Hieveryone.

I joined the forum several years ago, It has helped me a lot to learn but I have almost had no activity.

Recently i tried to forge a reproduction of a short-handle war billhook from the “Les Coutumes de Toulouse”, a French manuscript from late XIII Century.

I used an old spring of low-carbon steel and oak wood.

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Is not exactly like the illustrations taking account that are somewhat abstract, it measures 83cm and weighs 1.08kg.

thanks for watching!

Nice work, good to see some of the less fancy and more common early medieval weapons about.

Well I think you did a fine job! I like the rough forged look, and I think the shape of your blade looks even better than the original artwork. You got the handle dead-on perfect! Good job....keep it up!!! :D ...........McM

That's a very nice weapon.

I wonder is the same process that turned the two-handed axe into the pollaxe and halberd turned these sorts of weapons into the bills, welch hooks and roncas of the 15th century onwards.

Hey I really like this. I'm a fan of polearms and I think this smaller one is great. Nice finish!

Thanks all!

Tom: It is curious that we no longer see weapons of similar length, I do not think these short bills do evolved more, there were always curved cutting tools with different handle lengths, the longest were used for pruning and to be good against chivalry and maybe continued evolve to complex typologies. Possibly this is a transition:

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Oh, In the first artwork shown it's obvious that the Bill is meant to have a short handle, my comments above are only about the the last illustration where the length of the Bill could be longer than shown due to the available space.

What is also debatable is that in the first drawing there seems to be some lines that suggest some sort of fuller on the concave side where you interpreted as being the side with the edge: It is possible that the weapon was a heavy chopper with the edge being on the convex side ?

I can see short Bills and/or short choppers being portrayed in the drawing ? :confused:

I see no reason why both types might not have been used in period, but it's hard to be 100% sure with the period artwork.

For actual hand-to-hand combat, I personally wouldn't want one much longer than the one in the bottom photo. It seems to me that with extra length comes extra time to make your move. Yes, one would be able to deliver a hard, solid chop....but it would take more time to deliver. The short hafted version would be deadly close up just by weight and force alone. I can see it getting through mail relatively easy with a good downward chop....unless you already have a spear or sword blade in your gut. I can see a weapon such as this being called on after an initial pike/long spear charge. But.....this is all just me.....McM