I’m seeing a lot of variance in the ratios. Some flails have longer handles, some have short. Some have chains as long or longer than the handle, some have almost non-existent chains. What are the advantages and disadvantages of various handle and chain lengths, and is there an “optimal” ratio?
I’m going to risk there is none.
Many hand to hand combat weapons were bespoke to the user.
Using an example I’m fairly familiar with:
In Portugal, we have a martial art called jogo do pau. It uses a simple wooden staff. Today’s schools insist the staff has a standard lenght, width and shape.
An old school practitioner I had the pleasure to meet taught me the staff was always made to fit the wielder, not the opposite.
As a general guide line, it should have the lenght of the distance from the wielder’s armpit to the ground but there would be people that prefered longer or shorter staffs. Some people would prefer thinner staffs, nearly cylindrical in shape, others would prefers heavier, thicker, almost eliptical in profile. The amount of customisation and variation capable of being put into the weapon itself was so diverse, it made each staff unique.
I’d risk this same logic would apply to more classic weapons, like the flails you ask about.
Infrapink@thebrainbin.org 3 weeks ago
[https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-v-just-flailing-about-flails/](The optimum is no chain at all).
A flail is a really bad weapon. The chain makes it difficult to control, puts you at great risk of hitting yourself, while not giving you any reach advantage. Real flails were medieval agricultural tools that were sometimes used as improvised weapons, but if you had access to an axe or spear, you would use that. If you have a big spiky ball of iron, it's much more effective to put it at the end of a rigid wooden staff and whack people with it that way; in other words, a mace is strictly better.
That said, real chain-based weapons do have their uses. The lkusarigama is made by attaching a sickle to a wooden handle with a long chain. It is used to entangle and disarm your opponent, at which point you can close in and slash them with the sickle end. Since it involves swinging a sickle on the end of a long chain, it would never be used in pitched battle lest you hit your comrades, and in any case spears are more useful when armies clash. However, kusarigamas were quite handy in one-on-one combat; since they were easy to conceal and could be disguised as agricultural tools, they were primarily used by ninjas and city guards
So to give an answer to your question, if you're going to use a chain-based weapon, the optimum length is long enough to completely wrap around somebody. And in that situation, you want a fairly light, small business end, not a big metal ball.
dingus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This essentially answers my question of how in the world were flails like in the OP’s question a thing? Answer: they probably never were
Even child me was confused at how you could use such a weapon without injuring yourself.
grue@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How were they used agriculturally?
einkorn@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Flails are used for threshing.
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
But I’m told there is great power in swinging a chain.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
So maybe something like a rope dart, meteor hammer, or bolas? I’ve seen some YouTube videos on meteor hammers, and it looks like one way to use them is by throwing the weighted end as a projectile and using the chain (or very often a rope) to retrieve/retract it.
I agree though, flails as shown above seem like an unwieldy garbage weapon. If I had to use one, I’d want a very short chain on it, so probably 2nd from the left on the bottom row.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately in some medieval combat sports, the “speed flail,” a foam ball tethered to a handle, is an easy non-historic way to bypass a shield – swing at the top of the shield, and the ball wraps around to hit the opponent’s shield or sword arm.