SCA Rubber Spear Head Options

As one of the early proponents for spears in my SCA Kingdom (Atlantia), and the current Kingdom Rapier Marshal, I get asked a lot about what spear heads to use for rapier spear.  I decided to put all of the options I'm aware of together as a resource for other folks, along with what I know about them.  They come from a variety of places: my searching, items coming through the Spears in SCA Fencing Facebook group, people showing me spear heads, etc.

Do NOT take any entry on this list as any kind of official endorsement.  This page is put together by Private Citizen Percy, and not as any kind of official resource of the office of the Earl Marshal of Atlantia.

Just because an item is on this list does NOT mean the one you get will be legal.  Manufacturing of some of these replicas appear to be inconsistent, so do test them against SCA rules before mounting and using them on the field.

As a reminder, rubber spear heads must be between 4" and 20", must extend 4" past the haft, must have at least a 2" socket for the haft (which I think then means they have to be a minimum of 6" long), with the tip having at least a thickness of 1/4".  They must flex via hand pressure (who's hand pressure?) to 90 degrees and return to roughly their original shape within 3 seconds.  (Paraphrased from the SCA Fencing Marshal's Handbook - refer to it for the current rules.)

Item	Maker	SCA Legal	Comments
Partisan Head	Purpleheart Armory	Yes	I personally have one of these. It does pass the SCA flex test, but it's unwieldy as all get out on the end of 9 feet of rattan. Great for drills and learning control, because if you can hit properly with this you'll be able to control any other head on this list, most likely.
Spear Head	Purpleheart Armory	Yes	I have one of these, too. It does pass the SCA flex test. It's... stout. Be nice to your friends with this one.
Spear 4, Polymer Trainer	Purpleheart Armory	Unknown	I haven't seen one of these. I suspect it's too stiff, based on the product description.
Spear 1, Short, Helgi Polymer Trainer	Purpleheart Armory	Unknown	Haven't tried it. Reviews say very flexible, and the video looks like it has decent flex. Reports in spear FB group says it's good, but probably too flexible.
Sudanese Spear Head	Purpleheart Armory	No	Haven't tried it, but says in the description that it does not flex. Purpleheart has several others with similar descriptions, so I'm saving some space in this table by not listing them all.
Arcem winged spear head	Arcem	Yes	I own this spear head as well, and I think it's my personal favorite. It has a button head which means people notice being hit, but it flexes very well. My head looks like it's got a manufacturing defect, but it's held up so far. I just handled another one that's a little stiffer, but still fine. I got mine through an overseas vendor, but the one linked is a US supplier.
Arcem spear head mk 3	Arcem	No	I purchased this one too. It's too stiff, almost no bend at all.
Arcem pike/javelin head	Arcem	No	Another one I've bought. Again, too stiff, and really small.
Arcem spear head mk 4	Arcem	Unknown	The one Arcem product I haven't seen and also unavailble from US suppliers.
Cold Steel Spear head	Cold Steel	Varies	Ah, the original we all thought would be great. The original run was fine (and I have one and have seen lots of others), but a little floppy with a tendency to break at the socket if not seated properly. Any more recent manufacturing run has proven too stiff and will not pass. This was the cheapest option out there, so it's sad to see it not pass anymore. And no, there's no link for this one because it's easy to find.
Playwell spear head	Playwell	Yes	My KRM predecessor has one that passed when I saw it. Looks like it might fail closer to the tip rather than in the socket. I vaguely recall hearing that it may have gone the way of the Cold Steel with newer ones being stiffer, but that's anecdotal at best.
Fake Steel spear head	Fake Steel	Yes	I've seen one in person; someone in state has one. It looks a little cartoonish, but it hits solidly and safely.
Fake Steel pike head	Fake Steel	Probably	Same person who has the spear head recently purchased this, but I haven't seen it yet. I'd say it's probably good, but until I see it, i won't know for sure.
Cap-A-Pie 25mm Spear head	Cap-A-Pie	Unknown	The listed Shore hardness on this probably makes it a no. Also based on the picture, I'm not sure there's enough head after the socket to make it legal.
Cap-A-Pie 28mm Spear head	Cap-A-Pie	Unknown	Longer and bigger socket than the 25mm one, but probably with all the same issues.
Cap-A-Pie Javelin head	Cap-A-Pie	Unknown	No Shore hardness listed on this one, but it still has the same potential problem with not enough rubber above the socket.
Pikeman shop spear head	Pikeman	Unknown	Some comments from the Spears Facebook group mentioned that this head may be questionable, but it's an unknown for now.
Dark Victory Armory Spear head	Dark Victory Armory	Unknown	Short socket, very similar to the Purpleheart one (possibly about the same stiffness) according to FB comments.
Historica Spear trainer	Historica Clothiers	Unknown	Looks like the website is defunct. According to their Facebook page, they went offline last November. Not sure if it will come back, but leaving it here for historical purposes (hah, see what I did there)
Long spear head	Jolly Knight Armory	Unknown	Haven't seen this one in person either. The 5kg pressure listed in the description may be on the stiffer side, but I like the look of it.
Rogatina	Dominus Gladius	Probably	First saw this a few days ago. The Spears FB group says it's good, but might be too flexy. The manufacturer is in the group and very willing to answer questions as well as working with organizations to make acceptable products. They released a video on YouTube that shows the flex on many of their products.
Javelin	Dominus Gladius	Unknown	This looks very similar to the Arcem javelin or spear heads, but may be a slight bit larger. The flex in the video mentioned in the previous one looks borderline to me.

That's all I've come across for now. If you find another one, or have one of the above and know it either passes or doesn't, I'd love to hear from you so I can update this for everyone.

What I found in my pants

I'm actively working on a pair of pants after a breeches pattern in Mathew Gnagy's Modern Maker 2.  I got to a point where if I'm going to add trim, I need to do it before moving on, and decided it was time to actually do a little research.  We've had a copy of Jacob de Gheyn II's Exercise of Arms in large format print (the 1971 McGraw Hill facsimile reprint of a 1607 edition) since our first trip to England in 1998 (it was a damn lucky find), and while I'd like to admit that I've used it for research in the past, I would be lying.

Then I had a beautiful thought: I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of clothing in the manual, rather than its usual military function.  A quick web search later, and I was left with having to do it myself 😒.  117 plates (thanks wiktenauer, so I didn't have to tote the book around - although the scans seem to be from the Rijksmuseum) and one spreadsheet later and here we are.

For those unfamiliar with the Exercise of Arms, it is a Dutch military manual printed originally in 1607 (although there's evidence that the work was completed earlier) that contains 117 detailed and stunningly beautiful engravings of drill positions for the weapons of caliver, musket, and pike.  There are some likely duplicates, like plates 2 & 34 of the caliver, but I chose to count them all independently in the data.  Since my current rathole was trying to decide on decoration for pants, I only looked at that garment (some other poor soul can do doublets, hose, and other accoutrements later - oh who am I kidding, I'm that poor soul).  For classifying the pants, the only surviving 16th century tailor's pattern manuals I'm aware of that contain pants are Spanish, and are outlined in Modern Maker 2, so I've used that information for classifying except for the pants that are clearly none of those (i.e., trunkhose).

Fig 1 - Caliver Plate 36 scalloped detail

So what did I learn?  Only pikemen wear trunkhose.  No, I'm kidding (only kinda).  Of the 117 pairs of pants, the vast majority of them (85%) line up best with the standard breeches pattern from the Freyle manual (p. 144, MM2) - this is convenient, as that's the pattern I'm working up.  There are 7 examples of trunkhose (all pikemen), which have no exemplar in the period tailor's manual we own.  The rest are scattered amongst the other styles of breeches, but depending on one's eye, they could all be variants on the Freyle.

Fig 2 - Musket Plate 4 braid detail

For decoration, it's clear that some type of trim and button arrangement on the outside seam was very popular, with 57% of them having between 1 & 4 vertical stripes of trim and 79% having 3 or more buttons, sometimes all the way up the outside of the leg.  There are also a significant number of breeches with a scalloped edge (19), with buttons of course (see Fig 1), and of horizontal braids (18) with tassels (and you guessed it... buttons) (see Fig 2).  Only 5 garments have no decoration at all, and 24 have some form of decoration on the main body of the breeches such as horizontal, diagonal, or vertical stripes, sometimes in addition to the trim on the seam.

I'll bet you're wondering what I chose to do, aren't you?  Well, I'm going to go with this pattern you see in musket plate 15 (see Fig 3).  It shows up a couple times, but should be a fairly easy pattern for me, a novice, to spiff up a pair of breeches.  As to the data as a whole, this is a very narrow set of data to draw any conclusions from.  It's from a very narrow time period, which is nice, but it's really a single person's view of fashion and really only in the scope of working class military.  The variations you see in Exercise of Arms could also easily be small regional variations.  That being said, if you are a Dutch persona from the late 16th century, all of the decorations patterns would be viable for you.  Unless you're a pikemen, then just wear trunkhose 😉.

Fig 3 - Musket Plate 15 detail

Chemical Bluing Rapier Gear

My gear is notorious for getting rusty (let's face it, I sweat), and because I happen to live in the ample humidity of the southeastern US, it’s never going to not rust.  I had to learn how to take care of my rapier gear or find ways to mitigate the affects as best I could.  When I purchased a nice steel gorget years ago, the maker performed a chemical bluing process on it which looks gorgeous, and it turns out helps with the rust.  When it did start to rust a few years later, I had no idea how to take care of it and re-do the beautiful work he did.  Luckily, folks who came to the local practice (Rosalind & Gaston) did know the process.  They taught me this method that I will share with you today.

Wikipedia has a lovely article on steel bluing.  I use a process they term cold bluing, because it requires no heat, but is also called chemical bluing.  Read that if you're interested in how this works.  I am not a chemist.  It should be noted that this process only works on steel, so those of you with aluminum are on your own.

Materials

Materials you will need for this process:

• Abrasives (i.e. sandpaper, sanding sponges, etc.)
• Clean rags
• Painters or masking tape
• Protective gloves - the rubber/nitrile kind, not the woodwork shop kind
• Degreaser
• Chemical bluing agent (sometimes called gun blue)
• Cotton balls
• Black shoe polish
• Protective sealant (I favor gun oil, and it comes in wipes)

Some of the materials needed

Rust Removal

I’m going to assume you have a rusty piece of gear to start with.  Use your favorite abrasives to remove as much rust as you can.  This is the most time consuming part.  My gorget has been bad enough that I needed to start all the way with a wire wheel a couple of times before progressing to sandpaper.  Move through progressively finer abrasives until you get to the finish you want (a dream) or you’ve reached your point of patience (depends on the amount of time I have on my hands);  220 grit is a good finish, 320 is better.  Some people use a lubricant while you’re doing this; it will be your bane later if you do, so leave it out this time.  Once you’ve got as much rust off as you can, wipe down your object with a clean rag to get off all the dust you’ve created.

Mask

If there are any parts of your object you don’t want blued, now is the time to cover it with something.  My gorget has a lovely stripe around the outside edge, so I usually try to very carefully cover it in painters tape so I don’t have to worry about the chemical bluing accidentally hitting it, and having to clean it up later.  This last time I cheated and didn’t do it, so to each their own.

Degrease

Now it’s time for the gloves.  You are about to start using chemicals, some of which are caustic to humans, so these are important.  I have a pair of longer kitchen-type rubber gloves that come out only for this process (but they’re black, so it’s cool).  Nitrile/latex gloves might also work fine.  Spray your object with degreaser, and wipe down with another clean rag.  You’re looking to get all the oil from your hands off of the object so the bluing will work well, as well as any remaining dirt or grime.  Wait for the object to dry - it shouldn’t take too long, especially if you place it in the sun.  Leave your gloves on (dry them off if you got degreaser on them).

Blue

Now on to the fun part.  You might want to lay down some newspaper or cardboard to protect whatever ground you’re over.  Grab a cotton ball, get some bluing agent on it, and go to town on your object.  Be liberal, but try to get consistent coverage, and don’t rush.  The results will be almost immediate turning the metal a lovely bluish black, but it will probably look splotchy.  You will likely need to go through many cotton balls as they’re not much use after the first go round.  After a short while, a sort of yellowish scum will form on the object where you’ve put the chemical; this is a normal byproduct of the chemical reaction, and we’ll deal with it later.  Any spots that look particularly splotchy should get a second coat (and you might want to just do a second coat all over anyway).

Finish

Once you are done bluing, find yourself yet another clean rag and start buffing the yellow scum off - it should rub off with a little elbow grease.  You will have an object that is darker, probably a bit splotchy, and kinda dull looking.  Apply black shoe polish liberally, and buff it to a shine (you’ve shined a shoe before, right?).  The shoe polish helps even out the bluing and applies a nice wax coating to that section.  Remove any masking you have done, and your object will be complete.  For the masked portions, apply your favorite protective substance be it a wax or oil - my penchant is for gun oil, as it’s designed to seal out water and comes in handy wipes :).

Gorget & 2 guards that have been chemical blued

All the Fingerloops

As evidenced somewhat by the lack of posting about it on this blog, I've become somewhat disenfranchised with the leather doublet project.  I still love the idea, but I look at what I have to do next, and I just can't bring myself to pick it up.  Sometimes I just need an easy win to get over the hump, so I found a distraction that I hoped would do just that.

I have been contemplating for a while on ways to make period appropriate trims or small weavings, and had generally been curious as to whether tablet weaving was period for a 16th century persona.  When cursory research down that route proved inconclusive, I started to look at fingerloop braiding.  My wife already had the wonderful book Tak V Bowes Departed, but this talks about a 15th century manual.  I did some braids anyway to learn the techniques, and started digging further.

As I dug, I found references to later manuals: https://fingerloop.org/ has two 17th century manuals, but with limited pictures & samples.  And then I started looking at bibliographies.  Eventually I found that The Met had put almost the entire Phelita Millward manuscript, with blow ups of the samples, on Pinterest, and I was hooked.  That spider motif kept calling my name, and I just had to figure it out.  Unfortunately, there's no text around the motifs, just these charts which are nigh undecipherable without the right resources.

Some of the best early resources for loop braiding come from the author Noemi Speiser, but the one referenced over and over again, Old English Pattern Books for Loop Braiding, is out of print and was a self-published book.  I got lucky and found it in a local university textile library (NC State), and thanks to a friend that works there, I had it in my hands.  In addition to that, the follow-on set of books by Noemi Speiser and Joy Boutrup, specifically European Loop Braiding: Part II: Instructions for Letter Braids, was instrumental in deciphering these motifs and charts.  I finally had all the resources in hand to make that spider, and oh was I excited.

Luckily, I'm married to a fellow re-enactor and textile enthusiast, so we practiced the technique for a 7-loop Spanish braid using both the Boutrop and the lovely blog post from Ingrid Crickmore which is the basis of the 14-loop charted motif braids.  Working out most of the hiccups there, we attempted the spider the next night and all I can say is SUCCESS:

 

For those that care, the materials used for all of my samples so far is Aunt Lydia's Classic 10 Crochet Thread.  It's easy to find, comes in a wide variety of colors, and is big enough for me to see what's going on while I'm learning. I'm hoping to get a complete sample book of all the braids in Tak V soon.

Amsterdam Vacation - History pieces

I had the pleasure of taking a vacation with my lovely wife and family this summer that included Amsterdam and Norway.  While our selections in Norway were limited by the ports of call of our cruise, we had free rein in Amsterdam to do as we choose.  Being who we are, our choices of stops were fairly historical in focus (duh!).

In Amsterdam in no particular order, we were able to visit:

Rijksmuseum

Probably the best known museum in Amsterdam, and one of our highest priorities to visit, we probably could have spent a week here and not seen everything we wanted to.  Museums with children are always challenging, luckily big kid is getting old enough to entertain little kid while mom & dad do their thing.  The biggest draw, of course, are the Night Watch and other Rembrandt paintings.  The Rijksmuseum is fairly good about having their collection available digitally, but the things you just don't get from the online presence is the sheer scale and vibrancy of these works of art.  They are massive, and so, so beautiful in person.

Hermitage Amsterdam

This museum is a branch of the famous Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.  I honestly didn't even know it existed until we were already planning to go here and were looking for things to do.  Then we found out they had a Dutch Golden Age exhibit running in coordination with the Rijksmusem and the Amsterdam Museum, and it quickly came to the top of the list.  They had a huge collection of civic guard portraits in this exhibit, and the presentation was awe inspiring (I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor when I walked into the big room).

Museum of Bags & Purses

A personal interest for both me and my wife, this was pretty high on our list and we didn't figure it would take too long.  It's not a huge museum, and all of the pre-1700 items were on a single floor, but they do have a nice little collection with several sweet purses, a bead purse, and a lovely leather purse that I've seen before (it's WAY bigger than it looks):

Museum Van Loon

This is the house of one of the founders of the Dutch East-India Company.  Again, a small museum, but unique in that it consists of the house, the garden, and a coach house still together.  While the house itself is later than our period of interest, the Van Loon family is not.  There are several portraits and a few artifacts for anyone researching the later 16th/early 17th century times.

Rembrandt House Museum

This was one from the wife's list of priorities, and I'll admit I wasn't that interested until I got there.  With it being the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's passing, this museum like others in the city were well stocked.  This was probably the busiest museum we went to as we managed to hit it right as a school group was leaving, we think.  There is evidence that some of the furnishings in the historical portion of the house are actually from other museums in the city, like the Rijksmuseum; it's nice to see that partnership and sharing among the local museums again.

Oude Kerk

It's hard not to end up in at least one historical church while in Amsterdam, and this was our choice while we were there.  Translating to Old Church, it truly is, originally built in the 12th century, there are various additions throughout the centuries.  The entire floor of the church, practically, is full of graves with some very interesting grave stones if you're into that kind of thing, but the painted ceilings were especially nice to see.  They also have a few artifacts on display from varying time periods.


We also managed to visit a couple extra gift stores: those in the National Maritime Museum and the Niewe Kerk (New Church - new is relative, being consecrated in the 15th century).  If I had to do it over again, I would have liked to find time to do a full visit to the Maritime Museum, as they apparently have a very nice collection of historical maps.

All in all, a wonderful vacation filled with a ton of history.  Pictures are spread across at least 3 devices (2 phones and a digital camera) so haven't fully been gone through yet, but I'm hoping for some gems in there.

Old Fencing Curriculum

In a time that seems so very long ago, my wife and I moved to a new state and found a lack of consistent SCA fencing practices.  So what do young upstart Freescholars of Atlantia do?  That's right, we made our own.  We had a good friend who lived in the area, we called him up, and found a place to practice.  Over time, the practice grew, we became white scarves (I suspect partly because of this practice), and several members joined us.  At one point, we gathered a group of people to sit down and generate a list of topics to cover and hence was born Percy the Pontificating Provost's Practical School of Defense.

Kate has mostly retired after kids (although they're almost getting old enough for her to come back out), and my activity waned for a bit, so others stepped up and led the charge.  I have since become active again, but other life priorities prevent me from taking charge any more, but I promised some folks at the current practice that I would put up this, for lack of a better word, curriculum.

I will state that this list of topics was not just from the minds of my wife and I, but a contribution of various people, many of which I will likely forget, but I will try (SCA names only, no titles because I'm lazy): Galen of Black Diamond, Rosalind Delamare, Gaston du Valmont, now Iskender Bey al-Istanbuli, Marion le Red, Chris MacConing, Ysane de la Selle, and so many more.  (If any of you remember more, please let me know so that I can add note their contributions.)  The list was also heavily influenced by our primary teacher, Giacomo Vincenti (yes that Giacomo), without whom Kate & I would not have been the fencers we became.

This list has not been touched in quite some time.  I leave it here in it's last form of a teacher's list and a student's list.  Neither has a lot of information, mostly being just lists of topics.  At the time, it was what we needed.  I hope that these inspire others and if you can use it, they are free for your use, just please give credit where credit is due.

PPPPD Student

PPPPD Teacher

Class on Leather Doublets & Jerkins

This last weekend with my lovely wife, we taught a class at an SCA event that presented some details and inferences of the research I've been doing in regards to extant leather garments.  I think the class went pretty well, and it was pretty well received.  For those that couldn't make it, the link to the slides is: https://tinyurl.com/ybl8h49r and the spreadsheet that drives it is at https://tinyurl.com/y978b3gb.  The one thing we didn't share with class was a link to my curated Pinterest board with the available museum pictures.

The short version is leather doublets & jerkins were more prevalent than what we generally see in the SCA.  From what I've been able to discover, these type of garments made out of leather were treated just as if they were from any other cloth: could be decorated or not, assembled with regular sewing-type seams, etc.

To recap some of the class, I've found 81 extant doublets and jerkins between the periods of 1540-1650 so far.  43 of those are from the Mary Rose wreck which pretty much requires access to a copy of Before the Mast to get details, and can definitely skew any kind of analysis.  The next single biggest cache comes from the Royal Museum of Sweden, which contains a total of 11 unassembled doublets, which are absolutely stunning.

There was no way I could go over the entirety of what I've found so far in a one hour class (or even on this blog).  I encourage anyone interested to go through the main tab of the spreadsheet for the full list, as many of the items either can't be captured to Pinterest or have no available online pictures.  If you know of one I haven't captured, please reach out as I'm always interested in finding more.

And again, make more leather jerkins.