What Every Fencing Parent Should Know About … Cleaning and Fixing an Epee or Foil Tip

Fencing Thought of the Day: Some people say fencing is the sport of kings, but at times it can seem like the sport of second mortgages.

So, wow. Some people remember where they were the day the Berlin Wall fell. Or for a younger generation, where they stood in line to get the last Harry Potter book at 12:01 AM on July 21, 2007. But now you can trump them all, because you can say you witnessed an EVEN MORE momentous occasion: the publication of the twentieth “What Every Fencing Parent Should Know” article! Who knew that USA Fencing leadership was so asleep at the switch that they would let this misuse of server space get up to twenty articles?

So in case they wake up, and because I’m the kind of person who likes to help out, here is a list of the top ways that USA Fencing could rededicate the little ones and zeros that currently are storing my parent fencing articles:

• Proposal #1: A Compilation of Funny Monkey Videos! Come on, if you have been reading these articles at all, you knew this one was coming.
• Proposal #2: Caption-That-Coach Game. USA Fencing post pictures of coaches in mid-yell at critical junctures of NACs; fencing parents compete to fill in the caption. Extra points are given for topicality, the level of humor, and use of fencing-related puns (“I am really pisted off that you are not setting up your fleche!”).
• Proposal #3: Parental 10,000-Step Contest. Fitness contest where parents compete to see who takes the most steps over a season of NACs to retrieve missing fencing items. Bonus points are awarded for multiple trips taken within the same hour.
• Proposal #4: Establish a Parental Misery Leaderboard. Fencing parents compete based on annual points accumulated based on: (1) miles spent driving to and from fencing practice and tournaments; plus (2) credit card bills for fencing expenses; plus (3) the number of flights leaving before 6:30 am. Ties are broken by the number of watched lost priority bouts. 
• Proposal #5: Trip Screw Mystery Jar Game. USA Fencing places all tip screws lost at the previous year’s NACs into a jar and lets parents guess the total. The grand prize for the closest guess is the release of GroupHousing rooms for the next year 48 hours in advance.

One of the good things about epee and foil maintenance is that a lot of the issues that arise with swords can be fixed with the simple tasks of cleaning and tightening. Removing the tip of the weapon and rotating 400 grit sandpaper inside, and then finishing off with a cotton swab (genuine Q-Tip for epee and generic/smaller ones for foil) with a bit of 90 percent proof alcohol (high alcohol content to avoid rusting) can max sword tips glide in and out smoothly and even fix intermittent swords, if the problem was caused by a dirty tip.

Also easy to fix while the sword tip is apart are the following items:

• Sword Failing the Thin Shim Test: A simple tightening of the small contact spring, going a quarter turn at a time until the issue is fixed, can cure the spring being a bit too long and triggering the light a bit too soon. By the way, the opposite is not true – if a spring is too short, it generally will bend if you try to loosen it, making it usually the better option to start over with a new contact spring.
• Sword Failing the Weight Test: A simple replacement of the large pressure spring that is not pushing the weight up to clear the light is about as easy as you can get.
• Straightening Even a Pretzel Sword: Although I have seen many fencers who have gotten adept at straightening swords on the ground under their sneakers, this tends not to work when swords are really bent in multiple directions. I have, however, been able to straighten even the strangest bends in swords by using the hole at the end of most crescent wrenches and working my way gradually to a straight sword. The key is to start very low on the sword, at the grip end, and to move your way towards the tip. Even a small adjustment near the bottom has a surprisingly large impact on the overall bend of the sword. Adjustments near the tip should be done carefully, as these are the ones most likely to snap the sword. (Although you shouldn’t feel too bad if the sword breaks during straightening, as it likely was getting close to snapping anyway.).
• Tightening the Handle: Fencing with a loose sword is annoying, and also can result in wiring issues if the small-gauge wire falls out of the just-slightly-larger channel. Just be certain that the grip is not rotated when tightening things. If the sword is very tight and still has a wobbly bell guard, this usually means you have a crack in the center and need a new bell guard.
• Tightening the Tip: The key thing when tightening the tip is – believe it or not – to rotate it in the correct direction. Loosening it by mistake can actually sever the connection at the tip, which means you have just signed up for a rewire.

A good overview of the cleaning and maintenance of epee sword tips is found at Leon Paul Fencing: Epee Tip Maintenance. Another good basic video is Ask an Armourer: How To Clean Your Epee’s Tip, which in addition to providing good tips on cleaning epee tips also includes more videos of the cute black cat. Although the video uses a video set-up on a towel to work on the epee tip, I prefer to use a vice, like the armorists you see at NACs. But either method is fine if it is comfortable to you. I have always used 90 percent alcohol but will try the acetone recommended by the video. And if you really are a die-hard fan of cleaning tips, you can always take in a final showing of I Can Haz Armory: Clean Foil and Epee Tips (reshoot).

Also helpful is Diagnosing an Epee: Visual Check and the video on Diagnosing an Epee: Using a Test Box, which also features the cute cat in Where’s Waldo mode peeking out here and there. (My working assumption is that the omni-present black cat is the video series Executive Producer or perhaps the Feline Key Grip.) The video walks through various scenarios that can easily be diagnosed with a simple epee test box. It also is helpful to review I Can Haz Armory: Inside Working of an Epee Tip, which provides a helpful illustration of how the contact and pressure springs work together to make an epee tip work.

At this point, hopefully your epee is tight, clean, and working nicely (and you lost a minimum of tip screws along the way). But we do live in a world where the Sadistic Fencing Gods (SFGs) have a sense of humor, so don’t think that this is your only potential outcome. (Questions: Is the Feline Key Grip the arch enemy of the Sadistic Fencing Gods? If the SFGs and the Feline Key Grip went into battle, who would win? And will the Feline Key Grip ever invent a replacement for the SFGs most fiendish invention, the tip screw? But I digress.) That’s when you head over to Ask an Armourer: How To Repair an Epee That’s Failed the Gauge Test and Ask an Armourer: So Your Epee Failed the Weight Test. Also helpful is I Can Haz Armory: Epee: Failing the Thin-Shim Test, as this also is generally a pretty easy fix.

Foil weapons have a parallel set of videos. The Leon Paul Fencing: Foil Tip Maintenance covers the basics of keeping a foil sword clean, as does Ask an Armourer: How to Clean (and Fix) Your Foil Point Tip. To get into the foil basic diagnoses, head on over to Winter Garden Fencing Academy: Basic Foil Tip Maintenance and Repair and I Can Haz Armory: Clean Foil and Epee Tips (reshoot).

When it comes time to fix foil tips, check out I Can Haz Armory: Repairing a Foil Tip, Cyrus of Chaos: How To Fix a Foil Not Passing Weight Test, and Ask an Armourer: What Is the Weight Test, and How Do You Fix a Foil That’s Failed It? For some foil-specific items, check out Ask an Armourer: Taping the Tip on a Foil or I Can Haz Armory: Taping a Foil Blade, and I Can Haz Armory: Fixing a Stuck Foil Tip.

And with these videos, you should be able to get your weapon to a working state that would satisfy your fencer or, maybe, even a Feline Key Grip.

So this is really a thing – a strange sport that was NOT found at the 1904 Olympics. From 1984 to 1992, there was the sport of “solo synchronized swimming.” This involved judges evaluating the swimmer’s routine against what is variously described as synchronization to the music or to an imaginary partner. Yet despite only having a single person to grade, a judge at the 1992 Olympics inadvertently entered the score of 8.7 instead of the intended 9.7 in the computerized scoring system, leading to an incorrect second-place finish for Sylvie Fréchette and the initial award of the gold medal to Kristen Elizabeth Babb-Sprague. Following an appeal, Fréchette also received a gold medal in place of her silver medal. I suppose you can say that they received synchronized gold medals.

Questions? Comments? Just want to inquire exactly how many strange events have been at the Olympics? If I don’t have anything better to do, it’s possible I’ll look at any emails that show up at usfafencingblog@gmail.com.

Looking for more fencing content? Swim on over to the USFA Parents’ Fencing Blog Website, where all my articles are synchronized and then reposted, unfortunately without any intelligent editing to remove the bad jokes and puns. If you have questions about membership, tournaments, or for advice on how to get a petition before the USA Fencing board to send me to a few writing seminars before I’m allowed to post again, visit the USA Fencing Contact Us page. Any suggestions regarding how the Marvel Cinematic Universe should incorporate a new superhero called the Feline Key Grip are beyond the purview of USA Fencing, and unfortunately will need to be sent elsewhere.