I work metal and make various tools such are effectively polearms.
Spears are by their nature incredibly cheap weapons, you only need to buy a spear head, the handle is generic. You fit a spear handle differently but the piece of wood you buy is the same.
From easiest to best:
Splice and pin. You just get a full tang knife blade, remove the handle, re-hsndle it the exact same way to a pole. $10, you get a c100 stainless blade. Very prone to splitting, so you'd nearly always glue and bind it, put a pipe section as a cap over the end, binding it with wire, whatever.
Rolled Steel. Like
>>2851933This is essentially the easiest kind of spear head to forge because it's not strictly welded,
Socket:
With modern welders its far more sensible to just weld the entire head to a socket, and have a full socket. Not a good as a fully forged head but your still talking about any random socket from any old tool with a socket, and hoe is a good choice, and any random blade. Depending on the quality of the weld this might not be weak at all, and especially if you want custom features, well that's no more difficult.
Then there's a fully forged head, which probably requires forge welding and is actually especially difficult, even compared to swords and the like, which are typically just made from bar stock and not forge welded at all.
And then there's casting, which usually you don't do for one off pieces but the notable exception is bronze. A bronze spear head isn't really that much worse then steel, and for a long time various copper alloys were preferred for spears even when steel was available. It just wasnt *worth* making steel spears. And if your piece is custom, again that's a big boon in the casting process, and especially if you want to get several spear heads, that you might simply sell to cover the cost.
