We wanted to look at some of the new details on our Burgundian Pole Axe and talk a bit about the recent upgrade. This is a popular piece and a great reproduction of the beautiful axe in The Wallace Collection in London, one of our favorite places.
The Axe is now done in 4140 steel on the spike and head. The cutting edge and spike are hardened steel with an interrupted quench as they would have been in period. The langets are tapered and the whole piece is mounted on an ash haft made in house. Our desire to make these pieces as authentically as possible at the price, allows us to hand chose the wood and do the extra work to hand fit all the components as individual weapons. This provides a solid and dependable axe.
Burgundian Axe back hammer face
A long with the custom spiked butt (see the video) we have done a few other elements on these as custom additions. These take more time and add cost but can personalize your axe and are certainly elements seen in period examples. Our queue is long on custom adjustments these days, but drop us an email if interested.
Burgundian Axe by Arms & Armor with custom for e and aft langets and a vine motif chiseled into axe face.
Custom Rondel on Burgundian Axe with vine chiseling.
Custom fancy butt on axe
Here is a video where we go over some of the specifics and discuss this excellent knightly weapon. Great for the list or the field, it is a medieval axe from the 15th century that is tough to beat.
Nathan Clough, Ph.D. is Vice President of Arms and Armor and a member of the governing board of The Oakeshott Institute. He is a historical martial artist and a former university professor of cultural geography. He has given presentations on historical arms at events including Longpoint and Combatcon, and presented scholarly papers at, among others, The International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Craig Johnson is the Production Manager of Arms and Armor and Secretary of The Oakeshott Institute. He has taught and published on the history of arms, armor and western martial arts for over 30 years. He has lectured at several schools and Universities, WMAW, HEMAC, 4W, and ICMS at Kalamazoo. His experiences include iron smelting, jousting, theatrical combat instruction and choreography, historical research, European martial arts and crafting weapons and armor since 1985.