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- Axe & Polearm Replicas
Our Hanwei Axes & Polearms collection offers amazing replica models at an attainable price. These items will be a perfect complement to your home or theater collection.
A pole weapon or polearm is a close combat weapon in which the main fighting part of the weapon is placed on the end of a long shaft, typically of wood, thereby extending the user's effective range. Spears, glaives, pollaxes, halberds and bardiches are all varieties of polearm. The idea of attaching a weapon onto a long shaft is an old one indeed, as the first spears date back to the Stone Age. The purpose of using pole weapons is either to extend reach or to increase angular momentum—and thus striking power—when the weapon is swung.
Pole weapons are relatively simple to make, and they were fairly easy for most people to use effectively as they were often derived from hunting or agricultural tools. For example, the Chinese Monk's Spade, with its shovel-like end, served two purposes for the monks who used it: if they came upon a corpse on the road, they could properly bury it with Buddhist rites; and the large implement could serve as a weapon for self-defence against bandits.
Massed men carrying pole weapons with pointed tips (spears, pikes, etc.) were recognized fairly early in the history of organized warfare as effective military units. On defense the men holding the polearms were hard to reach; on the attack, as in the Greek phalanx, they were devastating to those units which could not get out of the way
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