Why would anyone use a one handed axe? They are shit!

Bearded axes.
They were used to latch onto shields and other weapons and pull them away. Plus in addition to this benefit they required less metal working, and if it breaks you can just remove the head and make a new shaft for it.

Basically, they were a cheap anti-shield tool that could be replaced easily enough

Came here to say this.

Why not use a warpick then?

And what sources do we have that support this anti shield weapon claim?

The matrix beard.jpg

Not the same guy, but I can tell you anyway.
Source: common sense

Those are sugar picks. They're used to chop up sugar cones.

Wow that's very believable. How come chronicles from viking age (and vikings supposedly were pretty big on axes) don't mention anything like it? How come they did mention swords and spears but nothing about axes hooking shields?

Fine, be a faggot then
From the Þorskfirðinga saga (ch. 10):
"Askmaður skopar um hið ytra og vildi krækja af honum skjöldinn."
"Askmaður ran around him and wanted to hook his shield off him."

>a fucking saga

wow remember sagas that mention seiðr? I bet that's historically accurate too.

They could carry momentum with a cutting and piercing edge.

Don't you get bored posting this same fucking shit thread day in, day out?

An axe that's useful as a tool is terrible as a battlefield weapon and vice versa.

The PDF is a scholarly article talking about axes being prominent in the Viking era.

Feel free to look up the references and read those:
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeggöx

You can also get a hand on this:
gutenberg.us/articles/skeggöx

Take this one how you will:
community.worldheritage.org/articles/Long-bearded_axe

And, while not as viable as the above, it still shows the possibility of such an application:
youtube.com/watch?v=szG4-9QSpyA

Here are some more books talking about tactics and the vikings and axes:
The Viking Art of War by P Griffith (Greenhill Books, 1995)

Viking Weapons and Warfare by JK Siddom (Tempus, 2000)

Generally sagas try to explain what they don't know at the time with mythology. Generally they have a basis in fact for the tale. Remember Troy was also meant to be a myth until Heinrich Schliemann got to work.

Warpicks were used in order to pierce the armor of knights. They came with the drawback that they could get stuck.

Stop making this fucking thread. We don't care if your family was murdered by axes or if your abusive ex-husband axe has been beating you. Go to therapy, date a zweihander, eat some ice cream, just stop making this retarded thread over and over again.

You got it in one user. The big benefit of axes over swords was that you could make the haft out of wood and save on metal and time.

I applaud the both of you, you gentlemen scholars.

Every. Day.

this could be applied to all /k/-bait threads
I realise they're somewhat on-topic, and in theory could be informative or inspiring, but in practise they amount to
>swords are shit-tier
>no they're not!
>spears are shit-tier
>no they're not!
>brigandine is shit-tier
>no it's not!
>bascinets are shit-tier
>no they're not!
etc.

/thread

>not as long as a polearm
well neither is a sword or warhammer dumbass
>less versatile than a sword
What? swords where built with specific roles. Slashing swords which could do fuck all vs armour and stabbing swords which could pierce armour but lacked the reach other weapons. An axe can cut through armour (Not plate, but very little gets through that) and flesh without overspecialisation.
>can't deal with armour as well as a mace or warhammer.
Unless your fighting knights or men-at-arms your axe can deal with whatever armour the poor fucker in front of you is wearing. If your fighting knights or men-at-arms your already fucked. Axes can also have a reach advantage over maces since it can still do damage with a lighter head than mace so can be balanced with a longer shaft.

Battleaxes were cheaper.
Just a tiny inch of metal vs. two and a half fucking feet of steel.

Yes clearly swords were either curved or had needle like blades and there were no swords meant for both cutting and thrusting.

>less versatile than a sword
an axe is a compromise between the anti-peasant power of the sword and the anti-armour power of the mace
a sword will do fuck all against most armour, an axe will probably at least dent it and apply a lot of shock
it's also much easier to use than a sword, and easier to make too

Point taken, but still it would be harder to stab the weak spot of and angry man trying to kill with that over a specialised stabbing sword.
Another point in favour of axes, far less metal needed for an axe than sword like that one

You post this shit every weekend, quit it already.

Simple. An axe is both a tool and a weapon. You can chop wood and enemy heads just as easily. Also with greater mass at the end it defeats chainmail better then a sword. Not as good as a mace, but if you are a peasant on foot in the 5th to 13th centuries, axes are nearly king of the on foot battlefield. Once plates start to appear on the body, not quite as good. Better to switch out to a mace or a warhammer.

Then there is the fact that carrying a axe is so much cheaper then a sword and doesn't require as much maintenance. People have been lazy and cheap all throughout time.

>1rth

>hand axes are useless against armor!
>posts one of the kinds of hand axes specifically used to Pierce armor and puncture organs

The other side would be great against anything unguarded, and would cut through light armor like leather or furs very easily.

How many fucking times does this have to be denounced?
>You can chop wood and enemy heads just as easily
Battleaxes do not chop wood.
Wood hatches do not chop people. (Unless you're a rioting peasant with literally no other weapon.)

>People have been lazy and cheap all throughout time.

Which is why they don't read the fucking thread

Is this one of those bait posts I've heard about?

One handed axes were used when people only had one hand available for a weapon, such as people using shields with their other hand, riding a horse, that sort of thing.

You talk about versatility of a sword, but then immediately talk about maces and war hammers as if a sword isn't equally inferior against armour. An axe has more weight to it which can come in handy in certain instances. Also it can hook things and is easier and cheaper to make than a sword.

>>can't deal with armor as well as a mace or warhammer
explain how the axe you posted is less effective against armour.

that's like saying a sword cant stab and slash, there are swords for slashing
there are swords for stabbing
and there are some that can do both (but not as well)
its the same with axes, there are axes that can be used as a tool and a weapon, and in certain environments you NEED an axe to survive

Do you have literally any idea what you're talking about.

Because I think you don't

99% of woodcutter axes would not fly on the battlefield and 99% of battleaxes would not fly in the forest.
The small 1% of overlap is completely fucking miniscule.
If a soldier was using their battleaxe on a tree, there's a huge fucking chance they're just going to snap it because it's too small and light to hack lumber.
If a lumberjack is using their hatchet on a person, it's huge and heavy and dull and probably not much better than a particularly oblong mace.

that's not exactly true as some axes were designed to be all-purpose
examples:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd's_axe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(axe)

fuckin ents man

Why did anyone ever use melee weapons when guns are so much better?

Axes are not for slashing. They are for hacking

>stone age barbarian equipment and slightly modified stone age barbarian equipment

that's kind of what all axes boild down to

But OP only cares about the brief 300 year period between 1400 and 1700 when full plate was prosperous.

I fucking hate these threads.

Have you considered that 99% of fighters in the middle ages were rather piss-poor and had to make-do with whatever shit they had at hand?

How come you assumed some shit was true when you obviously had no fucking idea what the truth was?

Didn't realize OP meant only battle axes (I know the pic is a battleaxe, but still).

But a typical working ax was an effective weapon. Most of the time, people would just grab their tree felling ax or hatchet and put a better edge on it. That's all you needed.

And what they had at hand was specialized battle axe? Pretty lucky for a bunch of poor dudes.

swords varied wildly in price

there are surviving historical documents of crappy swords being sold at auction for less than a day's wage for a longbowman

some documents also describe custom commissioned highly decorated swords selling for more money than a peasant longbowman would make in their lifetime.

Axes were easier to produce, peasants already knew how to use tools similar to axes, and they could hook onto enemies.

/thread

Yeah, and a very crappy sword might break on the slightest bump. Axes have the best bang for your buck, surpassed only by shit-on-a-stick like spears or halberds or all that

>Yeah, and a very crappy sword might break on the slightest bump.
if it wasn't bent or made like shit it wouldn't. Dinged up blades meant keeping it sharp was hard, but whatever.

>polearms
spears were not a sidearm like swords were so it isn't a good comparison.

Swords weren't exactly hard to produce, and most axes were shit for hooking. Look up some actual historical battleaxes please.

Nobody uses axes anymore.
They use guns nowadays.
Did nobody tell you, OP?
I guess e-tools are kinda axe-like though. But being down to your e-tool means your situation is pretty fucking dire.

>1rth century onwards every soldier had a sword as his sidearm

And here's your problem. When the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century CE (give or take) it left small feuding kingdoms in it's wake. Those tiny kingdoms couldn't afford to pay for large armies of professional soldiers so most of them used local levies armed with whatever they could get their hands on.

The one handed ax was fairly cheap to make and most households had at least one on hand. Get the local carpenter to assemble some wooden shields and you're good to go.

Later, people used the one handed ax to counter armor. Chain mail (redundant, I know), would deflect a sword cut but the ax had so much inertia that it would break bones regardless. Eventually, one handed axes were replaced by falchions and warhammers which basically did the same thing but the ax head persisted on various weapons because you could always get a lucky hit in on a weakpoint.

Hyperbole much? You are just an autistic millennial that doesn't realize your modern sensibilities meant dick all back then.

Pretty much what they mean nowadays as well... lol.

Axes were made to be both tool and weapon except in very rare circumstances that a person wanted a war-only axe. And those came much later in the history of axes. Learn your history kid.

Swords were more expensive in bulk. Axes also required next to no training.

>millennial

But a regular ax can be used as a weapon

this must be the 7th or 8th time saying this,

Because of that glorious thing known as a cutting Arc.

Swords require tons of practice to get the cutting arc correctly.

Axes by their sheer design love chopping things.

Swords in general were expensive. Unlike axes or spears, a sword was metal from the tip to the tang and metal was always expensive. I mean, first you needed to pay someone to dig up the ore and then for someone to refine it and then someone to turn it into something useful but I digress.

Swords were also used to parry blows so they needed to be very sturdy. More than a spear which tried to keep the enemy at bay and more than an ax that was shit for defense to begin with. Most swords are balanced at the hilt for thrusting so the cutting power of a sword was dependent on how well it kept it's edge. An ax mostly just focuses it's inertial over a thin line.

Yeah.

So they can also use shields

pff hahaha

This

>Heavier head allows easier breakage of bones for cut-resistant armor.
>Back side of axe can incorporate a spike or hammer for armored opponents.
>Axe head allows hooking for shields or limbs.
>More momentum may offer more cutting power.
>More momentum increases ability for blunt force trauma.
>Ability to be used with a shield counters range disadvantage by allowing user to close distance easier.
>Can still thrust; spike can be added to end of shaft or blade can be lengthened at point to provide stabby parts.

Leaf sword is superior to all.

THEY
WEREN'T
POOR
Im so tired of this being posted here 10,000 times a day. Sure at some points peasant militias were used but for a majority of places and times in the middle ages the fighting was done by well equipped professional soldiers or mercenaries. They did not make-do only VERY rarely would even the lowliest common soldiery have to improvise of "make-do". Read a book before you post you rube.

oh shit, you're right
let's go find all those poor misguided people who are still using battle axes on today's medieval battlefields! think of the lives we could save with this knowledge!
oh wait, shit, I forgot it's 2016 and this thread is retarded and you're retarded for making it

On your first point you are correct, I would however argue with the second: A felling axe needs to be sharp, very sharp. when you swing it several thousand times a day it is well worth the few minutes work to get it to a razor edge,since this will save you hours over the course of the day, and years of work over the course of a career, not to mention wasting less material and making neater cuts. When I touch up my trail clearing axe I sharpen it until I can shave my arm hair.

Axes are the only one handed weapon that get impact, that's two D10 rolls and pick best one for damage which is OP as fuck.

Please give references. I do want to read.

But swords are shit tier unless you want to compensate for your lack of equipment down there.

Why was sharpened entrenching tools so useful during ww1? It sure as hell wasn't meant to hit people in the neck with, but people still did it a lot.

Armor has been abandoned since the 1700s so melee weapons are back to being king in CQC. Bayonets suck.
And CQC was big in WWI due to mucky yucky trench warfare.

Because axes are more lethal than anything else one-handed with both blade for pain shock and bloos loss and high momentum for stopping power and concussion. If you want something dead right fucking now but not about to discard a shiled for two-handed weapon, axe is what you need.

More demanding on blade alignement -> higher chance it would bounce off enemy armor or shield

Because they weren't issued proper weapons for the ranges that they were fighting at. Just prior to WW1 the nations involved thought that having a rifle that could hit someone a kilometer away was the important thing, because they thought the war was going to be a bunch of rifleman standing around in the open shooting each other. In that scenario being able to shoot and kill the other guy from further away was all that mattered.

It took the higher-ups who decided what equipment was issued months, if not years, to realize that most infantry combat wasn't happening at anywhere near that range. Instead, troops were forced into close quarters by trenches and other fortifications but were stuck with rifles that were way too long and had an awful rate of fire because they were all bolt action. During those months, soldiers had to improvise or die, and often the best thing they had on hand at the time was their shovel, because that is what they were issued. Others scrounged spiked clubs, knives, brass knuckles, and sometimes combinations of several of those.

Don't forget that the before the war brass thought that in melee combat the winner would be determined by whose rifle+bayonet combo was longest and thus the bayonets issued to the troops were completely useless in trench conditions.

Because remember WW1 was a shock to pretty much everyone. Prior everyone stood in formations and had pitched battles. WW1 technology advanced so far so fast it threw everyone off. There are diary's and reports of whole German units of 500 or so just marching down the road like it was nothing then getting absolutely wrecked by machine gun emplacements in the opening moments of war.

Generals didn't know how to respond so they fortified and then fortified more and more and more and then suddenly everyone was in trenches with a no mans land in between. Everything offers learned up to that point were useless. Everything had to be restructured from military planing to organization to equipment and everything in between. They had to learn how to fight a brand new type of war.

Because of machine gun emplacements when attacking the men had to get into the other sides trench ASAP there was no time to stop and shoot. If you did you got mowed down by an emplacement or shot by a defender. Then once the men were in the enemy trench they found their rifles were damn near useless. You were likely surrounded and shoulder to shoulder with who ever else made it with you. So the men used what was available to them that was feasible their shovels. Later on things like trench knives came around. Then with the advent of the tank trenches as they were used were more or less obsolete and war evolved again into what we now think of is war.

The worst thing is that they could had figured all of that out from from Russo-Japanese war and earlier colonial conflicts that had shown that the machine guns make short work of people standing out in the open but no, the idiots in charge failed to learn that.

>They weren't issued the correct weapons
Exactly. An axe might not be the best weapon on the field of battle, but sometimes that's al you have. Also people used to chopping wood all day were more familiar with it.

Depends on the axe just like it depends on any other hand weapon. That said, I don't think many people actually used one-handed axes as primary weapons. The only things that come to mind are boarding axes and tomahawks, both of which are primarily tools that have historically been used as weapons. There's definitely an argument to be made for the fact that axes tend to be pretty cheap to manufacture, and likewise some of them were probably pretty useful for hooking shields, snagging clothes, or binding weapons, but generally speaking I think they fall into the category of "emergency weapons," used by people who had them on hand. This doesn't apply to ALL work axes, a modern hatchet or woodcutting axe is generally a pretty shitty weapon (too heavy, unbalanced, broad headed), and likewise there were probably a lot of ceremonial one-handed axes, but most waraxes seemed to be two-handed for good reason.

>Bayonets suck
Why? I would think that a bayonet would be a lot more useful than a sharpened entrenching tool.

Well of course they could have but back then military tradition was ingrained and beaten into new officers. It was close to a religion. There was a right and proper way to do everything. Thankfully modern military academies teach officers that improvisation is a valued skill and officers should always try to find the best solution rather than to depend on the old. Soon though that wont even mater. War has changed to the point that the only way to win is to not play at all.

WW1 era bayonets were just too fucking long to be useful in cramped trench conditions.

WWI bayonets were stupidly long
WWI rifles were also stupidly long
it was like trying to manage a polearm in a hallway

It literally was manuvering a polearm in a corridor, the British method of using a bayonet evolved from the way they fought with a quarterstaff or English bill.

Niggas were basically taping swords to the end of their long rifles

Colonial conflicts weren't seen as something from which you learn lessons about fighting other European powers. They were mostly fought against non-whites, who were considered inferior and thus not a proper analog for a white nation. They figured that dark skinned people died in droves because they were incompetent and disorganized savages, not because the Europeans had a firepower advantage. Look at pretty much any depiction of colonial conflicts in European art from that era, and they will always emphasize the superiority of European PEOPLE rather than European firepower. They figured that they were winning because they were just better, and that if it came to a war between European powers, they certainly wouldn't be getting gunned down in droves like those dark skinned savages, no sir.

>Because remember WW1 was a shock to pretty much everyone.

There's a german two-book +3000 page report written well before the outbreak of WW1 that basically said "we all gun die if we don't dig in" and backed up why the "run and stab"-tactic favoured by the brass didn't work given semi-recent advances in arms technology, with statistics, test reports and diagrams.

The brass didn't care.

Shit is there a link or a name? I want to read that. I always enjoy reading stuff from people who were labeled as crazy or wrong when it turned out they were right all along.