For example, how were they gotten in and out of cities - could they fit through city gates? If a force in the 30 Years War was besieged in a city, where did they keep their pikes when behind the walls, as I imagine they couldn't exactly take them into a barracks with them? And for manufacturing, were pikes created out of a single piece of wood, or could pikes be made by fitting several shorter shafts together somehow? Were single trees used to make a single pike, or could a large trunk feasibly have several cut out of it? Just in general I'm curious about a lot of aspects about the day to day aspect of caring for a pike. Such a large weapon surely had to have some kind of specialized routine for keeping it in working condition.
Pike hafts were made in much the same way as European spear hafts from ancient times through into post-Medieval times. The preferred wood was ash, and hafts were made in a single piece. They could be made with either of two common methods. First, they could be made from a trunk, which would be split into smaller pieces in order to get many hafts from the one trunk. Splitting ensured that the grain of the wood was continuous along each piece. The split pieces would be rounded using a draw knife. If required, the hafts could be straightened, using either dry heat or steaming to make them bendable. Second, they could be made from coppiced poles. Coppicing is the practice of allowing many new shoots to grow from a stump, which are harvested, and then another set of shoots are allowed to grow:
Hop poles were commonly grown by coppicing, and are usually of similar length to pikes, or even longer, so coppiced poles would be quite usable for pike hafts. If at least twice as thick as required, they could be split and rounded to make multiple hafts.
For storing pikes, they should either be kept upright, or horizontal, supported at many points along their length. If there are too few points of support, the haft is likely to bend, either sagging in the middle or drooping at the ends. For indoor storage, horizontal storage is usually more convenient than vertical, not requiring such a high ceiling. Racks allow the storage of large numbers of pikes:
Where troops are in temporary indoor accommodations, pikes could easily be stored on the floor, next to a wall, as long as the room is long enough. Horizontal storage is a poor choice outdoors, since contact with damp ground will wet the lower side, making the haft likely to bend. Thus, for outdoor storage, e.g., while on the march, vertical storage was usual. Pikes could be stuck into the ground by their butts. In this example:
they are supported by some hard-to-identify structures.
As for moving pikes in and out of cities through gates, tall city gates, such as perhaps
provide enough clearance for pikes to be marched through held upright, while short gates do not provide such clearance:
Pikes were held in various ways while marching, from almost horizontal
through to vertical
The most common was pike on the shoulder, sloped between 30 and 45 degrees:
A low city gate would merely force pikemen to march through with their pikes more horizontal.
