Largest Project to Date

This 7 foot Yari (Japanese spear) was made simply because I needed to use up a large amount of 1084 steel I wasn't going to use for knives anymore. However, I had been desparately wanting to make a spear for about a year and a half and I finally knew I had the skill, knowledge, and steel for it. Two handed spears (I hate shield and spear) are, in fact, my favorite medieval weapons by far, and I feel they are always heavily underestimated and overshadowed by swords. The only army that ever seemed to use them right were the Japanese, who developed an effective fighting style known as sōjutsu (art of the spear). Sōjutsu is an aggressive art that involves using stabs and slashes in fast, accurate hits, and it is what I mainly self teach myself. There is little knowledge on it so I just mix it with European spear fighting to get a pretty decent fighting style. Now that I had a chance to make my all time favorite weapon, I got straight to work on designing the head before the week days. Starting Monday, I worked 2 hours forging it, but the rest of the days I would work 5-6 hours on it! I was exhausted at the end, but I managed to a fully functional yari in one week. It now sits by my bed and I enjoy practicing spear fighting with it every so often.

#Forged #Bladesmith #Handmade #weapom #spear