a mass weapon, and you need to have some sort of weapon head on it then."

Him: "But it is a polearm!"

Me: "Then put and edge on it."

Round and round. Then he asked me:

"Well what do you think it is?"

Me: "A stick that you want to use to game the rules. Mass weapon effect, polearm hitting and no edge requirement. I call it cheese."

It got failed the whole way up the chain that day.

People's desire to win has overridden their ability to take certain blows. So the issue became "it doesn't feel like a sword!" So polearm fighters made them to hit like a sword - with a "clack" - unpadded polearms was the easiest and safest way to do so.

Sad, really.


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[Leo Medii]

I totally agree Dilan.

I remember back when I first joined, weapons looked like the weapon.

Then, in the lmid to late 90's that changed.

Now I sound like Johno!

[Diglach Mac Cein]

I partially chalk it up to technology lagging behind need.

1) First we did it like we thought it would be done.

2) Then we wanted to be more competitive.

3) We couldn't be competitive with what we had, so we we adopted modern "sport" mentality and brought modern technology to our game.

4) Now, we are seeing technology (and building techniques) that allow competitive gear that LOOK right.

It took a lot of years to get from step 1 - 3, it'll take time to get from 3 - 4.



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[Milan H]

my only argument is that i dont equate padded polearm with "real" looking.

Sometimes yes, sometimes, no.

Mine looks, to me, kinda like a real weapon with no padding. Ive thought about adding shaped foam to get an even better profile, but then it runs into the 1/2 into the visor rule. Though, I would LOVE to put a "sharp" looking edge and a really squishy pointy tip on it.

http://i458.photobucket.com/albums/qq30 ... 730831.jpg


A lot of the split rattan (while thankfully they developed it because it allows us to do other things) dont look real to me cause they often have holes in them. I just cant figure out what weapon they approximate.

I fought with a solid stick for awhile... Mostly because i was lazy, i never even thought of it as a game of the rules. I did use it to build my new one above though. Anymore though, i dont think i would do it unless i have a very wierd set of circumstances.


Cheers!

[Diglach Mac Cein]

Milan -

Heck, any of our equipment can be made to look bad. I think the worst comes when people don't MAINTIAIN their gear. A little extra tape, toss padding on when the stuff underneath breaks down, and soon - Blech.

No, we'll never end up with real "edges", but we can make the profiles work and get a bit better idea what a pol-ax or other long weapon.

But for that to happen, a couple aspect in the general SCA fighting culture will need to happen - the culture that we have to tweak our gear and rules (especially weapons) for the SPORT, and either get clackers on polearms and/or educate fighters that a good hit with a polearm doesn't have to "clack". (Oddly, thrusts don't...)

.

[Kilkenny]

Milan -

Heck, any of our equipment can be made to look bad. I think the worst comes when people don't MAINTIAIN their gear. A little extra tape, toss padding on when the stuff underneath breaks down, and soon - Blech.

No, we'll never end up with real "edges", but we can make the profiles work and get a bit better idea what a pol-ax or other long weapon.

But for that to happen, a couple aspect in the general SCA fighting culture will need to happen - the culture that we have to tweak our gear and rules (especially weapons) for the SPORT, and either get clackers on polearms and/or educate fighters that a good hit with a polearm doesn't have to "clack". (Oddly, thrusts don't...)

.

You do understand that east of the Mississippi we had a longer time with padded poleweapons than we've had with unpadded, and that the acknowledgment issue was one of the arguments used for moving to unpadded poles ?

In other words, we spent a couple of decades fighting that battle - with insufficient success.

I think it is possible, and that numerous people have demonstrated it is possible, to make unpadded polearms with heads that have decent weapon profiles. That direction is probably the most viable one to pursue.

Eliminating the call for padding on padding (I do not understand why the By My Hand and similar rubber profiling materials need to be padded - but the stick doesn't ) would let us achieve good looking heads pretty easily.

[Milan H]

Eliminating the call for padding on padding (I do not understand why the By My Hand and similar rubber profiling materials need to be padded - but the stick doesn't ) would let us achieve good looking heads pretty easily.

I think this has to do with vagueness of the rules. Is a rubber or firm foam head a "rigid" material? i dont know... by the rules ive read its not, but others interpret it as yes. Still, like you suggest, rattan isnt a rigid material when compared to rubber? Again, i think its wonky. Safety is the goal, and i think they are erring to the side of caution. Im ok with that, but make it a clear decision.

Dilian, i agree completely. Ive been hit with padded poles that were plenty stiff, others were like a pillow. Both looked like good weapons. The big problem i think is people genuinely do have a hard time judging the all pad polearms without clackers. They are looking for that "pop" sensation, which they will get with a thrust since its over such a small area. But in a similar vein ive seen people get pushed to the ground with a thrust and not take it because it didnt "hit hard enough" Doesnt happen as often but a very similar issue.

Still back to the padded poles, i think another part of it is people just dont see them that often. They are so used to taking shots from broad, bastard and great swords, that they arent programmed to take padded pole shots.




As an aside, here is a thought....
Since force = m*a, could they just say that anything with a balance point more than X % forward of the midpoint of the weapon shall require a padding on the striking surfaces? Too heavy of a head, and you need padding, light enough and you are ok.

Lets say 10% forward of the midline is the rule...

7.5 foot polearm = 90", so 10% would be 9". The one i posted above is 4 inches forward of midline. No padding needed

Lets say a 70 inch hammer balances 11 inches forward of the midline.

46 inches is 64.8% of the total length, 15% forward of midline. Then it gets padded.

Counterweights on polearms would have to become a no no since you could game this rule pretty easily.

Thoughts?


Alright enough rambling.

Cheers!

[Diglach Mac Cein]

Gavin -

I agree (maybe my post wasn't clear), as fighters moved to be "more competitive", we started hearing that padded poles were "too slow" and people couldn't recognize blows from them because they didn't hit like a sword with a "clack".

Didn't help that becuase of all the materials and construction methods used, we could have two visually identical weapons that hit radically different.

The technology available today (like the BMH weapon heads) make weapon heads not only consistent in shape, but material.

I also agree that the BMH weapon heads are fine in and of themselves. It is all about the guy swinging the weapon maintaining control, and the guy taking the blow not requiring the opponent to take hits to "11" becuase they don't sound like a sword...


Oh and Milan?


Dilan hit bad man with big stick....



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[white mountain armoury]

The rules are odd, I have a by my hand partisan/boar spear with lugs on a 6 ft shaft.
It was bounced at pennsic, my laminated 6 ft pole was passed with no issue, its far less friendly.