What's the best way to secure a socket head spear blade to a shaft? Bob

In my opinion, the Best way to fit a socket head spear to a shaft is to carve the taper into the shaft, head up the socket in a forge to a black heat, then burn it on the shaft. Don't put it on hot and leave it there, but push it on until it won't go any further then take it off. This also toughens the wood quite a bit. Then drill a hole and rivet the shaft in place.

Now there are a couple reasons why I don't do it that way unless it was for a museum exhibit, one is that it looks like hell usually. In theory you can make the burns look nice but it will always be obvious it is burned in, and just looks like someone was being careless while roasting hot dogs. Also, you have to re temper the head, and if this is a machine made spear it will probably alweays look a little funky unless someone spends some time cleaning things up. But for a good, traditional fit that holds up to hard use it has worked well for centuries.

Instead, the wussy way I have done it is to use a belt sander to get the taper correct and epoxy them in. A quick way to rough out the taper is to get a 1/4" bolt, and put a nut on the end. Now stick that into the socket and hold your finger where the bolt comes out of the end of the socket. Hold that against the spear shaft and mark the length. Now take the nut and use it to draw a circle on the end of the shaft. Sand the material off between the circle on the end of the shaft and the circle you have drawn around the circumference of the shaft. After you get a good fit, epoxy it in with some of the 30 minute stuff in the clear tubes, then when it is all hard do not forget to drill and bolt it together. Or you can use 2 or 3 wood screws, use epoxy on them too, and counter sink them into the head.

For the actually fitting to the socket, try using prussian blue, or other kind of machinist marking fluid.