Since I was in the woods scouting for a new hunting location yesterday I decided to start the process of making a simple spear.
I read a letter in Backwoodsman Magazine that seemed to make good sense to me, so its the procedure I chose to follow.

All I had on me was my EDC fixed blade, so I'm keeping the whole exercise limited to that one tool.

First was selecting a straight sapling of roughly 1.5" diameter. The author said pick one next to a tree, which I'm guessing is so you're harvesting a sapling with little to no chance of growing any larger.


Cutting it to length (5-6') took a few minutes, but it made a nice walking staff when I meandered back to my car.

Right now I'm at the point of keeping it tied to a rigid, straight item while it dries.

I used the prop stick for my SUV hatch since I had it handy. I'll update with how long its supposed to take doing that after I reread the article, I need a refresher.

But, for now, I figured I'd be safe squaring off the butt, again, with just a small knife.


That gave me a handful of kindling I can use in a later step, fire curing the spear point. in that step I'll actually be burying the point an inch or two in the ground beneath a fire so it doesn't char and become brittle. Chances are I'll make a couple more soon to rotate one above the flames and place the other in hot coals to do a compare/ contrast of the different methods.

I read these spears were traditionally melee weapons rather than range. They weren't thrown. The hunters depending on them also followed the "one is none" rule, and typically had 2-3 ready for use.

Who here's made spears - besides Grumpy, lol ?