Moonreave Hand Forged High Carbon Steel Bardiche | 54 Inch Overall with an 18 Inch Cutting Edge | Hardwood Haft and Steel Butt Cap and No Sheath Required | Reenactment Display Gift | RK-1371

A bardiche is the simplest way anyone ever found to put a very long cutting edge on a pole. The blade is a single sweeping crescent of 1095 high carbon steel, eighteen inches of edge, fixed to a hardwood stave at two points rather than one, with no spike, no hook and nothing else on the head at all. It is a Russian and eastern European polearm, in service with the streltsy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its great virtue was that a village smith could make one. There is no complicated eye to punch and no three way head to forge.

Forged, heat treated and finished by hand in the Czech Republic, hardened and drawn to 54 to 58 HRC and satin polished. It ships free anywhere in the United States and it can be engraved with Elder Futhark runes or a Viking pattern of your choosing before it leaves the bench.

Specifications

Why a bardiche is fixed at two points

Every other polearm hangs its head off the top of the stave. A bardiche cannot, because the blade is far too long and far too far off the axis for a single joint to hold. Cut with it and the blade tries to rotate around the socket like a lever, and a single fixing would work loose within a day. The answer is the lower fixing, a tang or strap forged off the bottom horn of the blade and riveted through the haft eight to ten inches below the socket.

That second point turns the whole assembly into a triangle. The blade can no longer rotate, the load is shared between two widely separated fixings, and the stave is braced along the length where the leverage is highest. It also gives the bardiche its other trick. The braced blade is stiff enough to rest a musket barrel on, and there are contemporary accounts of streltsy doing exactly that, using the bardiche as a firing rest and then dropping it into the hands to fight with when the shot had gone.

Why 1095 high carbon steel and not stainless

Every plain steel piece in this group is forged from 1095, a simple high carbon steel with roughly one percent carbon and very little else in it. That plainness is the point. A steel with nothing but iron and carbon to argue about moves predictably under the hammer, takes a clean quench, and comes back to a hardness a smith can actually hold to. These are hardened and drawn to 54 to 58 HRC, which is deliberately a touch softer than a kitchen knife. A head that has to survive impact wants to bend and rebound rather than chip, and 1095 in that range absorbs a bad hit instead of losing a piece of itself.

Stainless alloys buy their rust resistance with chromium, and above about thirteen percent that chromium ties up carbon in carbides that make the steel harder to forge and more brittle at the edge. On a small folding knife that trade is fine. On a head that lands with the weight of a haft behind it, it is not. The cost of choosing 1095 is that it will rust if you leave it wet. Wipe it, oil it, and it will outlast you. There is more on that trade in our guide to Damascus versus stainless.

The hardwood haft

The haft is close grained hardwood, turned to a slight taper so the hand finds the same place on it every time and sanded through the grits before it takes its oil finish. Dense hardwood is chosen over a softwood for a reason that has nothing to do with looks. A dense stave carries the shock of a heavy head into the wood rather than letting it stop at your palm, and it holds a ferrule or a langet tight for years instead of shrinking away from the fitting after one dry winter.

The finish is oil, not lacquer, which is a deliberate choice. Lacquer looks perfect until it chips, then water gets under it and you cannot fix it without stripping the whole handle. Oil wears gradually and is repaired by wiping more oil on. Once or twice a year, a thin coat of boiled linseed or a proprietary handle oil, twenty minutes to soak, then wipe off what has not gone in. See wooden handle care.

Engraving, runes and your own design

Use the rune converter on this page to turn a name, a date or a short phrase into Elder Futhark and we will cut it into the steel or the handle. If you would rather have a Viking pattern than a rune line, choose your own design in the engraving option above the add to cart button and tell us whether it goes on the blade or the handle. Where a piece already carries an engraved design, your chosen engraving replaces it rather than sitting alongside it.

Engraving is cut by hand after the piece is finished and before final oiling, so keep the line short and let it sit where the eye already goes. Names, dates, a line of a poem, a maker mark, a unit or a crew number all work. If you are unsure where a line should sit, send us the text and we will suggest a placement before we cut. Full details and examples are on the engraving page.

Care and sharpening

Carbon steel rusts. That is the only demanding thing about owning it. Wipe the steel down after handling, because fingerprints are salt and moisture and they will etch a bright surface in a week if you let them sit. A thin film of mineral oil, gun oil or paste wax on the metal is enough to keep it stable indoors. If the piece lives on a wall in a room that swings between damp and dry, check it every few months and re oil. Left alone in a garage or a basement it will spot, and once it spots the mark is permanent even after the rust is removed.

The edge is finished sharp from the forge and does not need attention until it stops biting. When it does, a coarse then fine whetstone, kept wet, held at the angle the bevel already carries, will bring it back in a few minutes. Do not take a powered grinder to it. Our guides cover steel care and sharpening with a whetstone in more detail.

Made in the Czech Republic

This is a handmade piece from the Czech Republic, made in a workshop that still forges, grinds and finishes by hand instead of stamping parts out. The smiths there have kept the older way of working, and the wood, horn and leather are shaped and fitted by hand as well. Two pieces of the same design will never be identical, and that is part of what you are buying.

Ransack Viking is a United States company. We handle the import ourselves, look over every piece when it lands and ship from our warehouse in Chicago, Illinois. Engraving is done in the United States after the piece arrives, so your design goes on before we send it out.

A note on handmade variation

This is hand forged. It is not machine made, not cast and not bulk produced, so what arrives will not be a pixel for pixel copy of the photograph on this page. The grain of the wood, the tone the steel takes from the fire and the oil, the exact run of a pattern, the precise curve of a profile, all of it shifts a little from one piece to the next because each one is worked by hand from natural materials. Two hafts cut from the same board will not read the same. Two etched blades from the same billet will not carry the same swirl.

What does not change is the specification. Dimensions, steel, hardness, fittings and build are the same every time. The character is the part that is yours alone, and it is the reason to buy something forged rather than something stamped.

Frequently asked questions

Is the whole eighteen inches sharpened?

Yes, the full crescent is ground and honed. On a blade this long the edge geometry changes slightly along its length, thinner in the belly and a touch heavier near the horns, which is how period examples were finished.

Can it be used for cutting practice?

It will cut, but it is not a tameshigiri tool and we do not sell it as one. Five pounds on a four and a half foot pole is very hard to control accurately and the second fixing does not enjoy repeated hard impact.

Can I have runes engraved on it?

Yes. Use the rune converter on this page for Elder Futhark or choose your own Viking pattern. A bardiche has the largest flat surface of anything we make, so a long rune line or a full pattern panel both work.

Will mine look like the photograph?

The blade profile, length and steel will match. The hardwood haft varies in grain and colour from piece to piece, and the sweep of a hand ground eighteen inch edge is never twice exactly the same line.

What is the difference between this and a glaive?

A glaive is a long single edged blade that continues the line of the haft and thrusts as well as cuts. A bardiche is a broad crescent mounted off to one side that only cuts, with a far longer edge for its weight.

How long does shipping take?

Two to three business days to leave the shop if it is in stock, two to three weeks if it is being made or engraved. It ships braced in a long carton and shipping in the United States is free.

What is in the box

• One hand forged bardiche in 1095 high carbon steel
• Hardwood haft with steel butt cap and two point riveted mounting
• Care, oiling and sharpening notes
• Forged and finished in the Czech Republic

Explore the range

More in glaives and polearms, halberds, poleaxes and battle axes, and read the guides.

Also in this part of the catalogue

If this one is not quite right, there is the Reaphook polearm, 72 inches overall. Also in this group is the Talonreave polearm, 34 inches overall. Sitting beside it in the catalogue is the Dawnleaf polearm, 68 inches overall.

From the same corner of the shop, there is the Wardenpike halberd. Or start from a blank sheet on the custom Norse arms page.