As far as your experience with the birch is concerned, it depends whether it was a spray birch with lots of twigs or just three or four stems with relatively little spread. With the latter, the twigs are not only heavier but concentrate the power much more and I would expect it to cause much more pain than the spray birch. I have no experience with a traditional birch of either sort, but I know that a comparable bamboo “broom” is much fiercer if the individual twigs are bound together to form a tight bundle compared to when they are left to splay out.
Corporal Punishment Comparing Impliments24
