modern era Clubs/cudgel, Kom-fag thailand..

[ausjulius]

well this was a topic that has always interested me.

Clubs used in the modern world.

because every country on earth poor guys always needed a weapon and a club is the really poor mans sword , in teresting to not in european countries if the people were to have some social unrest tand produce aclub. as there is no longer a sort of traditional pattern that they made in an uninterupted manner..
they will typically make the clubs based on medival european maces or studded clubs of that medval era.

but when i look at medvial literature i see a great deal of verity in cudgels , clubs , kosh, batons and other "every day carry" poor mans striking weapons..

there seems to have been prefered regional styles and many shapes and patterns used .
not weapons of war but clubs people would carry or use to slove a dispute.. almost an ethnograpic weapon you would say.. as they i would imagine be the products of poor people are more inclined to be regional specific..

things like the irish root ball clubs and sheleighly.. french or spanish fighitng sticks .. ect

it seems up untill the industrial era japan and china. maybe becaus eof laws regulating the masses from carring edged weapons .. seem to have quite a few styles of striking implements. and as with europe.. these are all now redundant.. forgotten items used in obscure matrial arts or show in video games.


it seem with rising wealth, guns, more police... ect these peasants weapons have almost vanished not just from the west but from most of the developed and developing world.


so i was very please to find in thailand they are still quite common.
although they appear really in only one style. although malay style octagional wooden batons can also be seen... basically just like a policemans night stick.. although these are rare.

there is a i guess you would say a "national style of club",
an edged cudge called a kom-fag... or khom-fag..mai-khom-fag.. woden khom-fag. although ive yet to see a non wooden one

ไม้คมแฝก or คมแฝก in thai..

it means something like sharp-grass leaf... in a roundabout translation. and is just in the same manner as the medieval edged culgels.
mostly as a weapon to settle diputes and inflich cutting bloes to the limbs, head legs, not kill the person outright.

as such it is used some what like a sword,

they are really quite popular still and there was even a thai t.v. show dedicated to a hero who used one. there is some martial arts based on kohm-fag use also.
id say nearly every older thai man has owned at least one kohm-fag, and they can be found in many homes.

another style..that thai people just call kohm-fag or krabi.. but which is clearly not is a bamboo root club. looking and being used exactly like a shillelagh,
another thing unique to that clubs it appears that they all are preferred to be fitted with a lanyard, ive never seen one without .
also they lanyard is preferred to be fitted in front of the hand not through the pommel


they are really quite popular items and can be purchased in markets and at most tourist centres, thais are very amused when they see a foreigner who knows what it is, as in western eyes it is distinctly un-club like..

so this leads me to a question..

who else has observed clubs and other wooden hand weap0ns in common use still in a society. outise of of the bantu inhabited areas of africa and the melinesia islands and .. australian aborigines. i dont know if anybody makes wooden weapons to seriously use any more??

i hear that in Bhutan and eastern nepal they still make some kind of fighting and or throwing clubs. but it was a passing conversation and the persons english was not good enough to convey more information other than in bhutan they used to have people who were club makers.. id be interested to see such clubs..

for that matter ive never seen any clubs from india. other that persian exercise clubs. like big cartoon mallets.