[1.8] How to render two textures for 1 item

Greetings experts. I have been working for while on a mod and things were going swimmingly with basic blocks, items and mobs. I sorta hit a dead end when I wanted to render my spear item, top part spear-bottom part stick. My initial workaround was just to modify the scaling and transforms of the model json. It was ok I guess but then I began to investigate other alternatives. I checked the rendering discussion done here and have gone through his tutorial mod, but so far I could not find a workable approach.

I am not asking nor raising an issue for the IItemRenderer, but only wish to ask if there were other means to render 2 textures for 1 item either via their model files or some other means. I also read somewhere in the forum that a parent-child link could be made between the model files? I was also considering creating a custom render class, but got stuck with the classes RenderItem and ItemRenderer. Which of two should I work with? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!