Changing a Raycast for different melee weapons

I am making a first person game and im using some melee weapons to attack the bots. at the moment i am using a raycast to detect if the bot has been hit, but all i can change is how far the weapon reaches, such as how the knife has shorter reach then the sword. but i would also like to change the width of the cast, so something like the sword can side-swipe and hit horizontally, or something like a hammer that has a bigger radius. i dont know how to do this though. i am also changing the reach and damage in a different script by using public static bools but it makes the code look bad and clunky. suggestions on how to fix that would also be appreciated. anyway, this is the code for the melee:

 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using UnityEngine;
 using UnityEngine.UIElements;
 
 public class PlayerAttack : MonoBehaviour
 {
     Camera cam;
     public static float range;
     public static float damage;
     public LayerMask layerMask;
 
     private float timeBtwShots;
     public static float startTimeBtwShots;
 
     float waitTime;
 
     public Animator knifeAnim;
     public Animator swordAnim;
 
     // Start is called before the first frame update
     void Start()
     {
         cam = GetComponentInChildren<Camera>();        
     }
 
     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update()
     {
         waitTime = startTimeBtwShots / 2 ;
         if(timeBtwShots <= 0)
         {
             if (Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
             {
                 StartCoroutine(Attack());
                 timeBtwShots = startTimeBtwShots;
             }
         }
         else
         {
             timeBtwShots -= Time.deltaTime;
         }
     }
 
     IEnumerator Attack()
     {
         RaycastHit hit;
 
         if (PlayerWeapon.usingKnife)
         {
             knifeAnim.SetBool("isSwinging", true);
 
             if (Physics.Raycast(cam.transform.position, cam.transform.forward, out hit, range, layerMask))
             {
                 if(hit.transform.tag == "Enemy")
                 {
                     Debug.DrawLine(cam.transform.position, hit.transform.position, Color.red, 3f);
                     hit.transform.gameObject.GetComponent<KnockBack>().applyKnockBack = true;
                     hit.transform.gameObject.GetComponent<BotHealth>().TakeDamage(damage);
                 }
                 else if(hit.transform.tag == "Squirrel")
                 {
                     hit.transform.gameObject.GetComponent<SquirrelHealth>().TakeDamage(damage);
                 }
             }
 
             SoundManager.knifeSwing = true;
             yield return new WaitForSeconds(startTimeBtwShots);
             knifeAnim.SetBool("isSwinging", false);
 
         }
         else if(PlayerWeapon.usingSword)
         {
             swordAnim.SetBool("isSwinging", true);
             SoundManager.swordSwing = true;
             yield return new WaitForSeconds(waitTime);
 
             if (Physics.Raycast(cam.transform.position, cam.transform.forward, out hit, range, layerMask))
             {
                 if(hit.transform.tag == "Enemy")
                 {
                     Debug.DrawLine(cam.transform.position, hit.transform.position, Color.red, 3f);
                     hit.transform.gameObject.GetComponent<KnockBack>().applyKnockBack = true;
                     hit.transform.gameObject.GetComponent<BotHealth>().TakeDamage(damage);
                 }
                 else if(hit.transform.tag == "Squirrel")
                 {
                     hit.transform.gameObject.GetComponent<SquirrelHealth>().TakeDamage(damage);
                 }
             }
             yield return new WaitForSeconds(waitTime);
 
             swordAnim.SetBool("isSwinging", false);
         }
     }
 }