A particular type of
spike which is frequent in
fashion, particulary among
punk rockers. The spike itself is usually made out of
steel or
chrome and can be anywhere from an inch
long to four or five inches, the longest, however, are usually only seen mounted on substantial pieces of
clothing such as
leather jackets. The spike's design is like a
tear drop mounted on a sort of
base.
The spike begins as a small cicular piece of metal and extrudes up and becomes smaller. Image the
volume of a
torus removed from the volume of a
cylinder. This forms the base of the spike. The tip is, as I said, a
tear drop which is formed by mating a
cone with a
hemisphere. The actual product is one
solid piece of
metal, these geometric terms are used simply such that one can
visualize the object from a text
description.
The spikes aren't usually manufactured to be
sharp enough to pierce the
skin readily, usually the
tip is rounded. This still doesn't safe guard them against, say,
pulling out an eye because some guy was wildly
windmilling in the
pit with three rows of them on his
leather arm brace.
The name of the spike itself probably comes from the
fact that it does bare a close
resemblence to the
torch that the
Statue of Liberty holds,
sans most of the handle. That makes even more sense, because on the statue you can't actually see most of the
handle, because it is obscured by the
statue's
hand.