Testing Nunchucks and Brass Knuckles: Can They Break Bones? 

Alternate title: "dad traumatises his kid by forcing him to film his murder practice"

Love it! 👏 Reminds me of what Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) wrote: "Do not collect or practice with weapons beyond what is useful."

I like how Mike keeps saying things like "I don't think these will hurt that much, I don't think they'll stop anyone," and the demonstrations are showing internal bleeding in the skull, ripping half his face off with a light punch, knocking a melon in half with a single glancing hit, etc.

I've seen a few patients who were hit with brass knuckles and they had the worst comminuted fractures of the face I've ever seen from fistfights.

"You can't put any of these in the video." "OK, I won't." Top 10 Anime Betrayals.

I know a dude who got hit with some metal knuckles. He got a concussion, broken jaw and like 20 stitches. Metal knuckles work.

Fun fact. Nunchak is supposed to be heavy. Light nunchak tends to be for beginners practicing it in the old days. Its like how wooden swords used for practice, while iron swords for practical use.

As a martial artist who has dealt with all sorts of weapons you can imagine, I have seen what brass knuckles can do to a person with light and heavy force. It's doing it right that always gets the job done.

“People have feelings” is my favorite line to come out of this channel.

Mike: puts hole in dummys head Mike: “this might discourage him”

Made my son a nunchaku. He threw a bouncy ball and I swung with all my might to see it’s power… missed the ball he threw and hit another one. That was the end of that for me.

I have used "brass knuckles" on a guy in a real fight. It messed him up bad. The biggest part to them is getting one that fits your hand right..

Neighbors: "It's 2am. What are Mike and Kristen doing out back?... Good Lord, they're pulling out human bones and bloody chunks of tissue out of their trashcan!... And Kristen has new boots!"

God Mike. You're holding it wrong. Hold it on the chain so you have access to both weapons 😂

I once saw a fight in high school where one had dusters and proceeded to cut the other guys face so bad that people actually rushed in to stop the fight, there was so much damage that to this day i believe knuckle dusters are more dangerous than most people realize. specially if they have square edges or points. flesh won't hold

Guys, the ballistic head was telling you the truth! My father was born in 1920 in a rough part of Newcastle, in the north of England, called Byker. He said knuckle dusters were commonly used and were devastating weapons. You could stop a fight with one blow. They’re amazing protection against attack, but as everything in Britain, they are illegal except for the bad guys who will carry them anyway. 👍

11:26 Imagine walking outside and seeing your neighbours doing this

Mike holding brains of dummy: ""I mean yeah, it'll hurt him. But will it stop him? I don't know, I think he can keep on coming."

The reason why most of the Okinawan arts teach to hold at the end of the nunchaku is because of the additional reach that is provided and the extra power, as you demonstrated. Yes, they are harder to control, but that is the reason a person has to train for quite some time to master them. Holding them closer to the chain/rope, are more for control in tricking.

I know I'm late but about nunchucks... the wooden ones I have are heavy and would definitely crack bones. About holding them what I learned was the further down the handle u hold the less control u have i.e. the better u have to be. Ultimately a midway grip is good gives u range and control (of course ability has a lot to do with it). Nunchucks are also used both for light strikes and heavy..like jab setting up a hook. The proficiency required may not be worth it on a practical level vs other weapons but that's another debate.

"My childhood is ruined." Maddox kills me. That little dude's awesome.

"MOM! They're practicing karate in the back yard again!"

Brass knuckles are actually used quite often I’ve seen a jaw broken nearly off with them. Very popular around gangster brawler types

The thing is, it's all about the person with the weapon and their intentions. The right person could probably kill with a rolled up magazine if done correctly.

Fun Story: My brother once used a pair of nunchucks to stop from being carjacked. It was midnight and he was cleaning his car trunk when he realized some guy, with shades on (at midnight mind you) and a backpack, was watching him from the shadows. He noticed that he had a pair of nunchucks in his trunks so he whipped them out and did the whole bruce lee style flourish. When he looked back, the guy was gone.

I love how when he crushed the skull his kid said "my childhood is ruined"😂😂😂

Here in texas knuckles were legalized a few years back but personally iv always carried them since i was a teen. The trick is to find some that fit you perfectly, its sort of like finding a hat that fits. Some will work for most people but some wont. Unlike hats however, you cant simply change how they fit. If you find the right kind , they are quite devastating.

Love how you could still be so nerded out when he asked you what cap's shield was made out of after he asked about wolverine... 🤣🤣🤣

The brass knuckles being so effective with the jab makes them so much more dangerous to deal with, in many ways....

Citing the authority of my granddad, brass knuckles serve best as an ambush multiplier as it were. There's also a deterrence factor; when your local bareknuckles boxing champion slips on a pair in his two-bottle value-rite vodka bender and starts yelling incoherently about devils coming for the puzzle box and shit like that, well it intimidates a lot of people. Finally, brass knuckles is a torture instrument you use to deform peoples faces with when they're down. Sadly ol' gramps held no opinion on nunchucks, at least not that I can remember.

3:54 "You can't put any of these in the video" "Okay, I won't" That's hilarious!

There was a guy on Quora that spoke about brass knuckles in a fight he was punched 3-5 time ended up broken jaw and reconstructive surgery to his facial area. My dad said once those are the worst weapons to use he was in the defence force in the late 50-60's said they are brutal.

This video actually served me a really good purpose: Always run in a fight, but specially if the opponent has a brass knuckle

"Mike, it's 2 o'clock in the morning." "Hang on, lemme find those body parts I left in the garbage."

The chemistry between you guys is hilarious.

“I’ve never cut open a dog, either”. I meant the ones they chew on 🤣🤣🤣 had me dying

I think Icy Mike is really taking a liking for his brass knuckles

This would look so dodgy if someone walked past. A kid filming two guys licking brain off their hands with a decapitated head rolling around.

My older cousin gave me a set of nun-chucks when I was very young. I fell in love with them and got good with them on my own. Lots of advantages with nun-chucks in many situations. I taught myself with the heavy bone breaker wooden ones., the real ones. I got better when I found practice chucks and translated my skills over to my heavy ones. Memories! I need to get another pair and start whacking my elbows again. Memories! The only ones that I would be completely comfortable defending my life with are the wooden, octagonal, bone breakers ones that I grew up with. They have the impact needed to end a fight instantly. Just one clear observation. You do not have a clue about weapons. I see that you have at least used a pair of chucks, but you have no idea how to put power and speed into them to end a fight quickly. This comes from someone who does. If you learn how to use them correctly and with a few months of dedicated practice, you can become pretty dangerous with either of those tools. Cheers!

Great work guys! Keep it up!

"kind of feels like a dog bone" "I've never cut open a dog either" the mind of mike😭😭

*hits the arm so hard the bones come out* "...but that didn't break *this* "

This was awesome, guys. And also the BEST way to make fruit salad that I’ve ever seeeeen!!! Bravo!👏👏👏😁

Mike's kid .... Don't put the hole dead body in 1 trash can, divide it between several trash cans.. hire Mike's kid for clean up you won't go to jail lol . I love these videos and the enthusiasm from Mike to participants it's just wholesome

Maddox with the "My childhood is ruined" 😂

When I was a teenager I accidentally hit someone in the hand while he was holding the target with a nunchucks. Broke his hand in multi places easily. I felt sorry for him.. After I wouldn't practice with the nunchucks while other people held the target by hand...

Can confirm. I've had multiple breaks from a sucker punch with brass knuckles. Learned my lesson.

the bit about flipping the dusters backwards killed me!! 🤣🤣

Hey Mike, love the channel and the commitment to testing and empirical data! I thought I might throw a comment at you for fun and mental chewing gum. Your highly scientific test didn't account for tone. The reason people's arms break in defensive postures (like holding your arm up to block a baton coming down on your head) is because the muscles are contracting to resist the arm bending out of the way. The energy can't get transferred into the accelerating the mass of the arm, so instead it causes rapid deformation (the key to what causes a fracture) of the bone and other tissues. So the model arm or hand held up unsupported is much less likely to break (the reasons that drunk people falling down stairs break less limbs). The reverse is the reason that people break bones falling onto outstretched hands snap all kinds of things all the way up to their collarbones. The other thing is that ligament and tendon injuries are often the cause of fractures in the hands and fingers (and elsewhere), because they're so strong that when they are torn from the bone they yank off a bit of bone with them (called avulsion injuries). The other thing your test is lacking is a control. Would love to see your model hit with something you do already think causes broken fingers etc. (Pummelling the skull with a metal nunchuck aside) Bar-room brawl punches to the face regularly cause fractures to the eye socket and other facial bones. Maybe your model is just harder to break? I think a trial of the self defense hammer is in order... 😁 Night stick fractures (horizonal breaks off the ulna) are named that because people get them from holding their arm up to block a baton (classically a policeman's truncheon). I've seen those fractures from other things, from kitchen sharpening blocks to chairs. Again, love the channel! Barry (friendly, peer-reviewing EM doc)

17:20 It sounds like the kid knows a thing or two about cleaning up a crime scene.

You guys are hilarious and having way to much fun! 😂😂

The gag then the cut to 2 am is the funniest shit I could’ve seen today

Knuckle dusters are prehistoric weapons, they have made it so far in history, that means something. Knuckle dusters are my favourite weapons to use. they are still somewhat non-lethal and are extremely effective. Also impossible to disarm. As long as you got gas, keep swinging and keep breaking.

Although you can't see it, those knuckles are most likely causing a massive amount of hairline fractures all over the skull and in the face, which hurt like hell

3:46 “I wasn’t good at baseball” 😩🤣

This is grown ass men playing with nunchucks in the back yard and wrecking some guilty-ass fruit. I'm here for it.

Honestly, I think the brass knuckles have the fear factor as well as making it so you don't cut up your own hand hitting places like the teeth. I remember a welder buddy of mine getting into a fight and shredded the hell out of his cause he landed a few punches that split the other guy's upper lip and so he was essentially punching the dudes exposed teeth.

"I've never cut open a dog either." Is the funniest shit I've heard today.

You killed me with the cat meow😂😂😂

Just imagine the neighbour taking a sip of coffe and looking out the window to admire the nature and seeing this going on across the yard, hahahah.

Thanks, Mike. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to see on historic weapons. I started writing a reply, and it quickly turned into an article-lenth response. Nunchaku are by far the most misunderstood weapon. I will talk about the historical context (of which we know very little), the proper grip, the purpose of the weapon, and why it sucks for what most people think it's for. I grew up on "traditional" martial arts, and as the years passed, I became increasingly aware of all of the faults in how they've developed over the years. This is universal over martial arts from all over the world: when the pressure to be proficient is removed (like when Japan no longer was at constant war, or when swordsmanship fell out of common use on battlefields in Europe) the art that remains slowly loses its "battlefield effectiveness." (God, i hate the internet for making me say phrases like that.) Basically, when it no longer is needed for actually fighting, people begin practicing it for other reasons. This is easiest to see in swordsmanship. Musashi wrote about the transition, because he watched it happen. He literally saw the change from fighting to kill your opponent and stay alive to the touch/tap type of thing you see in modern Kendo. So, nunchucks. I will admit that it was my favorite weapon when I was studying karate. So I am biased, but I'll do my best to be objective. They existed, they are real, but the way all of us have ever seen them used and practice is the "kendo" version. Far separated from how they were used in an actual fight. But that's where we run into problems. Because a large part of it was oral tradition, and passing techniques down over and over, we don't have a lot on their historical uses. But we do know a few things. Grip. Hold them down by the end. This is one of those transitions that happened when they were no longer used for fighting regularly. The original purpose of these were to be concealed. It's a weapon that gives you almost 30 inches of reach in something that can be a little less than 12 inches when stowed. Holding them near the chain/rope takes away range and power, but it sure does make it look cool and flashy. And when you're not fighting with them, looking cool is more important than being effective. Also, that concealability comes at the sacrifice of striking power. A solid stick will transfer more energy into your target. (That's right internet ninjas, they are less effective than a non-flail weapon.) We know this from inference from a similar weapon in Thailand, the tabok-toyok. It's a trade, effectiveness for concealablity. Speaking of Ninjas... the nunchaku were never a Ninja weapon. They're Okinawan. They were not rice flails, they were purpose built weapons. This misinformation comes from European historians. Its true that in Europe, peasants and farmers used barley flails as improvised weapons, and so historians assumed the same must have happened in Japan/Okinawa. But we don't have any evidence of this. But all of this begs the question: how were they actually used? Are the Kobudo kata accurate representations of the technique used? I don't think so. Just like how we've seen karate move farther and farther from its old form, the same has happened to kobudo. Before karate had belt ranks (thanks, Judo), the best fighters were known because they won the most fights. So even when it was no longer a skill used to protect your life (or end someone else's), it was still a combat sport that was pressure tested in competition. That's harder to do with weapons bases systems for obvious safety reasons. So weapon systems lose their effectiveness faster than unarmed systems. We can see the decline in combat effectiveness of karate in the last 80-100 years. We literally saw it happen. And weapon systems fall farther, faster. So if we were purely interested in learning to use them effectively in a fight, we would probably have better luck building a new system based on pressure testing, sparring, and generally fighting each other (in safe ways) than we would be trying to uncover the actual historical uses (don't @ me Jesse Enkamp). There is still value in trying to find the historical context, but it's simply not the fastest way to being able to use nunchucks well, given how much we don't know and how much has been lost over the years.

that look of disappointment on mike's face every time bigbro misses with his swings 😭😂

now I want to take classes with Mike just to talk about fictional metals

Maddox: Hey, you gotta throw away the body parts one trash-night at a time, not all at once. Perfection ⭐️

Nate, you gotta keep your eye on the canteloupe buddy

8:02 "What is that?" That my friend, is the zygomatic arch. One learns these things after one breaks both of them on the poor unsuspecting fists of other fighters.

This went from self-defense to manslaughter real quick, lol.

Imagine peaking over ur neighbors fence to say hi and you just see 11:27

His son has the coolest "What l did on my summer vacation." presentations. Lol The teachers really look forward to, parent/teacher conference day.

Why is Mike covered in blood and where is Jay?

I knew someone proficient with nunchakus who woke up on the floor after one of the bearings broke while practising solo, unintentionally confirming a one hit ko capability. :)

12:04 lol you guys sitting there covered in what looks like blood holding a brain was hilarious look like cannibals 😅😂 great video!! 👏 👏

Last second killed me.. “ you should probably break it up or do different garbage so they don’t suspect anything”

i feel like a blocking arms rigidity is very different to the floppy mannequin one you have, which would actually cause more damage to the blocking arm, potentially... anyhow, great to see you test stuff like this!

I like the style that is both playful and educational. Great job!

I love you guys. Grown-ups having fun like kids!

As a practitioner of okinawan karate i have to point out a few things, first, the original nunchaku are square, octagonal or the weird horse bridle shaped ones as supposedly imported from china, the other thing is they never used chains, but braided horsehair, when you strike anything with the chain swivel types especially the round ones they tend to roll across the surface of what you are hitting, the octagonal ones or square ones the edges concentrate the striking force, when striking with them you aren't so much "clubbing" them as cutting and dragging the nunchaku across the target, usually held with about an inch sticking out of the bottom, but you do change up your grip depending on what you are trying to do there are speculations that the nunchaku was used much like the western morning star to wrap around the edges of shields or other weapon used to block them, and the shield and spear (or short sword) was a very specific combo used almost exclusively by the okinawan karate practitioners. Personally while nunchaku were effective for the time they were used i have always considered them as more for training or dueling purposes, i will say that the traditional okinawan wooden weapons like the nunchaku may have been hardened in an artificial fossilization practice, this would make them much harder and heavier, scientists have proven that on okinawa it could have been done in certain volcanic hotsprings, they would have been made in several rotating batches over the period of a few months to several years.

A grandfather of a friend, carried a pair of knuckle dusters for defence in the 1920s-30s in the UK. These were not carried for fun, they were carried to use and to hurt when needed. Anything from the Victorian period and pre WW2 was used for its effect, not just to look good.

The traditional Okinawan chucks are oak, and have edges and an octagonal profile, and are linked with rope, and I’m thinking would hit a LOT harder than the round speed chucks…

"...you should chop it up so no one will suspect..." That's cold.

" you should probably rip it up so that they don't suspect anything" Best line of the whole video!

A hardened wood nunchuck can chip concrete. I knew that accidentally. And if struck properly it would break the skull. They're similar to striking with batons with more speed, than swing of batons generate. Brass knuckles can break mandible, but it'd hurt your hand too.

"It kinda feels like a dog bone" 'I've never cut open a dog' "No, the kind of bones dogs eat" 'Oh...'

Whoever told you to do a cat clawing motion when punching with knuckles has never held them. You hold them over your knuckles like you did in the intro, BUT instead of clawing, you angle your fist so that the knuckles face the target directly. This would be broken fist structure in unarmed fight (when you point your knuckles at the opponent instead of the flat part of the fist) but with knuckles if you throw a regular punch it will just break your fingers. The right angle will push the back thing of the knuckles into your palm, and while still hurting you a tiny bit if the knuckles are flat back there and not wrapped in paracord or something, they will give you the support that you need in order to hit like a truck. By a long shot not the most practical weapons but imo by far the coolest and one of the most iconic weapons

I literally have been watching old H2H videos all night and Then get blessed with a brand new one. Today was a good day.

I love that Mike was so annoyed that his friend there didn't know what vibranium was.

"My childhood is ruined" ahahahah. 😂😂😂😂 Priceless.

*goes to a shooting range* “I wasn’t good at baseball” (Dudes hilarious)

In Illinois, nunchucks are classified as a strangling weapon. When I built my own at 15, I had them confiscated by a local police officer

It’s legal in my state so I can openly talk about the use of a brass knuckle. I can personally say they will fuck someone up. Once I practiced with it and figured out the best way to hold it for my hand they stopped hurting my hand

Kid “my childhood is ruined” in response to him beating the head so bad it resulted in a half decapitation.

Alternative title: Two big guys doing "science"

"it would make me quit" "would it tho??" " Probably not" 😂😂😂 I lost it there

I would recommend to get knuckle dusters especially made for the user. They have to fit your fist. Cheap ones are often made to fit any hand, but not yours. If you use fitted ones, you won´t feel anything, but your opponent will. And then you will have the ability to punch with more force and CRACK THAT SKULL! Like that video! Thumbs up!

How did u get knuckle duster if they are illegal in all states and the whole uk and Eu

I love this kids comment and dads reaction at the end

First I love he channel very entertaining. Second- I have used both in melee and they worked. The fancy twirling is just for showing off it looks cool. Good for building coordination. Best tip is hand placement you hold on at the midpoint on the nunchaku. Best of control and power generation. You only hold than high near the chain for twirling and tricks. Knuckles I love hem. Used many times. First hold them how ever is comfortable for you and make sure they fit.too big or small they hurt. 2nd you never throw haymakers. Only drunk idiots do that. Basic boxing skills and knuckles and you can stop anyone no matter how big they are. Jab and aim for the nose face and jaw. Never the temple you will kill them too easily. If you fall or are knocked down hammer fist a foot, punch a shin, or knee.

Icy mike really getting his desire to beat a man to death out today.

I love you vids brother! Thank you. Keep it up🙏

Damn guess brass knuckles were more damaging than I thought, but not in the way I thought