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?
handle should be something along the line of you own height, and the chain should be 0cm so it’s easy to poke the bad man with your spearhead.
Nah just have the chain length short enough that it can’t swing back and whack your hand. That’s pretty much it.
Far as I know, flails as depicted weren’t really used in war. They may have showed up in tournament fighting, but not war. The flails that did get used in real battlefields were pole weapons. Long shaft like five feet or so, very short chain that’s essentially just a hinge, then a sort of long head something like 18" that may have had spikes or bumps.
Talhoffer wrote a manual for them, calling it a peasant flail. It has a lot of wonky binds that I would conjecture probably didn’t get a huge amount of use outside duels. In war, it was probably mostly overhead bonk attacks. Fighting against these things in a duel is a real bitch though. A skilled user can shower you in weird bullshit that’s hard to predict or handle and can’t really be done with anything else. There’s a ready stance where you hold it head-down and lean on it.
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.
I’m 6’3", or 193 cm. I have a friend who is 4’11", or 150 cm, and also has been a black belt in Shaolin since I met him when we were late teens in university. One day he was giving me a ride, when we were in our early 20s. I got into his van, looked down, and said, “Oh neat! You have a Jo Staff!”
He looked at me confused, then looked down, and said, “No, that’s my Bo Staff.”
I looked at it again, and said, “Not for me it isn’t.”
He looked defeated, and replied, “One man’s Bo should never be another man’s Jo. You’re too tall!”
[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.
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.
Real flails were medieval agricultural tools
How were they used agriculturally?
Flails are used for threshing.
Same as nunchakus.
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.
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.
But I’m told there is great power in swinging a chain.
Not an expert, but logically the shorter chain makes it easier to handle and relatively more precise.
A longer chain however, allows for a greater swing, resulting in a much heavier impact.
That however can also be achieved using a heavier ball on the flail. But that makes it heavier to lift and carry.
Using multiple balls however seem counterproductive, as it will make the flail harder to use compared to the impact you can achieve.
I suppose the idea is to make it harder to defend against, but if the defender has a shield, I think multiple balls are utterly inefficient.So as far as I can tell there is no single optimal balance. It depends on the persons strength and agility, and I suppose it also depends on what type of enemy it should be used against. For a heavily armored opponent, a longer chain will be better to smash hard against the heavy armor, and the armor will make the opponent relatively slower to avoid attacks.
In short I think the bottom left or the one above seems best all round, if you want something more precise, other weapons will probably be preferable.
The best would probably be the bottom right, but with one of the balls and chains from the top left.An advantage with the chain is to avoid a hard hit straining your hand and wrist. And that part can also be achieved with a short chain. But the chain also has the function that it can pass a defense that would block a cane. If you block the chain, the chain will bend and allow the ball to continue a short distance further. With a shorter chain the flail is easier to defend against.
I’m not thoroughly convinced by your mere claim of not being an expert.
I’d definitely say bottom left if you’re going up against someone like a Roman hoplite, or similarly shielded but not so armored opponent. It doesn’t take too much force to fuck up an unarmored arm, which a flail vs shield would be perfect for.
If they’re shielded and armored, though, I don’t think a flail is going to be so great.
Though as with all fighting, if one person is far more skilled than the other, they’re winning most of the time, regardless of (competent) armaments.
Here’s a video by historic arms manufacturer Todd Todeschini and historic martial arts teacher Matt Easton on chain flails:
I think the chain should be the length of half the width of your opponents shield, or thereabouts. That’s just me guessing and I’m no nerd about medieval warfare.
Flails are apparently kinda shit but prolly work against shields.
My out of my butt possible explanation to the chain is to preserve the strength of grip because if you’ve ever hit something really hard with a solid object like a bat against another like a pole or rock, or even a bad contact with a baseball the vibrations from the impact can be painful and reduce your strength, sometimes causing you to drop the bat. Dudes might’ve had some thick gloves though to probably stop that though.
Also another butt idea, it may also preserve the condition of shaft overall because it wouldn’t be experiencing a lot of impact pressure either, only from blocking I guess and the general wear and tear of the attachment of the chain to shaft thing and the tug of swinging that bitch around.
I could also see it as an over the shield lever point where the shaft strikes the top of your opponent’s guard and the ball and chain fall down upon them.
Thanks for coming to my butt talk.
(I edited a spelling mistake. If anyone cares about edit stuff.)
Flails are weapons for demonstration, not real fighting. Use a mace or poleaxe instead.
This.
The mace is your back up to the back up to the primary.
Primary weapon is going to be a pole axe or a pole arm or some other kind of pole weapon. The sword is your back up to this for when fighting closes quarters. And, in the case that a sword breaks or otherwise becomes unusable, then you reach back and grab that big stick of iron.
The axe is mightier than the sword. Easier to handle too.
But with much smaller cutting surface. And I’m counting a dane axe as a pole weapon.
Yeah, less danger of cutting yourself short of the handle. Also, easier to block a sword with it.
But in a martial context, the simply didn’t experience wide spread adoption.
Ranged weapons > pole weapons > sword and shield > whatever else you’ve got
The Vikings were retty successful with it. Swords on the other hand, were mainly used by high ranking individuals, since they require a lot of training. Pike was king.
Vikings used swords, along with axes.
I believe a mace will perform better than a sword against an armored opponent, or at least against some types of armor, so it might just be “back up to the primary” in some cases.
/not a medieval weapon expert, so take as you will
No that’s generally not the case. A sword is still going to be more effective against armor than a mace. Even a fully armored soldier has plenty of gaps to go for.
Maces were never as widely adopted as swords, even during to height of armor adoption.
yeah, turns out it’s really hard to defend against someone swinging a big heavy piece of metal at the side of your head. Best case it really really really fucking hurts and makes it basically impossible to even keep standing, worst case you die instantly in a shower of gore.
The problem is just that you actually have to hit them with the mace, while avoiding the opponent (or their friends) hitting you first.
To get all that power that makes the mace so effective, you have to take a great big swing with it, which is extremely obvious and means you’re wholly committing yourself to the action.
Meanwhile with a sword or spear you can keep it in front of you to defend yourself with, and just make quick jabs at the opponent.
You want the chain to be just long enough for the spike ball to swing back and smash your hand
Imo bottom right gives ypu the most control to bashing damage ratio
I second that bottom right as the best pictured by OP, but the chain is still too long. Below is the correct length of chain. Maximum control and damage. Best against armored opponents that one needs to bludgeon.
Really depends. A good shield used correctly can see a mace weilder dead before they’re really bludgeoning much beyond maybe getting some tingles going in the shield arm.
Depends on the task, I’d say. Are you trying to execute a combatant in the arena? Or are you trying to self flagellate?
Having played with my friend’s nunchucks in high school, I suggest long enough for the pointy bits NOT to reach your own forehead.
I feel these are all dated and as an advanced society we have far better option. An arm length, 2cm braided steel cable will provided equap parts control and flexibility while also allowing the entire length to provide impact force.
For a handle, a hand and a half of polycarbonate tube slide over the base of the cable and epoxied in place will provide a sturdy base, you can then wrap it in sports tape or paracord and even add a wrist strap as you epoxy it.
Lastly for the head, I believe there is onlly one obvious option. This will provide both a weighty enough impact to be lethal to the man and a weighty enough insult to be lethal to the pride.
