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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?
[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.
Fixed that link for you
lol, I just got done correcting the link in my phone’s browser, copying it, came back here and scrolled down to reply and see your post. Fml
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.
How were they used agriculturally?
Flails are used for threshing.
Same as nunchakus.
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.
The type of flail seen in your picture wasn't used by the peasantry but nobility. Some crafty blacksmith probably saw drafted farmers take their threshing flail into battle as improvised weapon and thought about how to properly weaponize the concept. Also we are not talking about two flimsy sticks here. Flails used for threshing had to be sturdy as they needed to last the whole harvest season. They were made from hardwood and I can personally attest, that they are heavy indeed. The things one finds when clearing the grandparents barn ...
As for the practicality of the weaponized flail: it was indeed of dubious use and it is questionable whether it saw widespread military adoption or whether it was the equivalent of "tacticool" gear of the middle ages. An iron club is indeed a more effective weapon and is commenly referred to as mace and if you take a look at a specific type of mace you can probably guess where the idea of the spiky ball came from.
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.
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.
So could a real flail work against a shield that way too?
A real flail is a lot heavier, which is harder to use, which is the main problem that me and my friends had with the foam version being allowed in the sport.
You would have to ask a qualified historian to know if these weapons were ever used in this way. I would be curious to know too.
My guess is that spear/polearm beats shield at a much lower cost and with less risk, but I don't really know I'm not an expert.
But I'm told there is great power in swinging a chain.