Hammer nunchuks

There’s…a record for that?

Sure. 13-inch, 44 7/16ths RPM double-grooved octophonic. With a scratch. A scratch. A scratch…

(Will anyone younger than 30 actually get that joke?)

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Technically in most places you can own these and other obscure “martial arts weapons”, provided that they’re stored in your home, or kept in an established dojo or school etc…

There is a degree of racial and poverty related “freak out” as far as the legality of these items go, but I’d get just as arrested walking down the street with my legally owned rifle (assuming that said street is not in a hunting area or BLM land between my car and an acceptable range/shooting area).

A weirder thing in my mind is that in several states, a weighted stick is illegal to carry in public. I guess I can’t carry a mace or a cudgel around… Is that really a big issue nowadays? Old guys and the infirm had better make sure that their canes have uniform mass distribution!

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The original big advantage is that if your samurai upper class etc… disallow the peasantry possessing bladed weapons, well the farmer folk can just carry their threshers around.

As for them not being “very practical” weapons, I sure as hell would not want to get hit in the head (or really anywhere else) with a properly wielded one.

That sounds totally awesome!!!

You’ve got to stop buying from the Pentagon online shop. Why buy a $435 hammer that meets Air Force specifications when you can get a $299 hammer that meets NASA specs? $349 for the Swarovski limited edition?

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Please, please do this. I’d really love to see this.
(You can always sell it on Etsy later and recoup.)

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A well regulated militia preserving the security of a free state with their nunchucks and shuriken riding around on ATV mobility scooters.

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What about pointed sticks?

You are correct, sir. Nearly all Okinawan weapons were farm implements, or weapons-made-from-what’s-at-hand. Oars, nunchaku, bo staff, tonfa, kama, turtleback shield and short spear, three piece staff. The exception is the sai, which was specifically a police truncheon.

These weapons and techniques were specifically for training against Japanese swords, to tame Japanese aggression on Okinawa. Okinawans are, traditionally, fiercely culturally distinct from Japan.

For example, the rice-flail nunchaku are excellent at trapping a sword blade. One side of the nunchaku wraps around the sword blade, and then both nunchaku are gripped with one hand, thus the sword is bound and the other hand is then free to strike. Or enter, get behind the person, release the sword but then use the nunchaku to choke from behind. Etc.

Or using the nunchaku to put distance between you and an attacker. The natural human reaction to something waving around in the air making a whoosh noise is to back away.

Also, all surfaces of the nunchaku can be used for striking, besides just the flail action. The butt ends, together are a striking surface, even the ends with the rope or chain. The Okinawans were very crafty and they did not just use an implement for one thing only. All sides of the thing, all options available. The handles of things, the points, the flat sides.

So, to the OP. A good nunchaku handler would know what to do with the hammer-chucks. They would be able to keep the end pointed away from their body part. But the problem would be side-swipes from the hammer head and hammer claws as they pass by the head. You’d have to retool your motion, to keep the hammers well clear of your ears as they pass in the arc around you. Plus, they will be weighted funny and you’ll have to swing harder to get them to do what you want. So, they are a no-go. But nice idea. And funny.

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Is it just me or do those look far far more like nunchucks w/found hammer heads than they do hammers w/found chains that became hammer nunchucks?

I refuse to pay that amount of money for the former that I was told were the latter!

Practicality is probably no worse than a mace, and they’d have exactly the same purpose: whapping someone who would otherwise be able to use their weapon, or a shield, to block your attack.

(Hm. I wonder whether the SCA has come up with a suitable model of this class of weapon. Could undoubtedly find out if I engaged my google-fu…)

I’d prefer a sai if I had to face a sword (without having a sword myself).
And a bo if I had to face nunchakus.

I’d choose a gun.

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That is a classic complaint about “modern art” - “That’s dumb, I could do that at home!”.

The classic response is, “Yeah, but you didn’t.”

Art, like most things in life, is mostly just showing up and getting it done. If you have some interesting ideas, do them, I bet someone will like it!

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OK, someone else can now go off and do gunchucks.

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done.

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The chain must consist of rosary beads.

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yes, but that was picasso.

Interesting point. I wouldn’t know a rosary if it bit me, so that’d take a bit of research.

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