Arms and Armor thread

I'm trying to imagine the first time someone with a sword decided to fight someone with this.

I would imagine you run slits halfway up two bars,
interlock the bars at the slits,
then weld.

been fascinated by these since i first played mortal kombat 3

Can you get me a reference for this?
I really want to use it in BON and IMCF

Quickly phased out of use in the timeline due to being a shitty, expensive and inefficient design. Most extant examples have a pronounced curve or bend due to the crappy geometry.

As says, forge welding. Nothing as fancy and interlocking joins though.

Just like fighting a man with any mace.

Maciejowski bible, but don't bother. To meet with IMC/ACL weight rules, its even more useless, expensive and fragile than it was in real life. You are better off just using a traditional mace or axe. Pic related, my ACL mace.

Which nation/local team do you fight?

Gropey, mind stepping into this () thread?

Done.

How does this weapon even work? You can't really cut things with the axe end.

It's a large weaponized shovel. Use your imagination.

Meteor hammer.

I love african meme weapons.

benin :DDDD

From NZ, Steel thorns we call ourselves

I mainly use a falchion and punch shield, we use ball maces a lot.
I was thinking of using it as a lever for grappling more than anything.

Picture of me and my team. (genuinely not sure which one I am)

The actual answer is "proper equipment". Welding isn't necessary.

>genuinely not sure which one I am
Consult a the rapist.

Hot damn. I mostly run flanged mace and punch shield, or polearm myself. I don't recognize the colors. I wanna say maybe an Aussie team?

>I was thinking of using it as a lever for grappling more than anything.
Still a waste with all of our diameter and weight regs. If you just want a lever-stick, go with a sheathed maced, AKA: Smash-stick. Pic related.

No, the proper answer is forge welding. All of extant ones are flanges that have been forge welded together.

We have those, we call them dildo maces.
The bar mace is pretty tho, might make one for myself.
NZ team, captain is a blacksmith and we are contracted to fight for him in exchange for armour. Its why we are all matchy matchy

>Weapons you want to use in games edition.
I somewhat often make a character solely based around some obscure weapon or armor piece I want to use.

>NZ
Ah, so not convicts. My apologies.

>dildo maces
Funny, thats what we call ball-headed maces.

>The bar mace is pretty tho, might make one for myself
Well, whatever floats your boat. I would suggest you make yourself a historically accurate one though. It would be a shame to waste the work on something that just doesn't work under our rules.

You hoping to fight international this year?

Wasn't going to use the bar mace for combat, as you said too fragile. Think it just looks pretty.

I was hoping to but its just not a reality for a poor student whose missus is currently in hospital. Would of been a good year to go, Denmark or Spain(purely because of the arena) would of been fun. One of the downsides of being down under down under is the travel cost.

>Travel costs

I know that pain. Educator salaries here in the US are not exactly good.

Hope your lady recovers quickly.

Thank you, If I ever got to an international tournament ill be the one shouting PEPE with visible autism.

I will be the one with the Veeky Forums arms on my belt as a favour, which in itself is visible autism.

I've been realizing lately how sexy stilettos are. Pity they'd be of little use in a campaign, unless I'm finishing off a lot of armored guys, or being a sneaky stabby type.

Hope We can violently hug at some point fellow fa/tg/uy

Hnnnng!

Best sword.

I hope so, but of course, I will try my best to be the best violent hugger, as you should too.

BotN: Its a cuddle party with weapons.

Always training, putting a pell in my backyard was the best idea ive ever had.

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Don't care how unrealistic it is, two-handed maces get me rock hard.

3.pf has this, but like most of the other vanilla weapons it's horrible

You don't cut, you stab and disarm

Yuge maces were a thing. Not too common, but they did exist.

I would also go with the kanabo, then pic related.

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The one original of these is not welded - reproductions are.

the original has a lot of profile taper in the sections. my suspicion from having looked at in in detail is that it was drawn out as a square bar, then swaged with fullering tools on each face, so it went from [ ] to ) ( and from there, to a >< shape, and then on the second set of sides, to a X shape. the edges of each flange were then drawn out a little, tapering them in the process. those edges closer to the hilt were less pronounced in their tapering, which also helps with rigidity, before it transitions into a tanged bar around the hilt. a conventional pommel forging is peined to the end, and the opposite end was punch-cut back an inch, and the central stalk forgeworked into a finial with a few dozen strikes with just a bit of grinding - you can still see the remnants of the "X" in the very tip. (see pic)
(the other possibility being that the tip finial was a later addidtion, if one or more flange ends had been cracked off. )

Hard work, but pretty straightforward, especially with a team of two strikers, and a pair of dies,

>solution to all polearm vs. swords shitposting.jpg

Some old artwork from god knows where.

>Maciejowski bible

A bar mace? Do you remember where exactly? I can't recall seeing any, and it seems a tad early.

When it comes to weapons that seem to be wielded mostly be "martial artists" it's quite possible that it exists more to be exotic and attention-grabbing during exhibitions than to be useful in a fight.

Simple, brutal, effective. I love it.

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>visored barbutes
Unhistorical but GOAT

Can't go wrong with hammers.

Visored bascinets are totally a thing, user.

The english wore them for decades.

I think he's specifically referring to this type of visor.

>Visored bascinets are totally a thing, user.
I know, that's why I didn't say bascinet but barbute. The bascinet has a totally different shape of both the crown and the visor -- in the case of the crown, either very peaked or a rounded backward slope. Similarly the hounskull visor is totally characteristic and not at all what we see in the pic I replied to, as says.

Visored barbutes are still GOAT though.

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Pole weapons are my fetish

So not sure whether it is better to ask here or /k( /k is mostly modenr weapons isn't it?) but would any of you gents knwo where I can get a good halberd?

I wanted to make a Shinto Buddhist warrior Monk in 5e, but our campaign started before the release of the Kensei.

The GM and I had discussed fluffing a Glaive as a Naginata, but I ended up being quite happy with my quarterstaff and fists.

I wouldn't give this picture as an example, to be honest - it's from the Shahnama, and the guy wielding it wrestles demons and shit.

But I have seen some real examples, even that ox-head mace, on antique sites (not sure how big they were, though).

kultofathena.com/spears.asp

They've got a few halberds in there

It's used to keep animals away by jabbing at their throats.

The fuck? Is that fucking nyarlathotep on the right?

$4 for a 7 foot tall 4x4, and $2 for several meters of jute rope. Hours of fun!

There is sparce documentation for them, but they do have SOME record in art. I know there is at least one extant example, but its obviously a parade piece. Pic related.

That seems like an awful lot of work for such an inefficient design.

>A bar mace? Do you remember where exactly? I can't recall seeing any, and it seems a tad early.

Not personally. Someone posted a pic of it in a HMC/HMB/HCL documentation forum a while back as acceptable evidence for period existence. I could care less at the time, as its a shitty design and not my period.

he said Barbute, not Bascinet.

So you have a picture of this that isn't for ants? I bet you saved from pintrest. You gotta follow the link to the source.

>That seems like an awful lot of work for such an inefficient design.

as opposed to forge-welding two bars? which would have to be made by drawing out two long thin bars, then slotted which would requite first a slitting punch, constantly cooling the punch to avoid overheating it, then using files (which you'd have to make) to file the slot square. then having made the two slots in your two bars of steel, you'd have to get them together, and forgeweld the pair into each other, when the steels are not butting up against each other, === like that, but a T with no support, so the edges would deform?

and then having forgewelded it all together, having to then do all the hammer-work to taper them you'd have to if you just used swages to forge out the ) ( shapes, then the X, all of which would be done without all the extra risk of forgewelds which are asking to fail if you get a little inclusion?

No. Forging it is by FAR the more efficient production method when you dont have modern welding processes to apply to it.

You could braze it. but that would be clearly visible on the original. And of course, you could just make a haft and flanged mace with brazed flanges... which is more efficient. And guess which one survived and was used more in the 15th C? exactly.

>which would have to be made by drawing out two long thin bars

Far easier than fullering a solid square stock.

>then slotted which would requite first a slitting punch

Yes, than any good weaponsmith would have.

>constantly cooling the punch to avoid overheating it,

...Like any tool while hot working

>then using files (which you'd have to make) to file the slot square

Again, like a professional smith would have and be able to do easily.

>you'd have to get them together, and forgeweld the pair into each other, when the steels are not butting up against each other, === like that, but a T with no support, so the edges would deform?

You act like all four flanges would be done at once, or that the entire flange would be heated through.

>and then having forgewelded it all together, having to then do all the hammer-work to taper them

The pieces would already be tapered.

>you'd have to if you just used swages to forge out the ) ( shapes, then the X, all of which would be done without all the extra risk of forgewelds which are asking to fail if you get a little inclusion?
>No. Forging it is by FAR the more efficient production method when you dont have modern welding processes to apply to it.

You are over estimating the material availability and technological ability of the period of its production. Piecing together is much more material efficient before the mill hammer.

>And of course, you could just make a haft and flanged mace with brazed flanges... which is more efficient. And guess which one survived and was used more in the 15th C? exactly.

But what you're missing here is the bar mace is still a shitty design all the way around, and the design of the bar mace DOES NOT exist in the 15thC. Those are all smaller mace heads.

You're all over the place bro.

>Far easier than fullering a solid square stock.

Bullshit it is.

Draw out with two strikers, you've got far less cooling with a square section than a flat bar, it can be done much faster. fullering itself uses two swages, one in the anvil, one held by the first striker, the second doing the hits. Easy and direct to do.

>slitting punch
>Yes, than any good weaponsmith would have.

And which would require all the hammer-work be done, then start to forgeweld. This is the stuff where it becomes blatantly clear you've never done this sort of work, Gropey... This is not efficient. you're adding extra stages into the process that any competent smith would look at you with utter bewilderment for. You're adding vastly more hassle to the process.

>Again, like a professional smith would have
and would never willingly use for something as wasteful a process, when a file is a valuable steel tool

>You act like all four flanges would be done at once, or that the entire flange would be heated through.
How many times have you forge-welded a shear steel?

I suspect I can rest my case when the answer is "never". to forgeweld like that you need it at the most extreme temperatures the steel can take, clean as hell, because any inclusion is a failure which will come back and bite you on the arse. trying to weld two bars, in a + shape, you would need to fuse each part to its opposite side, or you're simply going to break the weld when you turn it over. and even if you could....

>The pieces would already be tapered.
BULLSHIT.

one section '---' onto the other section: '|' : ---| like that. how does that get welded?
Pressure , down along the bar. ---|
what happens, on a plastic, soft steel bar when you hammer it with pressure to forgeweld? it bends. your flange ends up warped and bent, like: ∽|
or, it splays out. hammering onto a tapering section on the narrow end is never going to work. if you do, you're going to have to rework the entire thing.

I know that's Rostam, but his weapons aren't particularily oversized, user. The Persians and the Chinese both did use a few really large maces for real. They weren't common in comparison to regular one-handed ones, but they did exist.

Pic only tangentially related.

You are trying, you really are, but we still have one thing that in your attempts to correct me, you prove your misunderstanding of the technological and metallurgical capabilities of the period.

Inefficient? By modern practice, yes. Yes it is. You are also failing to comprehend the limitations of a 12thC-13thC forge.

Have a nice day.

>You are over estimating the material availability and technological ability of the period of its production. Piecing together is much more material efficient before the mill hammer.

Piecing together, one flat surface against another flat surface? yes.

But this is not a flat surface. these are two series of flanges perpendicular to each other, forming a narrow corner weld. That is HELL to do under the hammer, for a short length, to do it for the full length of the mace would be utter madness, where you need to fuse 4 flanges into each other without it failing miserably.

And lets ignore the fact that it could easily be done with two strikers and a master controlling the swage, or one master controlling the feed, and a single striker, while another holds the swages - are you trying to say they didnt have power hammers?

When did you have that reenactment trepanning?

we've got accounts of them in use in France in 1116. probably 250 years before that mace was made.

>But what you're missing here is the bar mace is still a shitty design all the way around, and the design of the bar mace DOES NOT exist in the 15thC. Those are all smaller mace heads.

Yes. That's what I said.
>"you could just make a haft and flanged mace with brazed flanges which is more efficient. And guess which one survived and was used more in the 15th C?"

i.e: You could just make a normal flanged mace. its more efficient. And that's why you dont see bar maces in the 15th C. because they stopped making them, because brazing flanges to a haft is more efficient.

Do I need to do you a drawing in crayon here?

>That seems like an awful lot of work for such an inefficient design.

The tools were already in use to make other weapons, mainly spears, I think.

>Special swage blocks on a triphammer for a such an uncommon piece

Nigga, you a dumb.

>Powered hammers are mentioned
>That makes them common

Gropey, you're the one who's completely failing to understand the inefficiencies of forge-welding for this sort of work.

You have absolutely no understanding of the technical problems you would face trying to forge weld two sections at right angles to each other.

you have not the slightest clue as to how many more times you're going to have to strike metal to forge out two bars, instead of one, then strike to slot, then do the hard and wasteful work to clean the slotting, then do the striking to try to forgeweld, then do all the striking to clean up the deformation on those bars the forgewelding would do. Then all the striking to put in the tapers,

in contrast, doing it right, you do a slightly longer amount of time striking to draw out once on a square bar, (but less time than doing two flat bars), then do less striking when you swage and fuller, and then you hammer in the tapers. And in theory, if I were to angle the swages right (ie, if I were making lots of these maces), the tapers could be put in in the final swaging pass, and eliminate that stage entirely.

that is half the workload per item. It eliminates the failure point of forgewelding. it takes a fraction of the time to make. it doesnt lose steel by having to do the fitting for forgewelding.
In every single stage, it is the more efficient, easier, cleaner, and tidier way to fabricate that shape.

And unlike you Gropey, I _am_ a smith. A fucking good one. Unlike you, I know that forgewelding it would be pants-on-head retarded. Unlike you, I've spent countless hours sweating in front of a forge, to make stuff in wrought, and in shear steel. and know how they did it.

I know you *think* you know it all, but at times, you're on the dizzying peaks of Mount Stupid and all too keen to talk about stuff you've never actually done.

And this is one of them.

What kind of premodern weapons would and would not work underwater?

I assume any weapon you'd have to swing are out of the question, so in melee you would be limited to thrusting weapons, first and foremost polearms like spears.

Blowguns (and bow and arrow?) would only be good for hunting. Are there any substitutes for rubber in making slings, Hawaiian polespears, or spearguns?

I can think of a dozen reasons for a slitting punch, not the least of which is small eye drawing and hilt work.

Im sorry, but I agree with Gropey here. You're assuming that a bar of square stock is worth wasting on a low class weapon. Welded or brazed, its a pieced together weapon.

Hey come on you do a google search you get a bunch of tiny pictures. Don't judge me that for whatever reason there isn't a larger version of that specific pic. I have a larger one, but it's a different design.

>>Special swage blocks on a triphammer for a such an uncommon piece

I'd clarify: I'm referring to two-piece dies, of the type commonly used for fullering, rather than what's more commonly called a swage block in modern terms, of the sort sold by Pexto or the likes nowadays.

two pieces of metal making a > < shape. - similar to these swage tools in the photo, only a positive V instead of a negative V shape:

if its powered, then you slot the first one over the anvil, second one is held from the side by the assistant, and the hammer strikes while the master holds the working steel, and feeds or flips90 degrees accordingly.

If its hand-forged, one goes on the hardy hole, the second is held by the first assistant, and the striker hits the top of it while the master controls the alignment.

swaging tools and fullering dies have been in use throughout the medieval period, I've handled original ones used for cutlery to make the bolster on blades. They knew the technique perfectly well.

also:
>for a such an uncommon piece

remember, if you're making these, you arent making one. the "lone blacksmith making one weapon at a time" is a myth. These were dedicated factories producing items by the batch. Perhaps it was just one or two such places who made these. but they were certainly not one-offs, any more than the rest of the italian arms industry.

Jamestown/Yorktown foundation. While i'll admit I never did anything as big, I did plenty of forge welding, mostly in hammer faces and axe blades.

I will stand by my point: this is a multipiece weapon, not a solid forge.

Tridents, spears, harpoons... Generally, thrusting weapons with barbs that ignore the greater part of resistance from the water.

If you have a suitably elastic fiber, you could make arguments for spearguns or a sling-spear.

But bar maces are uncommon. We have more documentation of flails than bar maces. They were not ever mass produced.

Wheel lock or flintlock?

I own both. Flintlock all day, every day. Simpler, tougher, and less finicky.

Pic related, my fav pistol. English Naval Short pattern.

1.
you assume its a low class weapon.

Most of the indications are that maces were a symbol of social status. there's no reason to assume this is anything less. particularly given its all-steel construction, a considerably more expensive material than the contemporary cast bronze mace-heads of Kiripichnikov Type IV / II with wooden hafts - a far cheaper construction process.
That evidence indicates these bar maces were status symbols.

2.
forgewelding is a really fucking *bad* way to do this. as in, its twice the amount of work, and adds a huge set of failure points - especially with medieval fluxing methods. They knew what they were doing - and that means doing it efficiently. drawing out a billet like that takes less wastage than making it from forgewelded parts - doing it like that involves a huge amount more surface area, and material loss from fire-scale for one thing, in the early shaping stages.
the only forge-welding you'd do would possibly be to assemble a block from a few smaller billets (and that's frankly unlikely by that date. if you're getting your steel from the italian sources, its in far big enough billets by the mid-14th C)

>faces

and that's the point I'm trying to make.
this isnt a face.

a face is a laminar - two layers flat-to-flat, maybe several if its a billet or if its a bit in between the lower carbon body of an axe.

what this is is not a face. its two pieces butted against each other, a T shape. that is the most difficult weld you could ever want to attempt in a forgeweld. Its easy to weld a right angle with a modern inert gas welder, forgewelding that is something entirely different as you can not apply the required force easily into the material without having plastic deformation, both in the piece at the normal, and the underlying material.

it is not, in ANY way, similar to attaching a flat face into an axe or the likes.

plus, I'm going to assume that you're welding steel flat face or bit to wrought. Wrought sticks like shit to a blanket. Steel to steel is far trickier.

> follow cock and drafts

eh?

While I will accept my lesser degree of knowledge in the concept of forgewelding large planes, I will still defend the pieced construction as a more practical construction method to the end product, by period standards of production.

Though I am most certainly with user about the class usage. I'll see about digging up the image, as it featured an infantryman with said bar mace in nothing but a simple casque helm and short gambeson, along side a mounted man in full maille with a type IX pyramidal mace (most likely cast bronze).

Follow the cock and swallow. Both noble birds are on the arms.

Were mitre great helms an actual thing?

Yes, but not metal. Paper mache, leather, wood etc.

>They were not ever mass produced.
depends on your definition of mass production because it seems like there were more than a few in Italy.

>From "European Weapons And Armour by Ewart Oakeshott".

"There is in the Odescalci Collection in Rome a most interesting mace of aberrant form, like a rather graceful club forged in steel with a little finial at its head shaped as a truncated cone reversed, and a small spherical button at the end of the narrow, shaped grip, illustrated in figure 13. This is a rare example of such a mace, though several are to be seen in Italian paintings of the fourteenth century-notably a fresco by Giotto in the Cappella della Scrovegni, Padua (c. 1303-1305), and a predella by Giovanni di Bartolomeo Christiani (c. 1367-1393) in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. It seems to have been a type of weapon confined to Italy, used probably only during the fourteenth century, since no representations of it exist later than Christiani's predella."

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This is up there with fermented foods on 'what the fuck were they thinking' ideas that somehow worked.

that or or its a rare example of the phrase "hold my wine, watch this" that didnt go horribly wrong.

I get what you're saying, but fermenting foods into alcohol wasn't really an invention. It was just something that happened to anything left in the open too long.

I was more referring to someone after ne glass of wine too many saying "look at this!" and sticking an arrow in a sling, and launching it.

in the same way that "hold my beer, look at this" is the common phrase just before some idiot does something spectacularly stupid today.