Weird Weapons - 'Bike' chain flail
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- čas přidán 23. 05. 2022
- Weird Weapons with Matt Easton returns with a 1530's German chain flail that appears to have a modern bike chain connecting it together......But it isn't a modern fake, it is a real 16thC weapon.
Why use a 'bike' chain rather than a conventional chain? Let's find out whilst Tod and Matt talk about it, Matt uses it and his students spar with it.
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"It would be fun to go at someone's kneecap with that!" Matt Easton channels his inner loanshark.
Yes, that comment out of context could sink a mans career
Such fun - having this flail sitting here at the moment (for future videos) makes me giggle every time I see it. Thanks for putting this one together Tod!
Your laugh when you first got to play with it says it all!
Love these collaborations. It's how I heard of you, and now I've watched dozens of your videos. They're so much fun!
Always fun playing with new toys and old friends!
I would like to see it used with a shield. Not sure it’s historically accurate. Seems like it would be fun though.
Thanks Matt and always a pleasure hanging out with you. Can I also say that I love coming down to your fight camp events. Really well organised, continually interesting and full of willing guinea pigs! What's not to like.
Matt: I was expecting this to have a thick shaft inside!
Tod:
Matt: I can see... it's got a knob at the end.
Tod:
Tod, when your costar sets you up with lines like that, you don't leave them hanging.
I respect Matt greatly, and it would just not be reasonable to infringe on his territory
Matt being a comedian lol. I laughed at the unintentional innuendo of it all
@@rasaecnai With Matt it's always questionable whether it's unintentional...
He was waiting for Matt to give it the proper context!
Phrasing!
Great to see this sort of experiment. Fascinating discussion and demonstration, and as usual, great weapons made by Todd!
I love how often I see you and Tod and scholagladiatoria and others in the community posting in each other's comment sections!
@@Zelmel Because they are good honest people with nothing to hide or be ashamed of. And no superiority complex, despite quite real uncommon abilities. True kings among men.
Agreed, and with every experiment, our knowledge grows. Funny to think that some of our best connections to the past, may be yet to come. This community is an invaluable collection of living archeology!
Thanks Jason, always appreciate hearing from you and I have a Weird Weapon that is right up your street........
@@tods_workshop ooo, let'e email or chat!
This seems to fix one of the biggest issues with these chain weapons, which is the chain itself. Once it hits a target, god knows where it will bounce to but a chain like this it only has one way to bounce back. All while still keeping its core attributes the same
A very good point and well put
Also it allows, in my mind at least, to serve a formation fighting role. Use this to deal damage and REALLY bring the shields down to make openings for the spears and such.
Pairing it with a buckler or shield would be interesting to see
Yeah, or with a parrying dagger in the other hand. It felt weird to have the off-hand completely free.
@@couchpotatoe91 it was useful to have a free hand and arm against the spear i think. Against a blade a shield would enable you to do the same thing while being protected against cuts you couldnt block or derail with your bare arm like you can do against a spear.
Yeah! That's what I was expecting to see.
Yes I would agree, it was an oversight of mine to not bring a shield
@@tods_workshop Would be interesting to see if you can hide the angles behind your shield. Or even purposely hit the top of your shield with the shaft to make the ball whip around faster.
Matt's fit of giggles when he's bashing that tree stump is just pure joy!
Doing basically the same thing all through my childhood, 45 years and counting!
Fighting with just a flail seems kind of silly, a shield or at least a buckler seems almost mandatory to make up the lack of defence compared with something rigid like a sword or a longer pole.
It depends on the armor situation, of course. If you're wearing plate, then having a free hand would be a lot better than holding a shield.
We used them from horseback
Imo, fighting with a flail would be only a fully armored thing. No reason to do it unarmored, a sword would be much better for that. But if you are in a full plate and can take a hit, you can just go with it and bypass some of the opponent's defenses with it.
@@Danik0301987 Maybe you could conceal a flail better then a sword .
@@piotrjeske4599 Good reach and combined force, great way to bash your enemy. I pity the peasant fools who opposed you.
I think pairing the flail with a shield would make a really strong combo.
Wow, the gleeful laugh at bashing a tree and not feeling it "hit back" with handle shock!
This thing is so nuts ... I would never have thought it was a good idea, but what do I know?
This is probably why it was mainly used as cavarly weapon by turks, persians ,koreans and manchus. I would assume the "hit back" from stricking a helmet with a mace at a gallop could make you drop your weapon. With a flail? No biggy. You also have less of an issue of parrying on horseback.
I think, as well, these weapons seem to take advantage of the idea that your are wearing armor. Trading a light sword strike for the full momentum of the flail does not seem a fair trade. Even if you catch the flail, that wrapping motion let's it carry the weight around the edge for a lovely strike on someone's exposed hands.
I am speculating. I have always figured flails made good sense in horseback, but I am thinking about the overall scenario. If you have this weapon, something tells me you have good armor to accompany it. What a deadly device. I would have never thought about these applications before seeing it in action.
It is a truly nasty thing
The way it accelerated around the tree for a rear strike is mad. Well done Todd.
Thanks
Presumably a little like orbital mechanics; if you want a faster orbit you reduce the radius, (shorten the chain). Increase the radius, (lengthen the chain) and the radial velocity slows. So wrapping around the tree produces a reducing curve and an increasing velocity….
You have the words where it failed Matt and I. Are you THE Martin Francis?
@@tods_workshop it is indeed; not quite sure which bit of the brain that popped up from given that my academic training was in geology and my professional qualification was in surveying. I think it might have been a lifetime reading science fiction and being 13 at the time of the moon landing, greedily absorbing everything I could get my hands on about it.
You guys have really struck gold with this series, thease are just so entertaining, For all parties involved i might add.
I’ve suddenly realized I have everything I need for one of these in my shed
Go make!
Wow, can hardly believe they has compound chains and other ideas like that back then. Goes to show the imagination and engineering skills of peoples of the past. Very interesting concept.
They had compound chains, and treadles, and yet, without the pneumatic tire, it took a few hundred years to create the bicycle. Technological progress is such a complex business. 🤩👍
very true, some great leaps happen and then tiny details stop progress
@@euansmith3699 The pneumatic tire wasn't needed to create the bicycle, though. In fact, we could argue that it was one of the last parts added to the modern design of bicycles.
The oldest bicycle predecessor known was created in 1817 by Karl von Drais, it had wooden wheels without tires (although some had iron bands to protect the wheel) and it didn't even have pedals (those were invented in the 1850s), but it already had a seat, a handlebar, and even a brake. In the 1860s the term "bicycle" was created (after quite a lot of versions of these vehicles had been made), and in the year 1879 the first chain-driven bicycle was made, although it would still take a couple of years for this invention to gain popularity. The tire itself was made in 1887, being, as I've said, probably the last part to create the modern bicycle.
So, yeah, as you said, technological progress is a complex buisness.
compound chain is somewhat easier to produce than linked chain because you don't need to forgeweld, it will take longer but its technically easier because all you need to be able to produce are two shapes, the "figure 8's" for the links and the rivets to hold the bits together.
@@euansmith3699 Simply put the reason is the nature of roads vs the state of a bycicle they could get in that period. The first bicycles had wooden wheels and used wooden frame. But those were quickly replaced by more advanced variants because they just didn't work at anything but the flattest roads. It is also worth noting that the industrial revolution made these contraptions cheaper while the cost of horse transportation continued to rise. Ultimately these factors likely lead to the invention of the bike, not lack of technical skill to accomplish them.
Now we need another exercise with the flail user with a shield!
DUAL WIELD THE FLAILS
@@derstoffausdemderjoghurtis Dual wield caps lock.
5:45 "it's almost accelerating it", well, it IS accelerating it my friend. when something is rotating with a center of mass that moves inwards the speed of rotation increase, and decrease when center of mass goes out. ice skate dansers have used this for a long time, they spin with their arms out and pull the arms in and they spin faster.
you can easily test this by gently using a rope as a whip on your arm, let the end of the rope strike your arm and it's not so bad, strike at the same speed but at the middle and let the rope wrap around your arm and the end of it will strike harder.
this might be where ppl get the idea that chained/roped weapons have more striking power, they do but only when striking at the middle and letting it wrap around something.
I love how in one small session with the flail an understanding of the weapon was evolving. Holding the head and using the whole weapon to guard, whilst still being primed to strike was great to see. Fantastic video, thanks for sharing.
A pleasure and yes the guys were really learning on the job, but of course in reality they would have been dead during the 'experimental' phase
@@tods_workshop I mean, isn't that what doing training is for?
@@wierdalien1 it is but as we saw even someone as well schooled in weaponry as Matt Easton can be confronted with something he has never seen before. Luckily the world has Tod Cutler to bring us weird and wonderful killing sticks to entertain us with.
Nunchucks have the same guard
Fun fact: the shape of the head is a cuboctahedron, i.e. what you get by truncating the vertices of either an octahedron or hexahedron until you get to this midpoint, making it an Archimedean solid. D&D dice are Platonic solids, with the exception of d10s and d100s, and some of the more obscure ones, such as the d30. (Notably, the original d10 was actually an icosahedron that had 1..10 printed twice on its faces.)
I so enjoy these weird weapon video's and having actual combatants use them the weapons and comment adds so much to the video.
Great and thanks
I can't emphasize enough how much I enjoy these videos. You can look at a weapon on a page all you want, but actually experimenting with it adds so much extra information. I'm not even a novice, yet alone an expert, but it seems to me this would scale in devastation if both parties were wearing armor. A sword or a spear needs to look for a gap in armor, whereas this looks like it can deal a disabling or at a minimum disorienting blow even if the opponent has armor on.
that is one of the coolest most interesting "weird weapons" I've ever seen. I mean all of them have been cool but this one is just extra neat.
Thanks
I feel like the roundness of the grip makes it more difficult to maintain "edge alignment", so to speak. A flatter grip would probably work better in that regard. I would be interested to see how much sideways pressure the directional chain can withstand before a link snaps, as that weight at the end is quite heavy.
There must be something wrong with the video, Todd is talking to someone but no one is there?? Some sort of invisible man?? The voice sounds like Matt Easton.
I have the same problem. 🤣🤣🤣
Took me a while but I got it in the end. 😆
I saw a baseball cap floating. Weird...
Depends on the context…
All OK now?
These are always so fun to watch. Seems like flails just need more training than swords or spears.
That with a shield of some sort would be a pretty devastating combo, I'd think. It offers surprising range, and the compound chain, if experimented with, might be able to catch an unwary opponent off guard, given that it's movement range is different than a typical chain or wire.
I wonder if you could push up your shield against the opponent and then use the acceleration flick around it to strike.
Yes a shield would have been a very interesting addition; apologies for not bringing one.
@@tods_workshop is the pommel on that hollow, or solid? Curious about that, and how it affects performance and balance! Great work by the way!
Solid
@@tods_workshop cool! Thanks for the response!
playing LARP as a youngster, I found that I was utterly lethal using shield and flail in combo. Try it...
The joy on his face wracking a stump is instantly recognized by all arms and armor nerds like myself.
Yooo, that's mint!
One would not want that connecting to ones head
Do only i want to see Chain flail + shield against other weapons+shield?
Some physics. As the chain wraps around the distance between the end mass and the pivot point gets shorter, conservation of momentum requires the velocity to get higher. The energy is the velocity squared resulting in a much higher energy impact.
These are some of BEST colabs you do. Very fun to watch real pros experiment with a new weapon and learn on the fly. Great video.
Thank you.
Me dio mucha ternura cuando el señor Tod preguntó "a simple question, do you like it?"
nuevo subscriptor
greetings from Venezuela
it might not have the thick shaft you expected, but at least it has a knob on the end.
Awesome! So glad to see more weird weapons. Please keep making more of these, the weirder the better!
I really like the humility in these sorts of videos. The stereotypical show of this type would be hyped up about "is this junk, what's the best weapon" but the approach of "this was used, can we figure out why" reveals a lot more. It reminds me of when a college friend got a kukri and as soon as I picked it up I could feel how it was supposed to be used and where the weight was. I'd thought of it from pictures as a stylishly bent flat blade but holding it was like holding an axe, I found it interesting the reaction I had compared to his (granted, much cheaper and poorly-made) longsword. Weapons are tools, and unless there's other factors most tools have a design that guides their use.
Thanks for the compliments and this statement is exactly the words that I have never quite found - thank you "Weapons are tools, and unless there's other factors most tools have a design that guides their use."
I love the group walking behind them doing the "oh frick they're filming" dance once they saw the camera XD
The wrap around to the back of the head is how my brother always gets me with his flail in sparring😂
these are my absolute favorites. the two of you combining your expertise makes for endlessly engaging videos
Thanks - That's really appreciated
I find the weird weapons series of videos very fascinating, and look forward to them.
Those are some of the best videos your both channels do.
It got everything.
From a real manufactured example of the object discussed, over the historical and martial discussion itself, to even a sparring version of the obejct used by fencers!
Thanks and we like making them.
A fascinating video. Lovely craftsmanship and actual field tests!
A wonderful little creation! And you and Matt having a bit of fun together is always entertaining, and educatioinal! I am looking forward to the next weird weapon. :)
Thanks and awe do enjoy these
"Difficult to feint with" might indicate this type of weapon was used from the defensive, stronger position of a battle. Maybe a single blow to disable a shield, then switch to other melee wep.
This was a fun one! Nice to see the process with a whole crew! :D Thanks!
Oh my, I love this series so much, thank both of you for the knowledge and entertainment!
Our pleasure!
An absolutely gorgeous weapon. Beautiful. Todd, great job, as always!
this is the best series of videos you do (along with all the trebuchet videos of course). Especially the sparring parts are interesting to watch, thank you.
It feels like this flail is a counter weapon to shield wearers, im sure it would be fun to test it in that evironment
Second British collaboration video today!
Awesome!
Always a joy to see Matt on your channel, and doubly so when it’s with a weird, strange, or downright medieval weapon!
Brilliant stuff guys. Thank you.
Really nice recreation, definitely extremely powerful for it's size and weight.
Most important part of the chain is that it absorbs the shock of the strike. A good way to tell the difference in hand shock pain from vibration, is to hold a metal pole very tightly and slam it onto a rock or concrete ground. then do it with a chain weapon. The chain weapon will be painless after absorbing all vibrations, the metal pole will hurt after one strike
I love these videos, thanks guys.
That has to be my favorite mace that I've seen. Beautiful weapon!
Great video! Thanks for sharing!
Cheers!
Mine too! It looks so odd and menacing
those lads in the back killed me :)
also, the demonstration towards the end was awesome, I wish more channels did such in depth testing and used real combat to show their findings.
Videos like this always make me happy I'm subscribed to this channel
Nice Tod! Another close call with your camera LOL
Enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up for the support of your channel
Wow the different chain design really seems to be a big improvement for the one handed flail. It looks so much more controllable.
Yes it really did change it from regular chain
That flail head puts a whole new meaning into 'brutalist design'...
Todd I'm loving this series!
I'm wondering if you could pair this with a buckler or perhaps a dagger in the left hand, and if that pairing would help mitigate the problem of having "spent" the flail's momentum and then being open to attack. The attempt to "snipe" the knee would probably have worked out better if our flail man was able to use something to cover his head during the attack.
A chainsaw blade flail would be an interesting post-apocalypse experiment.
Outstanding vid and info I’m very interested in this type of weapon so thank you for bringing them alive.
Lol - that wave and walk-off three minutes in.
Another great entry in this series.
I love the post-test discourse all six of them have. Everybody learned from everybody, and no thought was dismissed
We are all here to learn; that is exactly what 'weird weapons' is about
Heck yeah! My two favorite context boys, back at it again.
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!👍👍
Very few things are as entertaining as a flail. There's just something about the act of swinging around a weight on the end of a chord that speaks to primal man.
A very interesting weapon. I'm reminded of a makeshift weapon I've had for some time which is just a fully connected chainsaw blade with electrical tape wrapped on one end for a handle. When it curls up on itself the kink becomes like a rotary blade. I don't muck with it often since it's probably one of my more dangerous weapons to wield. Excellent vid y'all.
LOVE these kinds of videos! Seeing how weapons that one would think is a modern hoax actually were around centuries ago are always incredibly interesting!
Great video, good humor and learning 🍻
This seems like it should be used like other top heavy weapons (war hammers, 1 handed axes, etc) and paired with a shield. That way you can make full use of its offensive abilities while mitigating its defensive weaknesses.
The best Weapon series on CZcams returns!
Thanks
great fun to watch!
Few years ago I had made a bunch of medieval inspired weapons with fome PVC and duct tape to spar with my friends and kids. One of them was a flail that I had to quickly get rid of after my 4 year old son laid out a full grown man with it and gave him a hugh black welt.
You should get somone who is an expert at using Nunchucks to fight with the flail. A lot of nunchuck techniques would be perfect for this weapon
Tod: “Are you enjoying yourself?” Best part 😂
Im so sad this didnt appear in my feed! I woulda watched this on release! Flails are 1 of my top 3 favorite melee weapons from the middle ages! This is a very interesting type!
Thanks - best subscribe then!
I wish I was as happy for anything in life as Matt is about using that flail to hack at a tree.
Islanders from Polynesia have the poi. This is a flexible weapon with a weighted end. Now they are used for show but they where a weapon. When Matt was first showing the flail off it looked like he was doing poi work. If you give it to someone who has poi experience it might work better as there are a number of tricks to keep momentum up whilst changing direction quickly that they would know.
As usual, an extremely informative video
Fascinating and entertaining at the same time. Loved this one.
Thanks
A friend and I made a spiked flail once... length of iron pipe, chain, the ball from a tow hitch, and lengths of threaded rod ground to points. It becomes apparent almost immediately that the ball bounces back at you with nearly as much energy as you put into hitting something.
Matt can pick up anything and instantly it is deadly.
I have noticed that very thing. Just watching him move with the flail is impressive even though he never picked up the weapon before
very good demonstration with the fighting
These videos are absolutely phenomenal.
Thanks
Gentlemen your happiness and almost childish excitement is very inspirative! Just watched the intro and I must appraise you right now 😀
It's always fun to watch 2 grown kids discovering new toys
So true
At the last skirmish dual the the guy sort of 'half swords' it, cocking it as the blond oxford dude said, but while holding the tip. it seemed alot more controlable and and fast striking, answering to the grey haired dude "firing it straight ahead" disadvantage, and also for parrrying. having a buckler would make the disadvantage of the 'reloading' needed quite diminished, as one could shield themselves from counter attacks. awesome
This strangely brought me back to my teen years. Back in the early 80's where I lived, bike chains and chain belts were very common weapons. I still feel some of those impacts all these years later 😆
My uncle used to tell us stories of his mis-spent youth, weilding an old timing chain in glorious combat versus the lads from that other suburb. 😅
Yay, I love this series
Fascinating. Ty
I think when people used to talk about using bike chains as weapons, they were referring to the chains people use to lock up their bikes, not bike drive chains.
These videos are like Christmas for me!
I have never put much thought into flails before (let alone how their usage would be affected by changing their travel to be aligned with the handle), but this sure has brought them to my fickle attention
This was a great one.
Matt explains the way the mace works. Tod leans back quietly in fear...
I like my knees it seems
Fascinating! Great 'Mad Max Mace' Tod! :D How could you forget the flail video Matt?! :D Nice jacket BTW :)
Matt seems excited about the knob in the end!