12-22-2010, 01:13 PM
Folks,
Happy Winter!
I'm finally getting my life back after a fall spent on budgets, performance evaluations, and 2011 planning...
I'm with John on one point: tapering a spear is easy, even starting from square stock. A nice sharp bench plane or spoke shave make short work of the task (I like the plane better as you can take a longer cut more readily). It's dead easy if you live in an ash forest, as most young ash trees were born to be spearshafts with a natural taper.
As to the question of whether they were tapered or not, I also agree with John, there is only so much you can get out of artistic interpretation, although I'm not sure I understand how coppicing could influence the taper of spear shafts.
That said, the perfectly straight dowel of today that often becomes a spearshaft is not a historical solution, and if you are making a shaft by hand with a spokeshave or plane, its actually easier to taper it than to make a perfect cylinder, all of which assumes that spears were made from baulks of timber as opposed to naturally tapered wood.
Enjoy,
Cole
Happy Winter!
I'm finally getting my life back after a fall spent on budgets, performance evaluations, and 2011 planning...
I'm with John on one point: tapering a spear is easy, even starting from square stock. A nice sharp bench plane or spoke shave make short work of the task (I like the plane better as you can take a longer cut more readily). It's dead easy if you live in an ash forest, as most young ash trees were born to be spearshafts with a natural taper.
As to the question of whether they were tapered or not, I also agree with John, there is only so much you can get out of artistic interpretation, although I'm not sure I understand how coppicing could influence the taper of spear shafts.
That said, the perfectly straight dowel of today that often becomes a spearshaft is not a historical solution, and if you are making a shaft by hand with a spokeshave or plane, its actually easier to taper it than to make a perfect cylinder, all of which assumes that spears were made from baulks of timber as opposed to naturally tapered wood.
Enjoy,
Cole
Cole
