I'm looking for information on historical ball and chain type weapons. Anyone have any good resources? I'm espeically interisted in the works of the old masters on the subject, if there ARE any works on the flail type weapons, and also... what is the longest chain ever used on such a weapon? (On an actual weapon of course, no show peices or fantasy replicas... But that goes without saying with you guys.)

Jakob Sutor's fechtbuch shows use of the flail. I know it's on the last page, but I don't know where else in that text it might appear. If you can get a copy of Anglo's Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe you'll see some nice color plates of Maximillian using a flail (if I'm remembering correctly.)

Find Sutor and LOTS of other texts on ARMA's fantastic Historical Manuals page:

http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

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One "old master" is from 19th century: Demmin, A. "Die Kriegswaffen in ihren geschichtlichen Entwickelungen von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf dieGegenwart", 1891. :) There is something about flail.

Also, there is a picture of a flail-head excavated from Finland: http://mlab.uiah.fi/Mulli/html/media/valokuva/e_tya631_190.html

I'm pretty sure there are no directions books for the european flails.... But I thought I would ask here. Are there any?

I guess the main object of the exercise is not to whack yourself with the thing.
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These guys seem to be wearing helmets, just in case.

They were certainly not the first farm implement to be used as a weapon. The use in eastern martial arts might be better documented.

Cheers

GC

Many years ago at a Ren Faire I hit myself in the foot with one of these while wearing a pair of mocasin boots. Yes, it hurt.

Or to continue what Aaron is saying: Miss your opponents head and depending on the length of chain, get hit in the teeth or gut. Or at the very least struggle to get control of the thing wigglily waggely at the end of your totally unbalanced staff to attempt another blow.

One good thing though is that you can swing with all the power and speed you can muster and if the head hits its' target you won't get any of the chock transmitted back to your hand(s) holding the flail as you would with any other impact weapon.

It's sort of an all or nothing weapon: But those peasants would be used to using it all day long, so maybe recovery from a missed blow might be easy for them to control. :eek: :lol:

Aaron, well said ! Practice can make something that seems hard to use, easy.

My only experience is playing with a home made one years ago, quite different from serious practice or study.

There must also be optimum length of staff to length of chain to weight of spiky head that make the difference between fast and agile and slow and akward.

That is what should be in those missing historical direction books :p :eek: :lol:

"The most common design for the flail, one in use since the early days of the Christian era, was simply two pieces of wood as thick as a shovel handle, six feet long, the other 18 inches long, loosely attached to one another, end to end, with a leather thong. The short piece of wood, called the swingle would generally be made of hardwood. "

We've got somthing like that up to the barn, the first end isn't 6ft more like 3-4 but it certainly does sound right.

I think the one we had was used for beating hay down in the field, long before we had haybines and discbines. :)

George, you've already asked this question in another topic so I'm merging them together. Please keep your stuff together for the benefit of all of us.

I play around a bit with flails, and am finding the same as above. Shorten the chain (or hinge) and lengthen the handle. My first try was a 2 foot handle and a 3 foot chain and a heavy ball, the thing was a menace (and not to the enemy). I thought a simple chain (similar to the Mel Gibson affair in Braveheart) might be effective, but a handle multiplies power very quickly, as well as increasing speed. I was unable to find any good info on combat flails either, I hadn't thought of the peasant/knight aspect, this is almost surely the reason. Not to mention the things are dangerous to anybody within 10 feet, including the wielder.

Hello all,

Here's a couple of pics of what my father called "a grain flail". He said he can remember using it and he wasn't careful he gave himself quite a bump on the head. Enjoy and please excuse all the hay chaff.....the barn is used for mass hay storage and gets a little dusty :)

Thanks a ton, Eric! Yeah, that's pretty much the monster.

For a weapon, I would think a longer handle or a shorter swingle would make for a great footman's or horseman's flail, respectively.

It appears in the pics that the handle has a carved wood swivel as well. That's pretty interesting.

Oh, and George, as with most weapons, it started as a civillian tool, and found more grave application, and subsequent modification later. How common was it as a horseman's weapon? Not sure... As the picture in the original thread (now at the beginning of this one) shows, it apparently did eventually see use in the knightly realm. Maximillian armour was a heck of a lot later than the invention of the tool for threashing grain, though.

So does anyone know of any sort of period directions on the ball and chain-on-a-stick sort of flail?