Best woods for long spear training.

[JonathanArthur]

This has been discussed before I know, but I've failed to find the related thread. Could anyone on the board offer any advice as to what particular kinds of wood would be best suited to making a spear. Bearing in mind that I live in western Europe and would like to harvest the wood myself. Also, would any preparation be required before use, such as treating or drying? Any advice from experience would be appreciated.

TIA

[Pandrews1982]

I make 9ft spears using locally sourced english oak bought straight from the saw mill. Its difficult to find someone with a lathe or milling machine big enough to turn the haft round or its too expensive, so i use a drawknife to carve the spear by hand, you can do this easily when the wood is still green (not dried yet) but it can warp or crack as the wood dries, cracking not so much an issue with oak (stays internally strong even when cracked on surface) but with ash and others can lead to flaking and damage. I have air dried my oak for six months (or more) in my roof space at home, you can get timber kiln dried from a timber yard or saw mill. Makes it harder to carve but less chance of cracking or warping.

It is time consuming and don't expect to get a perfect round haft when carving by hand, you might mess up the first couple of times but you get used to it quickly. I would suggest using a shave-horse to hold the wood while carving but I have got away without one and tend to just lean one end of the wood over a bench or something.

I finish the spear by hand with glass paper, using a sander can be tricky and take too much off the surface.

Don't treat the wood until you're done shaping and then give it some oil, you can either soak it in a trough if you have one big enough or use a rag to rub oil into the wood, let it dry and repeat a few times to get best results. I use either teak oil, linseed oil or natural mineral oil, they all have simiar results.

If you are to harvest the timber yourself the best bet would be ash, as immature ash trees grow very straight you can cut a whole sapling, cut the ends, peel the bark and you need little shaping.

I prefer oak as it is rigid but has internal springiness/damping of impact allowing you to make thick, long, robust spears in a traditional battlefield style. I researched spears of variety of cultures at the UK Royal Armouries which happens to be in the city i work in, and found predominately all the spears are hardwood and are thicker and more rigid than those commonly seen in martial arts suppiers or in demo videos. My spears tend to be 40-50mm diameter. I also shape spearheads from wood and fit them into the haft with a wooden tang section.

I'd post a photo but i'm not sure how to and at work right now, if I have time I'll have a go later or maybe ask Graham to post a photo for me if hes got one with a spear I made in it.

[JonathanArthur]

Thank you for the detailed response. It certainly seems like a project. Really was looking for something more immediate; but I assume the Ash sapling would also need to be dried out over a six month period or more?

When you say you make 9ft spears, is this a business for you or for personal use?

Thanks for your time.

jon

[nicklas]

What do you think about Spruce? We have loads of theme here in sweden =) and they where commonly used for fences (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4rdsg%C3%A5rd)
I think am going to get one this week end and try to make it to a DaQiang see what happens...

[Pandrews1982]

That's me with a spear I made, I'm about 5'7''/8", difficult to see the spear clearly as the photo is my facebook profile pic so its not great and I don't ahve any others online this pic is about 2 years old. You can kind of see the size of it but the detail on the tip is not clear. i'd have liked to make the spears longer but 9ft just fits in my car if i drop the back seat down and point the tip into the passenger foot well so any bigger and i wouldn't be able to transport it.

I make them mainly for the guys I train with and myself, I make them in my spare time as a hobby (just finishing off one at the moment), i'm starting to try to make jian too and I've had a lot fo success making Xing Yi Ci (needles) with a bench lathe, but it takes too much time and effort for me to really be able to offer this stuff for sale and i wouldn't know where to start with trying to ship one.

The spears i make are big, heavy, robust and very dangerous. despite being wooden tipped it would easily go through someone with a decent thrust (I stuck one about 3 inches into a tree once) and I wouldn't want to think abnout the damage a shot to the head would cause. So we don't do any competive training with them and very restrained applicaiton training, even with pads or helmets the weight of these things would still be enough to seriously hurt someone. For applicaiton training we use slightly shorter and lighter poles which are still dangerous but much safer than the big guys.

You don't have to wait 6 months for the wood to dry out, you can buy ready dried timber. If you're just looking to make one spear it would be pretty cheap. If I were to buy a single plank for one/two spears i think it woud cost me at most £20-30 UK sterling for the material. You'd need a drawknife to carve it, which you can get for about £20-30 online, frosts drawknives are nice but i use a vintage robert sorby which i got from ebay and restored and resharpened. You'd need a sharpening stone as you will need to sharpen the knife regularly. And if you have to cut your wood down to size or want to make a separate tip a decent fine-tooth saw would be good, I got a standard japanese type pull saw for £25 UK and it does the job fine. If you're doing it yourself then I'd say costs of material and tools would come to around £100 UK and then your time and effort on top.

Takes me about 3 hours to cut and carve the spear head (I make them as separate pieces but you could just carve the end of the haft or whatever) and now I can carve the haft in about 8 hours but I don't work non-stop i usually take about a month or two to make one spear. My first spear took me in total hours about 20 hours to make, i was learning as I went along.

Don't know of anyone who makes them for sale which is why i started making them myself. Raven Studios http://www.little-raven.com do good wooden weapons, they are based in the USA but i think they limit the length of long weapons due to shipping costs and restrictions. We have bought jian from them in the past and custom wooden swords too, they are quite pricey once you factor in shipping and duty to the UK but the quality is very nice.

I think spruce would be okay, probably not quite as heavy or strong as a deciduous hardwood but spruce is fairly strong. Spruce needs to me maintained regularly, its quite suspectible to pest infection and rot so you'd need to oil it regularly or it will deteriorate, especially if you train outdoors in all weathers or want to hit them together. Also if you're going to try to carve it into shape note that spruce produce resin so if you work it "green" (straight after cutting) you could end up with sticky gunked up tools.

This video is making a quaterstaff but the process is essentially the same - except these guys use a shave horse to hold the wood in place.

[Teazer]

anyone tried these out? $55 sounds a bargain.
http://www.amazon.com/Boar-Spear-Ash-Wood-Handle/dp/B0017XGC06

[JonathanArthur]

Many thanks again. Will look for an Ash sapling I think.

[Frazetta]

anyone tried these out? $55 sounds a bargain.
http://www.amazon.com/Boar-Spear-Ash-Wood-Handle/dp/B0017XGC06

Only on people...when they weren't looking.

On a serious note, I'm looking to find a good source for heavy and thick 9-10 foot waxwood poles at a reasonable price. I'm looking for more of a chen taiji long training staff, not one of those flimsy wushu poles.
Also, is there any other wood grown in the states that might be comparable in flexibility and weight? Thanks.

[nicklas]

Went to the countryside this weekend and tried to make a big spear from spruce... (or well... im no expert i think it is spruce =)
Here is a picture series from my adventure:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1 ... 3241185804

Its not ready by far but after a day i got the shape, some how, right and i think the next stage is to use sandpaper to take away the visible marks from the plane and try to get it as round as possible. Then im going to oil it so it will, hopefully, keep for a while.

I have two problems though... after a day, in pretty hot weather, it cracked alitle... i wounder if the wood wasn't dried enough when i started working on it?
I had to cut it down to 3m to make it fit in my car and now it's to light to give me a real work out... i wonder if spruce is lighter then waxwood?

[Teazer]

According to this, spruce is very light. I don't know what the density of wax wood is though. That also seemed really light to me!
http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_wood.htm

I think soft woods like spruce are meant to be more prone to cracking than hard woods. Drying it very slowly would help a bit. If you only went this weekend, it's probably not dried at all, unless it had been cut or fell some time before. Sealing the ends can help too, since the moisture can then only leave via the bark. Using the center of the tree (or in your case the whole thing) tends to get more splits than using a pole cut from nearer the bark layer of a larger tree. You can try soaking it in polyethylene glycol (PEG) to replace the water.
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=686

Edit: p.s. don't use anti-freeze instead of PEG. Different stuff!

[nicklas]

Ah crap =) that it's so ligth... As I said, it was just an experiment to see if it would work because its so easy to get my hands on one of those. (and they are free as long its just for fun, because i know the farmers there) I have no idea when the wood i used was cut but if i would guess it had been drying for about 6 month...

Another thing that i didnt like with it is that its not springy at all... i mean it shouldn't be soft but it should give you feedback and some force in return to work with when you swing the big thing.

Well i try to seal the ends and then oil it real good... soaking it will be to much of an effort...

In the In the end i maybe just hang it on the wall in the training hall... at least its a good adventure and hopefully i learn something from it =)

[Teazer]

If you want more of a workout, just hold it at the narrow end!