Ashwarden Hand Forged High Carbon Steel Medieval Halberd | 62 Inch Overall with a 17 Inch Head | Reenactment Display Gift | RK-1364

A plain infantry halberd with nothing decorative on it, which is what the great majority of them actually were. The head is 1095 high carbon steel with a long axial spike, a deep crescent blade cut away behind both horns and a hooked rear fluke, and it is held to a straight ash stave by long steel langets riveted right through the wood. Halberds of this pattern were municipal property in the Swiss cantons and the German free cities, issued out of a town armoury to men who owned little else, and their plainness is the reason so many survive.

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

Specifications

Langets, sockets and why the mounting is the weak point

On a spear the head sits in a socket and the wood inside it takes the load in compression, which is a comfortable arrangement. On a halberd it is not that simple, because the axe blade sticks out sideways and every cut tries to twist the head off the stave. A socket alone will not hold that. What holds it is the langets, the long steel straps that run down from the head and are riveted through the haft, and they are the single most important piece of engineering on the halberd.

This one has them on the faces of the haft, running well down the stave and pinned with five steel rivets each, peened over on the far side rather than screwed. That does two jobs. It resists the twist, and it protects the top of the haft from a blade coming down on it, which is where a halberd is otherwise very easy to disarm. Look at any period halberd in a collection and you will see the langets first, because they are what stayed intact when everything else was cut about.

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 ash haft

The haft is American ash, the same timber that goes into tool handles and baseball bats, and it is here for one reason. Ash has long straight fibres that run the length of the stave, which means it flexes under a shock load and returns instead of snapping across the grain. That flex is what keeps a heavy head from beating your hands. It is turned, sanded and finished with oil rather than lacquer, so the grain stays open and the surface grips a dry hand instead of sliding.

Oil finishes want feeding. Once or twice a year, wipe on a thin coat of boiled linseed or a hardwood handle oil, let it soak for twenty minutes and wipe the surplus off. Do not leave it standing in a damp corner or propped against a masonry wall, because wood pulls moisture out of stone and the fit at the head will loosen. Our guide to wooden handle care covers the routine.

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 piece is made by hand in the Czech Republic, in a workshop that still works the old way. The steel is forged, ground, heat treated and finished by smiths who learned the trade from the people before them, and the wood, horn and leather are cut and fitted by hand rather than pressed out on a line. That is also why no two pieces come out exactly the same.

Ransack Viking is a United States company. We import these pieces ourselves, check every one when it lands and ship from our warehouse in Chicago, Illinois. Engraving is done here in the United States after the piece arrives, so your runes or your own design go on before it leaves for you.

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 crescent blade sharp?

Yes, ground and honed to a working edge. The spike is pointed and the hook is deliberately left blunt on the inside curve, because a hook is meant to catch and pull rather than cut through what it has caught.

Can I dismount the head for storage?

Not without drilling out the rivets, and we would rather you did not. The rivets are peened cold through the langets and the haft. If you need it shorter for a wall, tell us the length you want before it is built.

Can I have runes engraved on it?

Yes. Use the rune converter on this page for Elder Futhark or choose your own Viking pattern. On this halberd the flat of the crescent blade and the outer face of the langets are both good surfaces.

Will mine look like the photograph?

The head profile, the length and the fittings will match. The ash grain in the stave is different in every piece, and the satin finish on a hand ground head carries its own faint directional lines.

What is the difference between this and the brass fitted halberd?

This is the plain issue pattern with steel langets and a straight ash haft. The brass fitted version is the dress equivalent, with brass langets, a leather wrapped grip and a brass butt ferrule. The heads do the same job.

How long does shipping take?

Two to three business days if it is in stock, two to three weeks if it is being made or engraved. It ships braced in a long carton with the head covered, free anywhere in the United States.

What is in the box

• One hand forged halberd in 1095 high carbon steel
• American ash haft with riveted steel langets and butt ferrule
• Fitted leather head cover
• Care, oiling and sharpening notes
• Forged and finished in the Czech Republic

Explore the range

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

Close to this one

Also in this group is the Cleftcrown halberd, high carbon steel. Sitting beside it in the catalogue is the Brasscrest halberd, high carbon steel. Another in the same line is the Emberhook halberd, pattern welded Damascus.

For a different piece from the same family, look at the Whitecrest polearm. Nothing here exactly right, build one to your own spec on the custom Norse arms page.