Weighting in on Handle Cross sections: Round vs Oval/ Rectangular

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by freebooter

Timo, I am interested in seeing oval poles on Chinese pole arms.
All antiques I own and have sold, are/were round or faceted and in a couple of instances, faceted leading to round.

Oval or pear-shaped section was standard for ge. I don't believe that many hafts have been found, but socketed heads usually have oval or pear/tear-drop section sockets, and the same for butts. The only two hafts I've seen described were oval and pear section. Some sockets I've seen in photos look round, but I haven't seen them end-on. These are the tubular sockets.

A nice article, with plenty of pictures, including butts and one haft, is available online: http://www.grandhistorian.com/kennet...e_Halberds.pdf

There are also oval-socketed bronze spearheads. Whether these were to mount with ge, or for use alone as spears I don't know. It also doesn't mean that the whole haft was oval-section. The only spear hafts I know of that age have been round (and composite, a round hardwood centre with bamboo slats glued around it).

For more recent polearms, the shorter sword-on-a-stick dao are often oval-section hafted. Long-handled dao or dadao, or pudao, or whatever one calls it. Whether these are classified as long-handled swords or as polearms is a matter of definition.

I saw a tantalising photo of MIng polearms, very much like naginata. Would be interesting to know the cross-section of them.