Birchouse Woodcrafts specializes in making period accurate arms and armor with a special focus on shields. I make weapon and armor display mounts for HEMA, SCA, LARP, reenactment, hunting, and the like...Oh, and I also do some wood art. I just follow my muse wherever it takes me. You can find our products or contact us for Custom Orders at the following.
@jakeaiken9966 nice pull! It is not something we offer at this time, though it is something we could certainly look into it for you! New products generally take anywhere between 3 months to a year, as we conduct research, contact museum curators, and coordinate with our smithing partners. Feel free to contact us either at our email or business page on Facebook! facebook.com/Jczich?mibextid=ZbWKwL birchousewc@yahoo.com
I think art is a good source to determine if a culture was aware of a weapon. I really like the armor of the Saracens or Philistine troops as shown in medieval art. It's probably based on a bad interpretation of Byzantine arms and armor as well as second hand accounts of actual Islamic soldiers. What's your opinion of some of the fantastic or mythological arms and armor shown in medieval art?
@gozer87 The biggest lesson I have taken from my talks with museum curators when we are in research is to take a trust but verify stance when it comes to arms and armor from antiquity. Art is absolutely an outstanding starter point and lends a lot of credibility to historical items. On the other hand, art is at the artist's discretion/interpretation, so anytime you can use another primary source in conjunction with art, it makes for a pretty airtight case. As to anything fantasy/mythological in medieval or fuedal art. I think it's pretty damn cool that artist centuries before us were coming up with cool designs like we do today in our own artistic interpretations, especially thinking about movies and video games. Sorry for the novel, but that was a great insight!
It always amazes me that lances, sabers, and cutlasses were still initially issued to WW1 soldiers and sailors in the age of heavy artillery, machine guns, grenades, and gas attacks.
@robertrobert7924 it is certainly a fascinating insight into the mentality countries had going into the war and how unprepared they were for the frightful technologies and tactics that WW1 would unleash. To be perfectly fair, I don't think anyone at the time could imagine where they'd end up.
oh and btw did you paint the wood or add a leather layer, im thinking of adding leather layer and painting the icon. and did you sand the sides or thats just how it came out when you cut it?
@DannyCurrinton we use a 100% linen facing with a layer of gesso and then painted with milk paint to achieve that lead based paint look. The edges of the shield are chamefered, a feature we have seen on a few examples from museum collections. The full video is on our channel. Feel free to check it out as we talk about the build itself!
@insch.9547 we here at Birchouse love history and are fascinated by arms and armor. I think it is good to temper that enthusiasm with a healthy dose of understanding humankind's relentless pursuit of ways to destroy one another, and the tools we create are as frightening as they are creative.
Samurai: “Our primary weapons are the hallowed Yari and the Katana. These weapons both require great skill and commitment to use. The training we do with these weapons ingrain an ethos that they are not their own objects. They are a part of our very SOUL/S. And we spill blood on the battlefield with these weapons with the stroke of a hand that is skilled at the level of Gods if we can…” Also Samurai: “Mothafuckin BAT!!!!!!!!!”
I made a charm with green jade ans tiger's eye beads. Then my brother grabbed my Ball head war club and used it on a stump making the beads come off and i had to comb through the grass to find all 28 beads ;-; now i will sew them into the cloth wrap instead of using a wire
Hey there! I'm Deakon and I know I said in the email but wanted to say more here as well, you guys were a blast to talk to and I kept finding my way back debating on buying a shield but it didn't work out but man am I happy that I was still able to win this and am able to have some of your craft to call my own. Very happy and very excited, thank you!
Hey you just popped up on my recommended! Loved your review. My favorite part it when the brotherhood found the headless guy and held up the picture of his face and said “yep that’s him” 😂
theres a very interesting passage in james michener's poland depicting the "peasant's maul" made by studding flint into a growing ash tree, and the familiy going into the woods, as it was time to cut "the weapon on which their lives would depend" for the (im pretty sure it was) battle of grunwald.
Very few companies are making unique products like this, it is very appreciable and I will definitely be checking out the website at some point in time.
A lot of this is stuff that has been in stock for a while, and we have just now begun to utilize RU-vid shorts to advertise our goods. We are also in the high production season as we do a few festivals through the summer and fall.
Thank you for watching! It is genuinely appreciated. Generally, they are just called mauls, though clubs or bludgeons could be used as stand ins. We were largely inspired by the work of Tod Cutler, who also crafts period accurate arms and armor, though on a much bigger scale.
We use CS Osbourne decorative nails for the studs on our War Clubs. While they are very nice , I'm excited to say that we are looking to cast our own studs in-house later in the year. Thanks for watching! We genuinely appreciate it.
Will be buying one or two of these. It will be a great gift. You do really good work. I always wanted to make one like these but never have! Glad to find your channel
Thanks! We make them right here at Birchouse Woodcrafts! Here are links to all the places you can find our goods! (PS, we have 4 in stock right now!) . . . Find all of our goods in our shop at goimagine.com/birchousewoodcrafts/ Or contact us for custom orders at facebook.com/Jczich?mibextid=ZbWKwL birchousewc@yahoo.com
@@birchouse awesome! Sorry I got over excited and commented before you said that you made it and where I could buy... Haha your shields look great too I like the historical type
Not saying it would not be effective. Honestly looks like it would send my ass 10 feet in the opposite direction. It is the type of weapon you get hit by and I imagine you would wish not to be wearing armor so it could kill you and you would not have to live the rest of your life as a crippled or be literally beaten like a pinata until you burst open like a pinata. Only point is that I have dropped cinder blocks from about 3feet off the floor and they will shatter like that you drop a bone from that height won't break. Bones are not harder than a cinder block but they are way less brittle.
Thanks for the watch! For the same reason cinder blocks are used for punching demos in martial arts, we chose to break one more for the visceral appeal than how sturdy they are...also no one would volunteer a bone so...
@@birchouse good point never did martial arts lol. Was just wondering why you chose a brick. Also I don't think we need to be ready on bones pretty sure a guy with your weight/strength can easily break bones with a baseball bat imagine a steel reinforced baseball bat lol.
In Argentina gineknee pigs are a staple of food to eat on holidays there its fun to know what different countries eat some places eat scorpions, grasshoppers, turtles, the giant land turtles, Africa has Alligator,camin, crocodile, armadillos ,skunks,snakes the pythons rattlesnake,
As a young boy I noticed how much better it was throwing a short stick, 35 cm or so, than throwing a stone. It would be the simplest of hunting tools! Perfect for rabits. But you could probably knock out larger animals too. If you weighten one end with a stone (a kind of stone ax, or rather stone club) you certainly could hunt with that. If these existed historically, they wouldn't leave any trace. The wood would disappear and a stone glued to it would look like any other stone. Not recognizable as a tool, like an edged stone is.
I'm wondering why they never use shorter arrows. Perhaps like a bow arrow. But if you have those, you would probably have a bow too. I can't see why it wouldn't work though. A video about that? A lighter dart and a longer atlatl? If you have to hold the spear, that must weaken your grip, and that would interfere with the throw. Wouldn't two pegs holding the dart in place be a good idea? I think I would curve the handle of the atlatl to improve its dynamics. It's like with an ax handle. A straight one is inferior.
Howdy! You found the old video. We just uploaded a remake of this video that is both better quality and more concise. I will attempt to answer some of your questions, however, I am but a simple craftsman and I do not profess to be an expert. The atlatl is a spear thrower and pre-dates the bow and arrow. When superior bow technology arrives the spear shortens to an arrow. Some archeological atlatl finds do have spear rest and you would not need to balance the spear in your fingers. Some do not, and some have finger holes to enhance your grip. My guess is that this is all very primitive technology and it was all trial and error. There are a few museum pieces out there that have a slight curve to them. (and now that you've pointed it out, we'll probably build a few for our shop, another rabbit hole to dive into) But it seems that most are straight. My guess again is the primitive nature of the tool and the people building it. Thank you so much for giving us a watch and for the insightful comments! We are a small business and it means a lot us.
Thank you kindly! As a small business, we do sincerely appreciate the support. Alas, I am ultimately a craftsman, and I would certainly not call myself a professional with the atlatl, nor would I pretend to be otherwise. We do try to share short informative videos that complement the goods we have on offer.
I used to take courses on history and archaeology a century ago and always wondered what it would feel like to throw an atlatl. Thank you so much for making this video! You said it was short, and it is! More people should share what they know with others and it doesn't take a long-winded video to do that.
@@birchouse oh okay, so I throw it underhand or overhand or sidearm? Alot of ways to throw a baseball And I'm holding the thrower differently than I am a baseball fyi
Hello there! My apologies, you caught us in the middle of a shop reorganization. I just added one to the shop as of this writing. You can also contact us at the links below to have a custom order made. birchousewc@yahoo.com facebook.com/Jczich?mibextid=ZbWKwL
