A reader wrote in
to ask what I thought of a weapon he had seen on Amazon. What is
good about Amazon is that if the product is flawed a return is
easy. What is not so great about Amazon is they charge a lot to
the merchant (and, indirectly, to you the customer) for this. So
the person making the weapon gets a sale, but less profit than
if they had retailed directly to the customer. My own halberd
(see previous pages) has about 10 inches of snake blade that is
clear of the crescents. The inter-crescent space is 5.5 inches
and the crescents are five inches wide and ten inches tall.
There are 20 inches overall from the tip of the snake blade
to the top of the staff. That weapon was purchased from the late
and much-lamented Brendan Lai's store many years ago. Doing the
Northern Shaolin set (where the weapon is known as Hook Blade
Spear - see Wing Lam DVD VSL 35 in the Shaolin section) takes
considerable energy - the weapon is heavy and not an exemplar of
grace, so making the set look fierce BUT not getting exhausted
doing so takes some diligence. For reference, I prefer a 31" or
32" blade for sword and saber. My favored spear has a head that
is nine (9) inches long overall - the point is 4 inches and the
haft is five inches.
The halberd below (top left) has a spear point so there is some
ability to slash, but practically speaking, there is not that
much clearance from the crescents. While I like the stainless
steel, I preferred the feel of the wooden-shafted halberd at the
top right. What is very cool about all four items is
they unscrew and can be packed in a bag for transportation. Don't come complaining if you spend hours going through all the
Long Quan Sword products. I just had to include the very fancy version
(lower left) and the single-sided one. Drooling over pictures is
considered slightly uncouth but understandable.
By the way, for those
curious about such things, I attached the equivalent weight of
two more crescent blades - simulating what if the weapon had
four crescents. It is very difficult to land a good blow on the
weapon, and the weight makes displacing the halberd blade just about
impossible. That said, the weapon is very heavy and really
slooooow. |
