So I suppose the million dollar question would you buy one yourself
would you go out and buy... Oh nice! I like that.
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and in the last film
about weird weapons I showed you this the poll axe from the British Museum this time
we're back with the sparring version so i'm going to go down and see Matt at his fight
school where he teaches and we're going to see who wants to hit who with this, let's go!
So this is the second part of our weird medieval weapons series;
Come back with some sparring versions and the rubber components which I have chopped around I
must confess are from Tempus Fugitives so thank you very much Tempus Fugitives and they come
more beautiful than this, i'd like to say I've just changed them to suit this so first up Matt
and Gavin are going to spar with them so they're going to go hammer on hammer because one of your
theories is that they're judicial. Well i think they're not tribal combat so much as
nightly combat kind of uh fighting at the barriers fighting at a fence that kind of thing, so I think
that they're specialized duelling weapons okay so we'll try that and then i've got a theory
that this hook on the back uh might actually be for blade catching so we're gonna try long sword
against polax as well so um Matt can't really do much talking at the moment
so we're gonna put Matt and Gavin up against each other and then we're gonna come back and we'll uh
do our usual thing and we'll commentate on a couple of other people fighting
we've just watched a little bit of Matt and Gavin sparring with them
and we're gonna get his insights in a little bit while we watch other people so matt and
i will sort of like watch and commentate a bit and uh sparer's take it away please
nice straight to the head yeah immediately which is a classic long sword technique as well i mean
these a lot of the techniques for polax and longsword are actually
very very similar you just modify them slightly for the weapon length
but how did you find it in a general sense was it okay interesting to fight with but
were there aspects you really liked or disliked it felt like a clunky short heavy long sword
right so it felt like a bad weapon but not necessarily because especially in armor you
want to hit someone with with force yeah and swords actually famously aren't very good um
certainly for hitting against armor and I actually felt um in terms of the repertoire
because of the proportions and size of the weapon it's very similar to longsword
i think we both agree it's not english civil war area it's not mid 17th century i don't i
don't think it can be i mean i think the only way it could possibly fit in the 17th century is for
some sort of one-off tournament or something which they did occasionally do even in the 17th century
so we think it's probably not 17th century so let's assume that it's let's say late 15th. You
think it's probably judicial duel after having fought with it do you feel that or is it still
a good melee weapon. I don't think it's judicial dual because there weren't any judicial duals in
that period anymore but i think it's a tournament right i think it's absolutely a tournament weapon
and i think it's probably Tudor and i think there's a very good chance it comes from Henry IIX
time because we know that tournaments just were massive, in fairness even in Elizabeth's
time tournaments were still big. You know defending a staircase that was a comment that somebody made
i mean it's you know it's short um i mean like someone asked me if i could use it like a montante
and that of course you don't have the length and you don't have the speed to do that so it doesn't
feel like that for me it's an armored fighting weapon i feel sure because it's seven and a
half pounds i mean these aren't but the the the original seven and seven seven and a half pounds
that's so heavy yeah for a weapon of that size i and actually Matt this is a really important
point to make as well this is a sparring version and some weapons like a sword you can make to be
basically equivalent. Yeah this you cannot make and fight safely with i mean it's the weight
of a sledgehammer yeah you can't have these guys wearing certainly wearing the fencing even wearing
this yeah hitting each other with sledgehammers we can't learn everything we could about the
real weapon with sparring versions which we could with the sparring sword it's it's a problem with
all pole weapons really even quarterstaff which doesn't have any added weights it's very difficult
to spar quarterstaff safely because the amount of leverage involved with this it's not so much
a case of the lever it's more just a question of the weight yeah but that was interesting there was
there was definite sword techniques going on oh yeah i mean with this size of weapon with a sword
like cross guard oh that's nice there you go half swording disarm you're gonna get sword techniques
very recognizable sword technique the big difference of course is that warhammer head yeah
it gives you a hooking ability at the end a binding ability doesn't it the sword just doesn't
and against armor it gives you a more potent strike so i mean that's one of the things you
can say as well when you're talking about a long sword in the treatises we don't see
many strikes given that was lovely did you see that they both got hooked up on each other
they were both trying to disengage so with the long sword you don't see many strikes in armor
but with these they're now potent enough that you can ironically use them like a sword again
in armor because you can strike with enough force with these that actually have some effect
one of the things that surprised me about this was because of its short size
you think well it's that's only a disadvantage for a polaxe but actually because if it's short size
you can turn it around very very quickly yeah so in instead of halfswording if it was a sword
it's actually quite nimble well it's like in that sense it's like the uh staff weapon equivalent of
a katzbalger or something it's a yeah you know like a brawling weapon yeah yeah but
that's one of the reasons i mentioned about house clearance or street fighting or whatever is it
is it a good enclosed space weapon. Possibly and you know i one of my theories is that it was used
for they had a certain tournament fighting format where they fought across a barrier
so you couldn't close and grapple and you were either side of a fence and in that situation
you can see that a normal length collapse a long polax might not be very effective but one of these
it might be a way of going well we can give it some advantages and still fight over a barrier
very well and maybe be a little bit quicker a little bit more nimbler than a full-length
polax because not having the back end the cube sticking out at the back does mean you can turn
it around in ways that's a very interesting point because i talked to one of the guys earlier who'd
be messing with this and he was saying i think this would be great if you put a spike on the end
yeah and then we were watching another guy messing with it and he kept on bringing the pommel really
close to himself and i was thinking actually you wouldn't want to spike on the end now matt we've
swapped out and we've got a guy with the feder and the axe and we're just going to see if this
hook can come into play in any way my personal pet theory because i can't work out what it's for
so in this matching uh the polax has now got a reach disadvantage because the long
side longer it's nimble it's lighter but that being said if if they were both in armor then
the polax has got an advantage i think one of my questions is if that hook was for trapping a blade
when you've trapped it what do you do because then you can't use your weapon no no okay good point
i don't know it's just one of those daft things. The only thing that somebody has suggested
that i think is vaguely valid but i don't think is valid is that it's a display hook for the wall
why put that on the weapon though but i mean it's it's not a hanging hook i'll swear blind it could
be a transport hook for putting on a saddle so but it's just none of it no it wouldn't because it
annoy the horse i don't get it yeah and i think in a tournament setting there might be a short period
of time where even if it's just walking into the arena walking into the the tournament the tilting
yard where you have the thing hooked on some part of your arm that was nice you missed it you just
looking at it you missed it he'd so got it on the hook he swung it around and he brought his
hammer up and landed same move but he did it before. So i suppose a million dollar question
would you buy one yourself would you go out and buy oh nice i like that honestly i mean does it
speak to you as a weapon because i'm not for my okay i won't embarrass you when i made it i picked
it up it went i hate it so i did hate it when i first picked it up but it grew on me slightly
uh a bit like some kind of disease but it's it's so different i think when you've handled all the
usual sorts of longswords and pole axes it is really different actually it's familiar
but different and i actually think within a tournament fighting scenario they they are
really fun weapons to to fight with them to play with and if your background is primarily
in longsword for example you can very easily adapt that knowledge to using one of these
you know well he did exactly that thing he went you know he went into grapple he punched yeah
all right so even these even these sort of half weight wooden ones they do pack quite a lot yeah
you can feel it um and so you know most of the people here are sort of to some degree
pulling their shots but that hits harder than the steel federschwert even though one steel it's just
balanced in a different way i keep comparing these sledgehammers but actually of course a
sledgehammer seven pounds all at the end yeah the weight distribution is entirely entirely different
and again but then what but then next right well Matt actually should we call it a day
or that whatever yeah so that's great i mean thank you very very much guys that
was absolutely brilliant to see and uh the trapping hook kind of worked
but kind of didn't so give me your opinions you catch it but then you're awesome stuff yeah
you trapped them yeah yes the only advantage you've got is you might know it's gonna
i mean that's an interesting point because if if this was ever used in a mismatched weapon scenario
your opponent might not notice you've got that hook there and i i made a point about the fact
that i think if it was a trapping hook it should be bigger and this kind of thing well you could
say well if it's supposed to be a secret trapping hook then you do want it to be quite small and
slimline so so the swordsman might not notice it's there so on balance my theory that it's a trapping
hook might be correct but it probably isn't could we settle on that one which still still
leads it as a complete mystery what the heck is it right it "might" be a trapping hook yeah. brilliant
we have learned so little today so when you were fighting axe on axe how did you feel about it then
were they was it good it's a very good fun fight yeah because it's new and different than all the
rest of it i find i think with the real thing you'd be able to grip and lock it in and trap
it better. That's a fair point actually with the with the real steel version the disparity
between the the projections and the thin shaft is greater yeah than with these fatter shafts and
so i think you would, like you say, you'd be able to hook more easily with with the steel one
I'm hooking down, but as soon as i come up the other guy comes up as well
i think if it engaged best you can get them right down the ground and then come in
how would you feel about that if you were clearing a house out or defending a castle or
a sally port or clearing the streets in St Albans whatever it might be. I think it would be useful in closer
I think it would be useful in closer. It would be quite formidable weapon to try to get past
to try again you couldn't really swing it very much though could you in a
no but then again it's it's heavy so maybe maybe in an area where you can't swing
so much like with a conventional polax maybe having the extra mass might be compensating
I think it depends on if the other guy has armour on
To break the armour you'd have to hit him very hard yeah no well we showed that in our the first film we did it takes very well you were giving
it some but you could see it take very little to make quite a big mess oh yeah i mean i would not
want to be hit by that thing at all, armour or no armour no especially in the helmet because the amount
of force transparency to your neck and just shock you know ko kind of thoughts yeah, be horrible
i found the hilt got me out of trouble far more than i expected yeah particularly when you bang yeah and
suddenly the other person's hammer comes down to your head i 100 found the same thing that it was
it was beautifully familiar to a long sword user and having that familiar
sword hilt meant you could use it exactly like a long sword and it was very defensive
closest we're going to get to an answer so it works very well 1 on 1 matched combat
uh i think we all agree that it's not 1653 probably we think a tournament weapon i'll
ride with that it's good an answer as any so thank you very much and thank you very much
guys and Matt from Schola Gladiatoria again i don't know what the next one is another
weird weapon we'll see i don't know throw the suggestions out lots of ideas but always happen
to get more stuff yeah oh i've got something i so want to do good anyway another time cheers