The Armour Archive

Today at South Downs fighter practice, Duke Orlando showed up with some spears. They made me do a double-take because they looked like the shafts were made of some hardwood. In fact, they were fiberglass with wood-pattern contact paper. Nice, verisimilitudinous touch.

I've done that, it looks good for a while.

Saw someone who had done that to the poles in his merchant tent quite a while back.. someone in the booth asked the guy what kind of wood his tent poles were and he replied "Not wood". The other guy says "Knot wood? I've never heard of that".

Hehe

We tried the contact paper thing on the spears of an all spear unit that Jeff Hedgecock started long ago in San Diego.

Looks pretty good till the edges of your gauntlets chew up the contact paper and leave ya with a messy, sticky reidue.

Course there may have been amazing leaps in contact paper science since then...

This stuff flecks off pretty readily.

"Great minds think alike"

Nope you guys are right, looks great for the first 5 usages... than flakes off like a sumbitch...

JP

I used to do mine up with brown duct tape and silver tips. That meant it looked like almost every other one out there, and after the second one was stolen (at least one deliberately, bot by accident), I took to taping them in bright, unique patterns. Current one is green and orange spiral with a blue tip.

Someone told me long ago that the fiberglass spear blanks were manufactured in just about any colour you could ever want.

Anyone ever seen brown ones? Seems like an oddly obvious thing to sell.

Mal -

It's true, the color is from whatever dye you request to be added. Now sometimes that means extra costs if the extruder has to special order that color. Hard to believe that brown would be a unusual color though. As far as I know there's no plus or minus to performance for what ever color you chose.

Roderick

The poles should be painted or taped to protect the material from UV, to extend the life of the weapon.

I seem to remember that it was required that the pultruded extruded fiberglass shafts be covered to protect them from UV degradation per the manufacturers instruction. However when it was found out what we did with them that mandate was laughed at by the manufacturer. Seems that the UV degradation he was concerned with took place over twenty years and was a concern when the tubing was used in a building. Anybodyelse get this story?

Captain Jamie

Oh yeah. How about using clear duct over the woodgrain contact paper?

Either clear duct tape, or maybe a good stout coating of varnish? Might be cool to have that 'wood' finish if we can find a way to make it last. However, I'm just sort of shooting from the hip on that one as I'm not sure if clear varnish would add any to the stiffness of the spear shaft, or even last long enough to be worth the trouble to put it on.

Quite frankly, I'm looking for a way to cover some of the spear shafts I've got because they are this UGLEE-@$$ baby-puke green. And my unit marks our spears by striping them blue & white anyway (in case you were looking for us. )

Anybody got a source for blue spear shafts?

Spraypaint guys. Looks fine for quite a while and after server touchup coats it lasts even longer.

I seem to remember that it was required that the pultruded extruded fiberglass shafts be covered to protect them from UV degradation per the manufacturers instruction. However when it was found out what we did with them that mandate was laughed at by the manufacturer. Seems that the UV degradation he was concerned with took place over twenty years and was a concern when the tubing was used in a building.

I had not heard this, but it depends on what the original application is. Degradation to failure in a building might be a lot longer than we would worry about, but we do need to worry about very minute failure modes, seeing as how we have a risk of serious injury if the tube fails.

Captain Jamie wrote:I seem to remember that it was required that the pultruded extruded fiberglass shafts be covered to protect them from UV degradation per the manufacturers instruction. However when it was found out what we did with them that mandate was laughed at by the manufacturer. Seems that the UV degradation he was concerned with took place over twenty years and was a concern when the tubing was used in a building. Anybodyelse get this story?

Captain Jamie

Oh yeah. How about using clear duct over the woodgrain contact paper?

I do know that an untaped or unpainted pultruded spear can degrade when left outdoors. I can't say how long it took, but I left one of my painted spears behind my house for about 7 months and it cracked everywhere the paint was missing. I now wrap mine in brown (or black when I run out of brown) ducktape.

How about using spray epoxy paint ? Should be a little more resistant to chipping.