Hi I'm back for another weird weapons with Matt Easton. And
this thing it is a collapsible foldable staff weapon, absolutely bonkers or is it?
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and I'm back with Matt Easton
schola gladiatoria hi guys and I'm at Matt and Lucy Easton's fight Camp which is this amazing
thing uh where people come and fight so Matt give us a couple of seconds seconds yeah it's pretty
cool so about 250 people I think it's probably the biggest humor event in the UK that's historical
European martial arts and we've got competitions loads of classes we've got like 40 instructors
all sorts of stuff from the ancient era through medieval Renaissance all the way to the modern era
uh even stuff like pugilism and wrestling and MMA all kinds of stuff so lots of martial arts mostly
European got a little bit of Indian martial arts a little bit of Japanese martial arts as
well and all sorts of weapons at play we've just finished the first full day here so everything's
winding down there's just a few people left sparring so three days of this stuff so if
this is your thing I don't care if you live in a different country fly over do it anyway August so
what we're really here is weird weapons so it's a simple deal I find something that intrigues me
something unusual from the past medieval mostly bit of Renaissance and I make it and I present it
to Matt and he has no idea and so today no he has no idea what is in this bag now what I would say
is be a little bit careful okay but not very careful put your hand in gingerly but once you're
down there you're right the nasty bits oh good grab the bag do it yourself and it's like that
scene in Flash Gordon oh no no no don't look yeah okay okay right okay I'm holding it right now okay
can I look yet you could look but I'd love your guesses without looking gosh so it's got a hinge
without looking it's got a hinge and it's got Blades of some kind I have no idea it feels like
it's some kind of umbrella with blades on it yeah very close so go on open your eyes and have a look
I still don't know what that is should I give it a demo yeah this is possibly one of the nuttiest
things that I've come across so I was flicking through a book um army
Bianchi Italian oh yeah yeah so it's flicking through that and I saw this
and the one in the book is definitely a lot fancier but it's not just one if you
go digging on the net no you will find quite a few so it's a folding winged spear yeah
so that is absolutely mad it is absolutely mad and I would argue utterly utterly pointless what
was it like why would you want to fold it up well this is why I'm here Matt so
oh so I mean now it makes sense no it doesn't well you know it's a sort of it's a it's a form of wing
spirit I guess a corsack or a rancer or something like that speed them I guess yeah so it's I mean
that makes sense as a weapon but this stuff does get in the way of it well also the weight
I think the weight's all right yeah so it's I think it I think it would be called a speedem
um I'm trying to remember what the Italian name is for it spiedo yes I think uh mancelino talks
about that in his 1531 manual but like why would why why why why for for ease of storage and
transportation I guess but but yeah the funny thing is so the weight is quite heavy yeah but
it's about the weight of a polax so it's not crazy it's not crazy heavy I mean you can certainly you
can certainly move that around fairly well um it doesn't have any form of Spike on the back
end does it well this is where I have to admit that the the book has uh pictures of the heads
because that's particularly interesting yeah there's one picture of a central joint okay
um and there's nothing below that so I don't know what's going on at the back end so one
thing I would say is usually with these weapons you want to be able to slide them through a
hand and change hands fairly easily and having that in the middle is a bit of an obstruction
um but that being said I mean you can still you can still do it uh changing
sides which obviously sometimes you you want to be able to do in using generally speaking with
weapons that you're going to give a blow or a cut with you tend to be right hand forward and
turned over on this side whereas most people naturally want to have Spears and thrusting
with on that side it just seemed to be a sort of biomechanically natural thing that most people do
if you tell them to poke they do it that way if you tell them to hit they tend to switch to that
way how having said that treated as of the time do in fact show Spears being held the way around
for various reasons sometimes you might want to come around Shields or whatever and yeah we do
occasionally see polaxes use the other way around as well but um yeah essentially it's primarily a
thrusting weapon isn't it but you've got these blades here and I think most people would look
at those and think of the offensive uses for them but they're very good against other pole weapons
so one of the problems with Spears is it's very easy for you to both just stab each other whereas
when you've got these lateral projections you can actually interpose them in the incoming
spear push it off to the side and then get the person with the point so all forms of wing spear
partisan speedem Trident all of these sort of things they work really really well but this is
relatively short well that again is the length of so I found track three three examples down yeah
there's two in Army Bianchi Italian both of them I think were made in Milan okay um from memory
and they're within about two centimeters of each other which is what this is It's just over two
it's about uh Timmy to six something yeah and then there's another one which I think is or was in
Higgins I think Higgins yeah it basically exactly the same so I'll tell you exactly the story of
what's going on here so two days ago I thought oh you know what I'm going to match this weekend
I should do a weird weapon so uh I had very busy we made this in two days yeah very busy
Wednesday Thursday so there have been some compromises so if we have a look at this
so um effectively this joint here screws together well there's nothing wrong with screws that's
absolutely fine you know period appropriate and so it's a bit scary but you can't see it in the book
but there is something going on in here and my guess actually is that the thing unfolds and the
wings are closed and I think that what happens is it unfolds and as you unfold it they deploy
and you'd literally just flick it up and it locks so it might be sprung that
might be spring and there's two funny little pins that stick out each side
um you know we'll put the picture up on screen so we can see it but there's two pins each side that
stick out yeah that I thought when I first saw it you pulled those pins out and it did
something I think actually they're push pins and they push a catch in and that's what locks it so
I I suspect because the you know you can see from this object is absolutely covered in engraving and
gilding and everything else obviously two days I couldn't do that yeah um it has so much money and
Status involved in the piece that I think that it must just be a demonstration of how amazing the
armorer was yeah and it really I'd be surprised if it didn't Auto deploy when you did that and
locked into place and then these two little pins go in and interestingly both examples in
that book have two little Pokey out pins that look really vulnerable and you could do it differently
but they've chosen against all choices to do that the center joint I have one picture of the center
joint from that side right and so again I can tell nothing about what's going on on the other so
I did something that was going to be doable in in two days for you know a little video I
absolutely love it um I absolutely love it and you know pole arms as a whole don't get enough
attention I think shafted weapons halfted weapons whatever you want to call them are
you know they're they're main weapons if you're not shooting a crossbow or a bar or a gun then
you most of the time going to have some kind of pole arm as your main weapon and could this have
been I'm trying to think what contest it could fit into perhaps for carrying on board or in
something a carriage or a ship or somewhere where storage space is is important storage
space possibly or then getting it out of stores so a ship is an interesting idea actually that
you're getting long things through small doorways and low decks actually is difficult but that all
said the the three items I've seen like this all of Italian manufacture the three items I've seen
are so high status frankly that's not your problem you know if you if you want your high status pole
alarm delivered to your door it will be there so so why is it folding and I come down to the very
simple thing that I've got one you haven't I can see no reason because also you know let's face it
if it has got an auto deployment mechanism on it which I think it does yeah those can fail and now
suddenly the thing's not working in the way it should be working you can have a joint here that
is never going to be as strong as a wooden pole so that that's already a risk you've got a joint here
that's not going to be as strong as as a proper decent welded thing you have more mass than you
need because you've got all this mechanism and heavy joints the whole thing is just utterly
pointless and dare I say it weird so it is 100 weird there's no question about that but I I
just I'm desperately thinking of practical reasons for it to exist I feel like it's it's so so much
effort has gone into it yeah is it really just a vanity project is it just for showing off I don't
know I know but I mean World it works fantastic I mean if we were in a situation where you wanted
to travel around with a pole arm in your car it makes perfect sense because it will fit in
the back and at the drop of a hat you can spring out of your car and deploy your pole arm you know
I'm not saying you do that oh let's get there and there we go hi I've interrupted today's film
for another Tod Cutler-related interesting fact and today we have the knights rondel
15th century piece but what's really weird about these is small Rondel daggers like this you often
see a manuscript hung upside down at an angle totally weird but there you are this one hangs the
right way up and this and loads of similar pieces available on todcutler.com anyway back to the film
and it's also got the aesthetic of lots of polaxes of the period you know the the everything about it
from from the decoration to the the way that the head is constructed and you know polaxes are sort
of constructed of almost unnecessarily complicated construction sometimes and there's definitely
showing off involved in polax design um and I think it's part of that tradition but it's thing
like that you know I could have just put a nerve nut on it but that's not what they would have done
so you know I've made it look like flower petals with a little indented Center and things because
that's yeah that's what they do so the bottom line is I love it and it's not exactly pocket
size but you know it's unobtrusive so maybe that's the answer and I've got to say there's no question
that is not what I expected to come out of that bag at all I mean I never would have thought there
was a pole arm in there yeah so maybe that's it it's when you when you um well okay yeah I've got
it so all of those Hollywood moments where the heroes sneaking in with this medieval equivalent
of a violin case and uh he's got these in it yeah and all those video games where people when they
want to get their sword out there what do I do with the pole alarm I've mysteriously wear it
on my back and it just hangs there they need one of these now and they can slip it into a
little holster and there we go we've got back back mounted back Scabbard pull-on but I think it is
officially Bonkers and actually for that matter if anybody actually genuinely knows and I don't
just be guesses because we've all got a guess but genuinely knows why they made these things fold up
it's not impossible that it's mentioned in some text that that a folding pole arm is mentioned
in some text that that we don't know about well yeah but you know tauhoffer for instance there's
certainly stuff in his treaties because I think he was a little bit like Leonardo da Vinci yeah he
just he used his his books as almost like doodle pads for his mind you know and uh there's a bullet
dagger I can think of which has a screw-off blade so you can put different blades on it
there's another polax where he he was obviously fixated with this idea yeah and you had a single
shaft and you could bolt different things onto the head so that's very much in tauhofer's world
you know absolutely definitely yeah but but dated sort of 1550-ish so a long time later but this is
yes right interesting okay cool yeah I I but I think isn't this the weirdest weapon that we've
so far looked at yeah I can't think of any weapon which is weird it's going to take a while to get
to get odder but maybe the viewers know of an even weirder one I love it though yeah absolutely love
it okay good so it's going to sit on the Shelf getting Dusty like all the other weird weapons
I'll sell them one day you can make a book of weird weapons at some point the
treaties of weird weapons yeah yeah that we don't understand because actually that
is that has been a recurrent theme of all of these is we've all gone yeah great wonderful
because they could I guess is the answer yeah yeah but it's like that bike chain mace you know it's
like yeah yeah that was pretty weird actually yeah it's up there isn't it but yeah I absolutely love
it um and I actually think you know it could definitely work as a weapon given the length
and given the weight I think it fits more into the realm of pole axis rather than of typical Spears
um but yeah for someone in armor um to use as a close combat weapon I think it's a good practical
weapon so long as it holds together and doesn't break well I mean that would always have to be a
consideration yeah you know so you frankly you're going to go in and the money that was clearly paid
for these things I would put money on it the pre-guilding pre-engraving they beat the hell
out of it to find out and then cleaned up yeah but the other thing to remember of course is someone
with one of these they wouldn't this wouldn't be their sole weapon so they'd probably have a sword
and a dagger as backup so to be honest if you go way you know completely wailing in with this and
it does SNAP will you close in pull your sword out and carry on you know so yeah I think it's I
think it's fantastic and we know equally we know that typical normal constructive pole axes broke
I mean there's pictures of them broken on the ground in loads of loads of manuscripts so maybe
we're looking at this too much from a 21st century View and you kind of you think of
these things as to an extent disposable or you know they're there to be used until they break
and then you pull out the next weapon and carry on so well it's interesting we're having exactly
that conversation earlier on about swords as it happens yeah but um you take a Medieval sword uh
and you do the abuse tests that people do now and they just fail because they're not that's not what
they're for yeah yeah and and it's true it's the same same with these sort of things is and it is
the uncomfortable truth is that somebody spends they'll sell sell this one day and somebody will
spend a lot of money on this yeah well you know what if they go around hitting things they want
it to last a long time yeah that's not necessarily true of the time no and if you're rich enough in
the 16th century to afford this you can afford perhaps multiples of them Replacements to get
it fixed whatever you don't care if it breaks no you've got other weapons you can buy another one
there we go it's like white sword belts there is nothing worse than a white sword belt to
look after yet they were a thing yeah you know but it's fine because then they got a servant
to clean it yeah yeah now absolutely but uh fantastic what a thing what a thing indeed
I think totally pointless Matt thinks are these fantastic I absolutely love it and
this is one of my favorite weird weapons that I've ever seen we ended the filming and then
we had another thought well I didn't but uh Matt did so completely out of the left field
but it's vaguely possible that maybe this is something for someone to carry a horse back
um not as a primary weapon but presumably they'd have a lance or whatever on Horseback but maybe
as their foot combat weapon so we sometimes find records of people arriving at a place uh fighting
his Cavalry on Horseback with Alliance but then dismounting and fighting on foot with a polax and
you think well where did you get the pollacks from where did you keep it when you were lost because
you're holding a lance it's not like you can just wear a bolax they're massive and heavy and
usually you kind of think well probably we've got servants in tow or whatever but what if you
wanted to carry this on Horseback with a like a saddle holster well that would absolutely work
and actually although this one I've done with the fiddly screws and things like I said it was such
a high status object I suspect that it probably Auto deployed and just locked when you opened it
um I didn't see them I couldn't see the mechanism but if that was the case then having all those
gloves and things that wouldn't be a problem that it would be like in this case here so who knows
if that's true but it is definitely a plausible reason for my why you might want one so actually
maybe it does have utility take it all back it's a nice idea to think of a 16th century Italian
mercenary hopping off his horse casting his last exercise and deploying his flick here he's a flick
knife version of it yeah of a speeding aside you know if it is auto deployed and it does
all lock itself which I think it probably did it would be a flick a flick weapon wouldn't it and
you have to remember as well 16th century Italian mercenaries were often about looking cool weren't
they and you think of their job you think of the German lands connects and all of their puff and
slash clothing and you think of someone hopping off their horse it's like wow and that guy means
business anyway enough of that Matt thank you once again thank you really bye foreign [Music]