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?
Flails are used for threshing.
I still don’t understand how you arrive at the big heavy ball attached to the handle with a sturdy metal chain. If you’re a poor farmer and you don’t have anything better than your two little spindly wooden sticks attached by a little hinge in the middle, where do you get a heavy spiky iron ball? And a complicated chain, and how does your threshing flail built only to support the weight of another wooden stick not snap when you use it? And if you had access to a spiky metal ball, couldn’t you just attach it to the end of a longer thicker wooden stick and make a standby spear? Or moreover if our had to have some parts made despite your limited means, surely the capacity to have any of the constituent weaponised flail parts made would put you in a position to have something way better forged. It seems like almost anything would make more sense than that. Hell even a big iron club to bash people with at least wouldn’t involve trying to deal with a swinging chain.
Same as nunchakus.