[Jean Thibodeau]

I really liked the A&A English Bill and decided a while ago to order a customized version of it: Mostly, asked for heat treated rather than the standard not heat treated version.

http://www.arms-n-armor.com/pole030.html

I ordered the head only and mounted it myself onto an 1 1/4" pole that I reduced the diameter to 1 1/8 to fit into the socket.

The outside of the socket is not completely flush with the outside of my pole while the standard version by A&A uses an 1 1/8" pole.

Mine is a bit shorter overall at 79" compared to the standard A&A model which is stated on the site at being 83".

Craig also made some minor changes to the standard model that I was very pleased with:

A) The main axe blade part below the sickle hook has a bit of subtle belly rather than being strait.

B) The tip of the sickle/hook has a reinforced tip of surprising design that Craig told me he discovered on some period Bills and decided to add this feature to my custom version: This reinforced tip is like a miniature adze cutting edge a bit like a chisel at 90 degrees from the axe to sickle main edge of the Bill.

This would make the tip more robust and I think would really dig into a soft target and grab aggressively at maille or an armour joint at the sacrifice of the last inch or so of sickle edge getting wider and not being sharp.

But the actual adze like/chisel edge is sharp.

The top spike is sharpened on both sides for about 2/3 of the length of the top spike.
The back spike is also sharp.

One advantage of getting the head unmounted is that in hand it felt very robust and I could also weight it by itself, and it weighs 2 lbs 12 oz.

Mounted the 1/8" thickness of the blade seems thinner but because I could feel it's mass unmounted I know that it is far from fragile !

The steel plate that forms the head is continuous through the socket and it seems like the socket is slotted for the plate to fit into and then welded seamlessly to the plate, this creates a web of 1/8" steel in the tapered part of the socket.

This may not be the way these where put together in period but I think it's stronger this way than if the plate had been cut out and the structural integrity totally due to the welding of the plate to the socket.

The haft was cut with a slot to fit onto this web to be able to have wood in the tapered part of the socket, but could have been cut square but would have been more shallowly fitted into the socket: I don't think this would make any structural difference but I preferred the haft to fit most of the tapered part of the socket.

NOTE: If this description seems a bit hard to understand I made a drawing of it that is in the pics attached to this informal review.

Also, the finish is not the original finish, as I aged the finish using Dijon mustard I left to dry on the head after stippling it on with a wet wipe. I cleaned this with fine synthetic steel wool and repeated this a few times to randomize the " staining " of the steel.

Dijon mustard seems to give a dark grey staining and after cleaning and oiling it doesn't seem to be a rusting process but really a staining that produces a very nice patina of a Bill used and weathered but never left to rust and well taken care of.

I also added on a steel butt that may not have been done historically that I bought from Kult of Athena:
http://www.kultofathena.com/product.asp?item=...r+Butt+Cap

This feels like a solid weapon and quite frankly is probably the scariest weapon I have after I gave the edges just a little extra sharpening. Handling feels both authoritative but not over ponderous and with enough sharp edges to cut, chop or grab in numerous ways as one has a thrusting point, an axe edge, a sickle edge with a reinforced point and a back spike.

I really appreciate that Craig added a few extra custom features based on more recent research, and that A&A seems to constantly upgrade their work when they find new information about the historical weapons on which their catalogue weapons are based.

I may add more to this review if something I forgot to mention comes to mind or I find other things to add.

[Jean Thibodeau]

A few more pics, showing the back spike and both sides of the Bill head, hopefully the finish/patina is somewhat visible in the various pics: Sort of difficult to light and photograph this as I'm still learning to use the camera and I am using improvised lighting in a small space and I also have to figure out how to use the macro setting and control the focus at times.

[Ken Speed]

Jean!

Yikes!

Remind me never ,ever to get you angry!

That bill is about as vicious looking a weapon as I've ever seen. It's like a medieval Bass o matic for people! "it slices, it dices, it purees!"

You gonna do test cutting with it? NO! Don't tell me, I don't want to know!

Don't let kids see it, they'll have nightmares!


Good for you! I bet you and Craig had fun!

[Tim Lison]

Nice one Jean! Nice choice on the customization. The little curve on the axe part makes a big difference! Congratulations. It is in good company with your partizan!

[Corey Skriletz]

Great job with the attachment of the shaft. Cutting the slit in it looks like it worked pretty well. Beautiful piece of work!

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[William P]

... the ONLY reason i might find a poleaxe slightly less scary then this is that with a poleaxe your in danger no matter wat armour your wearing,

but facing this as a reletively unarmoured footsoldier with just padded jack, doublet and jack chains on my arms,

a good way to assess its pure edge sharpness jean, would be to fasten the sickle edge facing upwards and simply hit the edge with a tatami roll or something, at sword strike sort of forces, i realise theres more to the power of a slice than the edge sharpness alone, but itll give an idea of what happens when the tatami, or whatever cutting media you choose, and the edge collide with a decent amount of momentum.

definately gives me a newfound respect for bills (personally i prefer items like the bec de corbain and swiss halberd.)

[Craig Johnson]

Hi Guys

I am glad folks appreciate Jean's project. He did a great job mounting the head and I like his finish quite a bit as well. Good job Jean!

As to the heat treat of the head, it is something that not a great deal of research has been done on. Williams has an article that deals with testing a pole arm head and I have been around when some surface testing has been done. Also the constructional elements that would affect it are dealt with a bit in the Hafted Weapons in Medieval and Renaissance Europe book.

The main issue is that iron was probably used in most pole weapons so even if one attempted to heat treat it would not go hard. You would have to carbonize the area first and with the larger items that would be more difficult. As one gets into the later Renaissance I am not sure if this held true. Some of the big partisan may have been made from steel. Mu guess is they would rely on work hardening for the edges but they may have tried some heat treat.

I think it would be pretty unlikely that many pole arms before this would have been done at all though. One did not need to rely on the hardness of the edge as weight and speed are far more important for the physics of their use. Where you do see the attention to the harder edges is in the hand axes. Things like the Danish War axe and the fighting hand axes probably where done.

Best
Craig

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Lovely weapon, Jean. An even shorter haft makes sense to me, given both the recommendations of period writers as well as my experience handling the standard A&A model.

Now, on the subject of heat treatment and carbon content. Sixteenth-century sources such as Sir Roger William emphasized the importance of robust construction for bills and halberds. Williams specifically desired halberds made of "good stuffe" rather than those crafted from "naughtie stuffe like our common browne bills." Henry Barrett mentioned a "well stieled" point for the lead maul he wanted archers to carry. Of course, we don't know exactly what he meant by steel. However, these texts together suggest that the quality of the metal and manufacturing of polearms varied significantly and this difference mattered on the battlefield.

Also, various museum collections distinguish between iron and steel. If they do so accurately, many polearms contained steel.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Oh, Craig, you might also give us more background information about that reinforced tip as it was something I had never seen before, although I think it's a very useful and smart design to reinforce the tip very different from the more obvious way of thickening into a diamond section point.

[William P]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Gordon Frye]

Jean;

That's a really cool bill! Glad you finally got it into your hot little hands...I remember you talking about ordering it some time ago, so it's nice that you finally get to play with it!

May years ago (several decades now, in fact!) I made myself up a "do-it-yourself" bill from a brush-hook. I riveted a socket to the bottom of it and a spike to side, extending to the top, then mounted the whole contraption on a stout pole of about 6' in length. It was pretty wicked, and I wish I had hung on to it, Somewhere down the line though someone decided that they needed it more than I did, so off it went. Alas!

Anyway, it proved to be one of the most effective pole-arms I've ever had the pleasure of playing around with. I remember an SCA friend donated an old but fairly well built helmet to the cause, and I gave it a good swing and "SCHUNK!", the "beak" sank into the top of the helmet to the edge of the blade! Now admittedly, the brush-hook was probably of much better steel than one would have found in 16th Century England, and the helmet, good as it was, probably wasn't of the finest surface-hardened iron, but still, it was amazing how buttery-soft that helmet felt when the bill was sinking into it! The big wedge-shaped holes that it left were pretty impressive as well! I assuredly would NOT have wanted to have been wearing that helmet when it was hit by the bill!

So there it is, Bills as a Serious Weapon! Glad you finally got it, and thanks for sharing the photo's with us!

Cheers!

Gordon

[Craig Johnson]

Evenin Guys

The geometry of the tip is something I found on an original halberd first. It was probably about 20 years ago now, crap I am old and was in a private collection in Wisconsin. I was surprised to see this chisel shaped point. But when one thinks about it in the context of why would they do this, it is easy to see that it focuses the force on a stout edge tip than a more fragile point. Over time I have found the tip on many different examples of pole arms with a forward facing point.

The detail is something that is relatively complex as it does not have a sharp edge all the way to the point but rather fades to the chisel edge over the last short distance. This shape has great penetrating power and transitions into a pretty stout cutting edge. When I have used this shape on things it has a tendency really "open things up" as it where

The actual percentage of weapons with this type point I have no idea, but I have probably seen at least twenty examples if not more and think it would have been something that would have been a known design element in the repertoire of the pole arm maker.

Best
Craig

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Terry Thompson]

I love that bill, Jean!
I've recently purchased a bill head and having a bit of mental conundrum with the length of the pole mounting. I read that George Silver in 1599 wrote that Black Bill (military) should be about 5 or 6' in length. Where as a forest (brown) bill would be in the order of 8' or 9'.
I can see the 8' to 9' of a brown bill in over all length, being that an agricultural impliment being used primarily to reach up into tree limbs and might have a somewhat smaller head without the pointy bits. But conversely the length of 5 or 6' seems a bit short in over-all length when considering the head is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20"+ (50cm+) long including its end spike (not including the socket or langets for mounting).
The one I'm getting is a bit more like the A&A italian Bill in style, but more angular on the chopping part.
What's the general concensus of a proper black bill length? Does one include the projecting spike in the over-all 5-6' length when the spike itself is nearly a foot long?
I can always cut the pole shorter, but adding on length is not as easy : )

[William P]