Pilum ("Roman" spear) Project

Status
Not open for further replies.
Dirty Bob

Dirty Bob

Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2003
Messages
1,055
Location
The Great State of Texas
I've been meaning to do this for years, so this weekend I finally just took a shot at building a simplified Roman pilum for fun. I started with a 36-inch piece of 3/8-inch round stock, along with a 60-inch hardwood tool handle. Total material cost was just under 13 bucks.

attachment.php

I cold-forged a leaf-shaped point on one end, pounding with a small sledge hammer on a piece of railroad rail that is my "anvil." This took 15-20 minutes. I then cleaned the point up and sharpened it with a file. The forged head is a little under 3/4" in width and lengthened the steel stock by about 1/2".

I cut ten inches off the butt of the spearhead and drilled one end of the tool handle to the full 4-3/4" depth of my 3/8" spade bit. I roughed up the butt end of the spearhead and coated it with J-B Weld epoxy before seating it in the haft.

Cutting the haft to 42" at the butt gave me a total spear length of 65". I coated the forward end of the haft with carpenter's wood glue and wrapped it with twine to prevent splitting and to make a grip area. The rearmost part of it is right at the balance point.

attachment.php


The pilum is a heck of a lot of fun. With a cardboard box as a target, I found that I'm dangerous with my spear out to 10 yards or so at the moment. The point isn't real sharp, but the spear penetrates very well. The classic Roman pilum would have generally been heavier, and I can see how a legionary could launch such a weapon through the shield of an opponent, through his armor, and still have enough length of spearhead and force to make a serious wound.

Considering how easy it was to make and how fun it is to play with, I wish I'd made a spear a long time ago!

All my best,
Dirty Bob
 

Attachments

  • pilum_head_before_and_after.jpg
    pilum_head_before_and_after.jpg
    24.8 KB · Views: 275
  • pilum_7-22-2013.jpg
    pilum_7-22-2013.jpg
    12.5 KB · Views: 271
Sam Cade said:
Neat!

Are you gonna try to use a thong?
Click to expand...
I hadn't thought to...I was wearing regular shorts when throwing it. :D

Seriously, I'm glad you mentioned that! The cord might help me to have a more consistent release and might help me reach out a bit further with this little spear. Thanks, Sam! :)

armoredman said:
Very nice! The original pilum had a soft shank so it would bend, thereby fouling an opponents shield forcing him to discard it.
Click to expand...
There might be some disagreement about that. The shank of the classic Roman pilum is narrow behind the head and would therefore be able to better punch through the opponent's shield and wound the opponent. According to Wikipedia, it's possible that the bending was a side benefit, with the main focus being penetration. It's hard to say for sure. As a legionary, I would certainly have been happy about the pila barrage's ability to break a charge by wounding opponents and making them clumsy. The pilum could even be stepped on when approaching an opponent. Kinda scary to think about what that would be like on the receiving end.

In any case, I'm enjoying trying my hand with a spear!

Regards,
Dirty Bob
 
Very nice! My father recently made one too (he's a history buff) though he formed a four-sided tip instead of leaf. He built his with a steel shoe and spike ferrule, which was apparently to brace against charges by sticking it in the ground. He also confirmed, based on his reading of some Latin texts, that they were well known for penetrating armor of the time.
 
I believe the heavy pilum was designed to pentrate enemy shields at fairly close range and stick there, dragging down the shield and maybe wounding the shield arm, in order to open the enemy up to being stabbed with the gladius when they closed. The bending after impact also kept the enemy from picking up the spears and throwing them back, as could happen with a regular javelin.
It was a utilitarian weapon, and the the one you made is very much in the form and spirit of the ones made and maintained by a Legion's smiths and armorers in the field.
 
Very interesting. The idea of intentional bending always seemed a little questionable. I don't think there's very much first-hand information in the surviving descriptions. It would be interesting to recreate some of the combat in sparring and testing. I would expect any piece of iron penetrating a hardwood shield would get stuck fast pretty quickly without the need for a bent end.

My guess is that long shaft was calculated to deal with an enemy using Roman tactics, and would represent the length of penetration needed to skewer a man through the shield wall. If you imagine a wounded or dead man with a big shield and a long spear sticking both of them together, getting that mess out of the way could become an added problem for a unit trying to stay very closely linked. I don't really buy the idea that they were trying to get bent spears into cruder barbaric shields.
 
Cold forging might make your tip brittle or cause cracking. Have you checked the temper with a file to see if you need to draw it back?
 
hso said:
Cold forging might make your tip brittle or cause cracking. Have you checked the temper with a file to see if you need to draw it back?
Click to expand...
It's hot-rolled steel, which is fairly ductile. When I sharpened it, the file cut it readily. There might be some work-hardening, but I don't think it's brittle. If it is, maybe I'll find out the first time I hit a rock. There are plenty of them here on the edge of the Texas Hill Country. :uhoh:

I suspect that the pyramid point with a narrow shaft behind it would almost be like a barbed point in a shield. I'm surprised the Romans didn't barb the points. It wouldn't be difficult to do for just about any 'smith.

A spear stuck in an opponent or his shield can be used as a handle. It would also make an opponent clumsy, even with a minor wound or a spear that just penetrated the shield or a piece of armor without wounding the soldier. Imagine trying to climb a hill or go through a grove of trees with a spear haft sticking out of you or your gear.

If I were making this as a hunting spear, I would use 1/2-inch stock, so that I could probably get a broader point, as well as the benefits of a heavier spearhead, in terms of penetration.

Thank you for the encouragement,
Dirty Bob
 
I've read about the shanks supposedly bending on the pilum, and as someone here observed, it's a somewhat controversial idea, and a lot of historians reject it. What there seems to be better evidence for is the idea that the shank did not bend, but was attached to the wooden spear shaft with two pins, or rivets, one of which was weaker, and would usually break on impact, so now the shank would flop about like it was attached to the spear shaft by a hinge, and it would be useless to the enemy for a return throw at the Romans -- the same effect as if the shank itself bent. And when you think about it, a breakable pin makes a lot more sense if your goal is to make the weapon useless for the enemy to throw back at you. Pila would be collected and reissued after a battle, and if they all had to be hammered out straight again, that would mean not only a lot more work for the legionary armorers, but the likelihood is that they'd be never be straightened quite perfectly, and they'd be harder to throw accurately. On the other hand, if fixing them for reuse means simply replacing a wooden pin, it not only takes far less time and effort to repair them for reuse, it doesn't change the balance or dynamics of the weapon by having the shank hammered into a slightly different shape each time.

It is, of course, entirely possible that both methods were used at various times. To be sure, archaeologists have found pila with shanks that were attached with tangs or sockets fitted into or over the spear shaft, so the breaking pin method would obviously not apply to them. It's possible they were designed to bend on impact, and it's quite possible they weren't. Or that some were, and some weren't. Roman military equipment was not really standardized like ours is today. Partly this is because it was made in various workshops, in various parts of the empire, and involved a lot of hand labor. And it's partly because the Romans kept reissuing any given piece of equipment until it was no longer serviceable, no matter how old it was, or what newer types had come into service. As a result, the legions never really looked uniform like modern armies. It's thought that some mail shirts (lorica hamata) were probably reused for more than a century, and would have served alongside the newer lorica segmentata after those appeared in the reign of Augustus, even in the same units. In fact you'd see legionaries in the same unit with different patterns of helmet, lorica, gladius, etc.. It would be like seeing a modern U.S. army unit standing in formation, with most of the soldiers wearing modern kevlar helments, but a lot of them with old M1 steel pots, and even the odd M1917 tin hat, and some with M16A2s, some with M16A1s, etc.
 
Last edited:
Ave Cesare! Senatus Populusquo Roma!

Now I want to make one. :)
 
Cum pila proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti pila habebunt.
Click to expand...
I think it means, one Roman solder says to another:

"I got a bad case of the running trots from that green water we drank at the last sewer aqueduct the column stopped at."

I could be wrong though. :confused:

rc
 
Sam Cade said:
They often did.

Nasty.

romanpilum.jpg
Click to expand...

Definitely nasty! Hey, Sam, that's a great image and a big help! It looks like an illo from an academic book I read years ago, about war in the classical world.

When you look at those spears from a smith's POV, they're very well-designed. The socketed heads were probably forged from a single piece of iron, with a long, flat triangle curled around to form the socket and then either left "open," or the edges forge welded. I've read that, in any case, a pilum head is forged of one piece of iron, which makes them a fairly good representation of some skill with a hammer, especially for someone who probably was cranking them out in big numbers.

Pilum no. 4 looks especially good, by the way.

The riveted head was probably easier to remove from the haft, if needed, for rebending or replacement. A long metal shank or socket would have made a spear difficult to cut when it was stuck in a shield or in an enemy of Rome. Overall, an ingenious design that was used for hundreds of years. It seems the pilum worked well for the Republic and for the Empire which followed it.

Thanks, man! I need to make some more pila. The next one, I think, will have a 2-foot piece of 1/2-inch hot-rolled round stock as the basis for its head. This will make my leaf-shaped point wider. I think I can get an inch of width without too much trouble. If I apply a cold chisel, I can turn it into a barbed point, but I like the leaf-shape better for removing from my target.

I also keep thinking about a "modern" version of the plumbata. :D

SPQR!
Dirty Bob
 
Cum pila proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti pila habebunt
Click to expand...

"When pilum are outlawed, only outlaws will have pilum"
It's a version of a joke where "catapult" is used instead of pilum.

but I like the leaf-shape better for removing from my target.

I also keep thinking about a "modern" version of the plumbata.
Click to expand...

I would definitely avoid any kind of barbs, it will just make target extraction a nightmare. My dad favors the four-sided pyramid shape.

I too wanted to try a plumbata, but be advised this picture is not necessarily accurate. The real ones had a hand-span longer shaft after the fletchings, and where thrown overhand like a tomahawk!
 
Last edited:
For plumbata, the basic parts are a point, a shaft, fletchings, and a weight. The point could be a 6- to 8-inch piece of 3/8" steel rod, with one end forged into a leaf shape. For the shaft, I'm thinking of a 16-inch piece of 1/2" to 5/8" wooden dowel, with 3/4" being the widest I'd accept. For flights, I'm thinking either feathers or leather, or even thin wood. For the weight, it looks as though people cast a chunk of lead onto the shaft/head junction. I'm thinking about a piece of plumbing pipe, 4-6 inches in length, over the shaft. It would protect the shaft against splitting and provide the needed weight, although if it extends an inch or two over the 3/8 steel, I could fill the space between the rod and the pipe with lead. If I attach the flights forward of the butt of the shaft, it leaves a "handle" on the end for throwing underhand. That's the throw I favor for distance. It can also thrown underhand at close range.

As an alternate construction method, I could use 1/2" round stock and a 1/2" shaft, with the butt of the head and the head of the shaft inserted into a piece of plumbing pipe. Two small pins would secure the parts together. The thick round stock would add weight, along with the piece of pipe. It would also give a wider, sturdier point. This method could give a more streamlined, simple-looking dart than the more traditional method, and it might be heavier than the plumbata described in the preceding paragraph.

In either case, the Dirty Bob version of the plumbata would look like a lawn dart from Hades, with some of the shaft extending behind the flights as a handle. I can see why the Romans finally switched to them, if a throwing weapon was all they wanted, although the pilum really would have been a heckuva charge stopper, and it could have been used as a thrusting spear to hold off cavalry. I think the Romans should have kept one pilum and replaced the second one with two or more plumbata in pockets on the back of the scutum (shield).

----------------------------------

Ya, wanna know, why, though, I really made the pilum in the first place? I keep thinking of our brethren under the benighted weapon laws in other places. My simplified "pilum" is simple enough that you could make a few, paint them black, and use them as heavy-duty plant stakes! Lighter, cheaper, more mundane-looking "stakes" could be made with 1/4" steel stock, broom handles, and string for wrapping. If things got ugly, you could go out to the garden, pull the stakes up, brush off some dirt, and set them someplace handy in case of need.

If several people each had a "plant stake" or two, they could be quite a formidable group to reckon with, especially if guns were scarce. Whenever I read of people somewhere arming themselves with makeshifts after a natural disaster or other event, I wish they had something more effective, like some pila in the hands of a group of determined people defending their families.

Sorry for going on so long, but that's what I was thinking about while I made that spear!

All my best,
Dirty Bob
 
Last edited:
Plant stake??

Surely you have dandelions in your yard don't you??

This Rat Cheer is my Pilum!!
I keep one handy in the front of the garage by the door, and another one on the back deck for any rampaging dandelions, or Roman pillagers.

http://www.amazon.com/Ames-True-Temper-1941600-Dandelion/dp/B00004S1Z5/ref=pd_sim_sbs_hi_3

I pity the fool that got slapped up side the head with the handle, or stuck in the gizzard with the blade.

Yes, it's a little short for a Pilum.
But so am I.

rc
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

J
  • Locked
Going boar hunting, making my own spear out of my Shanghai Shadow. Haft tips?
Replies
10
Views
856
Leadbutt
Leadbutt
J
  • Locked
So. I want to turn my Cold Steel Shanghai Shadow into a spear head. Help?
Replies
2
Views
794
Dirty Bob
Dirty Bob
A
  • Locked
Updated Stupid Unemployed Project #644... Homemade Naginata
Replies
1
Views
627
JShirley
JShirley
S
  • Locked
questions about spears
Replies
14
Views
1K
erik larson
E
Ugly Sauce
  • Locked
My latest spear...!
Replies
15
Views
516
Ugly Sauce
Ugly Sauce
Back
Top