How To Forge Bodkins - Making Medieval Arrowheads
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- Medieval arrowheads came in a huge variety of types and forms within those types, but the most popular and commonly used military heads were the bodkins. Four-sided and with a range of point types, the bodkin is both the most commonly made and misunderstood medieval arrowhead.
This video outlines the four main types - the London Museum Types 7, 8, 9 and 10. Why they're different, and how they're forged in order to make them accurate to museum examples.
In order they are:
MoL Type 7 - Urquhart Castle (13thC)
MoL Type 8 - Castle Acre (14thC)
MoL Type 9 - Private collection (15thC)
MoL Type 10 - Urquhart Castle (13th-15thC)
For all of these arrowheads, and for courses on how to forge these, please visit my website at www.medievalarrows.co.uk
Music attribution:
Bensound.com
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He's giving all the years of his experience for free. Thanks, man
Beautiful wrokmanship. I love forging with charcoal also.
Great video Will. I'll be watching this on loop ready for my visit to see you in a couple of weeks.👍
What an absolute gem this video is! Good audio and easy to follow instructions 👍🏻😁
Wow. Thank you for sharing
very well made video, thank you
Your forge is gorgeous! I love the bellows. Great explanation of the different bodkins. I am planning to try my hand at some this week.
Beautiful. Relaxing. If you had an apprentice to work the forge, then you could probably churn heads out twice as quickly, but your muscles would be even more asymmetric unless you switched hand with each head.
Love to see new videos mate! Getting my order in soon ❤
Would you please do a video on how you make your socket-tong ?
Love those tongs! I made a much worse set with a similar vibe many years ago but they never really worked right. Instead of having the concave jaw holding against the mandrel taper, it was just a sort of rounded over end that pinched it. I'll have to revisit the idea!
Superb video Will. I really would love to learn this process. I’m super busy in the medium term. But would love to do your arrow making course.
You're welcome any time mate!
great skill,very nice video - I like your work
Thank you very much!
This was one of the best videos I have seen all year!
Very clear and very thorough. I could probably pull this off, but need to trash a few and spend some time grinding as I make no illusions about this being as easy as you make it look. 😊
All those pieces of automobile coils springs one finds lying around could probably be used for this. And maybe weigh the blanks to get them weigh the same before forging, which is more of an issue for shooting them straight than for historicity.
Thank you for this video!
Give it a go! You'll find that if you keep the sockets the same diameter, your forging methods are consistent and you cut off the same amount each time, the heads will come out within 3-5g of each other every time.
If I'm making a set of 12 for a customer for example, the unground heads are within a couple of grams, and any difference can then be tweaked during grinding to get them perfectly matched.
Thanks for the commentary,👍👍
That sounds like Will. I recognize the voice. Huzzah!
It is impressive to watch you form the socket in one heat. I am surprised that the transition between the socket and the neck consists of about half of the circumference of the neck, post-elongating. The proximal portion of the overlapping edges of the socket must buttress against the base of the neck to more evenly distribute force around the circumference of the socket.
I'd like to see you make fire basket arrows. I've got a general idea of how it would work, but I'm unsure of the exact order you'd do the work.
Split with hot-cut into the three bars, forge the bars square, weld the point and draw out. Neck the base of the socket, cut off, forge out socket and wrap. Done!
Elegant work Will, I can imagine needing quite a large number of smiths to keep up with the use of arrow heads on a campaign or indeed for defensive needs. Do you know how they were preserved?
I subscribed as I want to see more of your videos. I am a fellow smith and have an interest in arrow heads ...not sure if its the mechanics of making them, the art of teh designs or just a morbid wish to know how they worked but here I am
thanks for sharing
So you did have to touch up the very tip of the needle bodkin to bring it to a point. Is the wire wheel necessary for functionality? Do oxide encrustaceans inhibit penetration or exacerbate surface degredation?
The second one looks like you did some sanding of each face of the tip. Fortunately, you forged it quite uniformly, so it must not have required much material removal from each face.
Hey...I've seen that forge before! Only there was this tall, bald Nosferatu looking dude making a spearhead! Btw...who made that hammer you're wielding?
That type 10 looks more like a transition betweed a type 8 and a type 9. A type 8.5, in a way.
why didnt they cast iron arrows in a giant cast mold, so that it increased production massively?
Great question! Casting iron makes cast iron, which is brittle and no good at all for weaponry. You need to work with the grain structure, and produce weaponry that can be ductile to avoid it shattering on impact.
If you drop a cast iron pan onto something hard, you'll see immediately why no weapons were ever cast, once iron replaced bronze. Bronze can be cast because it remains ductile.
What's really cool is that when you look at early iron age weapons such as spear heads, you can see that they tried to copy the earlier period cast weapon forms by forging the iron, until they realised that forging can be used to make far more efficient shapes and profiles than casting.
In switzerland they apparently cast pure iron, without carbon. In that sense, their cast iron isn't brittle. As for the grain refinement, it's still possible to cold work the cast piece, perhaps give it a red heat, and call it a day. I think it's more related to technolgy at the time, it would be near impossible to melt pure iron in a medieval setting, and casting it would require much higher heats than just barely melting it (like 1700 C), and i'm not aware of ancient materials that would take that kind of heat. (And that's not taking into account the kind of furnace that would give you such heats)
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