Take a stick about your height, give or take a foot.  Sharpen end.  Congratulations, you have a spear..... :-)

  Seriously, there’s not much to making a spear.  It’s a long stick with a sharp point.  You want to try and get the straightest stick you can find, preferably at least 1” in diameter, not much bigger than 1 1/2”.  If it tapers well, then possibly one end can be up to 2”.  If you think you’ll primarily be using it as a thrusting weapon, i.e spear fishing, then you’d want the narrower end to be the pointed side.  If you’re primarily going to be throwing it, the the wider end would be the end to sharpen.

  To toughen the end, especially if it’s green wood, would be to fire harden it.  You don’t want to burn it black, but you do want to heat it well so it gets dry and hardened. That being said, suspending it over a bed of coals is the best way to do it.  You can try and do it with a fire, but you have to again be careful not to burn it.  Think roasting marshmallows, not burning to a cinder.

  If you have a spare available, attaching a knife blade of some sort to the end (with the ever present parachute cord, or possibly shoelaces or vines if nothing else is available) will make it a much more durable and effective weapon.

  If you’re primarily going to be using it as a fishing weapon, you would do well to carve a barb into the end, or if you have a knife blade on the end, to find a way to attach a barb to the blade. That way, if you spear a fish, it won’t slide off.  If you can’t attach some type of barb to the pointy end, then your best bet when you spear a fish (or frog, or other assorted animal), you’re going to want to pin it to the bottom and reach down and grab it firmly before releasing pressure, then you’ll want to pull the spear/animal up while using the other hand to keep the animal pinned on the spear.

  That’s pretty much it.  In a future project, we’ll learn how to make an Atlatal, which will require some modification to the basic spear.