hello my name's mark Griffin and I'm a historian arms and armor fan and
collector and jouster and I'm here to talk to you about Lance's it's the
Knights main weapon and in fact the only real reason for a knight and a horse is
to get this bit on to target no Knight goes onto the battlefield with
that one he can't undertake noble deeds or go on perilous quests and you
certainly can't just without a lance but although we talk a lot about arms and
armor about horses and swords we very often overlook this so I thought today
we'd have a little closer look now then to make a lance fit enough to go to the
field of cloth-of-gold you need some sharp tools a tree thats it's about it simple
let's go and find a tree okay so not so simple this is a war Lance it's made of
ash and is incredibly strong if you use this in a joust
you'd probably knock your opponent out of his saddle or doing some really
serious damage so for the battlefield you use hard wood like this ash or this
oak or beach or something that's really strong and straight grained but the
cloth-of-gold is a friendly joust and don't forget the whole point of jousting
is to break your lance so what you need is a soft wood like this fir tree here
that one's a bit big but this one is almost the right size and you can see
here it's got lots of little branches coming out of it it's basically an old
Christmas tree and these will give you knots and knots are where the lance is
going to break in a just so having got our tree off to the workshop right now
to get to work so the first and most important thing obviously is get rid of
all these little branches you know I've started a couple of lances off here so
what I'm gonna do is use my tools to start smoothing this off then I'm gonna
get rid of all the bark so the first tool I need to get is a side axe now it
may look like an ordinary axe but in fact if I show it to you like this you will
see it's got a slightly flatter edge to it so it's not just straight down the
middle it actually has curve which means I can get really nice
and close to the flat bit of this now obviously it's got a long piece of wood
to be working on so I'm we have to go and sit on a bench and work it horizontally
also I'm gonna stop using the axe when I need to and move over to draw knives
now draw knives that simply knives you draw towards you and these ones are
specially curved to fit around the shape of our Lance
it'll take about an hour to completely strip a lance right down until you can
start fine-tuning it so that's what I'm gonna do now a different set of
equipment and different tools so this is a shaving horse really useful piece of
kit and it's used for holding very long things in place so whether I'm making a
lance or a longbow I simply put the work in here and put my wedges in place and
put my feet on the stirrups push forwards and it's not going anywhere
I've got different sized draw knives again here to work as the work gets
smaller so does the circumference of the draw knife so we are now how wide do I
need the end to be well I've got a pair of calipers here set to see where I need
to get to nearly there so another few minutes work and I should
be there let's just turn that round push forwards we go so a lot is looking a
little bit smoother a little bit cleaner and it's now time to work on the grip
the grip is very important to get right too far forwards and your Lance is now
shorter than your opponent's too far back and it's gonna be front heavy
making it awkward to handle but the grip is also going to be the right thickness
because if the grip is too thick it's gonna be really difficult to hold and if
it's too thin well it might actually break on you when you strike your
opponent just on the grip which means you're gonna have an enormous piece of
tree coming back towards you and your horse so you don't want that now I've
marked where I want to put my grip in and I'm going to use this little axe and
I'm going to start making some little cuts all the way around following my lines
to where i want the grip
this is a burr or Graper it's a metal ring that's going to set just there on
the grip of the Lance and it's gonna help to lock the Lance into your breast
plate when you're jousting the next item is a vamplate this is like a shield for
your hand and it slides down the Lance and fits onto the Lance just there and
protects you the first thing that's going to hit you is your opponent's
Lance tip so it's very very important to get some protection for your hand there
and the last thing we're going to fit is a Coronel or mourn now this is a
three-pointed Lance tip rather than a single Lance tip you don't want to
kebab your opponent so this is going to make it a little bit safer but also
easier for the Lance tip to dig into your opponent's shield or catch on their
armor and break your lance and hopefully score some points for you so there we
are that's all the parts of our Lance all together
so no matter what you're doing in the tiltyard whether you're jousting whether
you're squiring and helping out on the ground or whether you're part of the
audience I hope you have a very enjoyable and safe joust