Making a late 4th c. spatha from nothing

[Crispvs]

When I first started out in re-enactment twenty years ago, we were all students on small budgets and as an added problem we had no suppliers whatsoever for the kit we needed (I was in New Zealand). It was a case of making everything ourselves from whatever we could get hold of. Clothes were made from old blankets; shoes, belts and bags from hides which were so poor that the local leather factory had thrown them straight on the rubbish skip rather than use them; and weapons from pieces of scrap steel which were too small for the local light engineering firms to have any use for them other than to sell them off to the occasional hobbyist for peanuts. We taught ourselves from books to sew and stretch leather, to make tablet woven braids and (in my case) to carve bone.

The steel we used was generally 6mm thick and we cut our blades roughly to shape with an ordinary hacksaw and finished the shaping with a large file (which was very time consuming). We used an angle grinder (which was fun at first as we were still learning to use it) to grind the edges down to a 3mm edge. Spearheads were welded into pieces of steel pipe which acted as ferules by one member during holidays, while he worked at his uncle's garage. All our handles were made from wood and we did it all by hand.





We all had to start somewhere and that was how I started. Even then though, we knew that it was only the starting point and we steadily got better at making our own kit, gradually bringing it up to a far higher standard of accuracy, as well as seeking out people who could make blades and spearheads properly and developing a willingness to spend a little more in order to pay them for their work.
You are at the start of what I am sure will be a long, eventful and hopefully enjoyable journey in this hobby and I wish you every success in your endeavors.

Crispvs