What Every Fencing Parent Should Know About … The Best Weapons Repair Resources

Fencing Thought of the Day: Repairing weapons is item 4327 on the things you never realized you would need to know until you became a fencing parent.

So, once upon a time there was a group of very minor gods called the Sadistic Fencing Gods or, to their closest friends, the SFGs. And they were sad – very sad. They wanted to torment fencing parents, but no matter what they tried, it didn’t work. They invented something called “the credit card limit,” but were foiled when fencing parents just applied for more credit cards. So they teamed up with the head of the Sadistic Airline Gods to invent the “baggage fee,” only to have fencing parents parry their efforts by gaining status for free bags. And they even invented something called the “open the fencing bag stink bomb,” only to find that fencing parents counterattacked with a magical talisman called “Lysol.”

Boy, were they piste. I mean, really, really pisted off.

So they thought and they thought. And then they thought some more. And then they came up with the most fiendish punishment yet: a devious invention they called “the tip screw.” It was the perfect torture device, because it was both essential to use and fiendishly difficult for aging parental eyes to see. It led to much cursing, which is a form of devotional prayer in the eyes of the SFGs. And as they looked down from Mt. Olympus – okay, the broken-down guest house behind the outhouse on Mt. Olympus, which is the only place the major gods will let them stay – they realized they had done good work. And they were happy.

By the way, if you have never heard of the head of the Sadistic Airline Gods, it is because he goes by a more common name, which is “Lufthansa.” Yeah, explains a lot, doesn’t it.

Despite the best efforts of the SFGs to block them, it turns out that there are hundreds of fencing armory videos on YouTube. (There don’t appear to be many on TikTok, probably because it is hard to do a fencing repair dance video.) So as an aid to both of my loyal readers – thanks, Susie and John! – I ran through them all to find the ones I thought would be of most use to fencing parents.

Now to be clear, I concentrated on videos that were part of a series, because I find it useful to follow through with a given approach to weapons repair. There also are plenty of videos out there that are more in the form of one-offs, which can also be quite useful if you have an individual need. As the saying goes, Google is your friend. But keeping that in mind, here are the three best overall series I have found:

• The first set is “I Can Haz Armory,” which has a good and comprehensive set of videos on weapons repair. These are quite easy to follow and are the ones I used to learn more weapons repair during the pandemic, when I needed to do new things like replace a snapped blade on my own.
• The “Ask an Armourer” series also provides good, sensible, and easy-to-follow advice. Between the two, one has to give the edge to the Ask an Armourer series because more than a few videos feature an adorable black cat that wanders into the video to do cat-related, non-fencing things.
• Northwest Fencing Center has posted a good series of videos in their Armory & Equipment Repair Series. These videos tend to be longer and cover multiple topics, so they are good for sitting back and covering a topic completely.

Also, this is the article that reveals that I am truly a Demented Fencing Parent (DFP), because this is where I tell the world … okay, the fencing world … okay, geez, those two loyal readers who actually read my articles … that I really and truly BUILT my own fencing repair station. True, I built it during the pandemic, when things to do were at a decided premium and churning my own butter was starting to sound like an entertaining pastime. And it is built almost in its entirety from white melamine medium-density fiber board that was left over from a closet project that didn’t really have any other use, unless maybe to make a butter churn that looked like it came from Ikea. And it’s located in an otherwise unused walk-in closet in the basement. But still, yup – you got it right – this DFP built a fencing repair station, for the service of exactly one fencer.

But the starting point for the Average Fencing Parent – i.e., the ones that haven’t built a weapons repair station and not one, not two, but three sword wiring chains, just in case the first two break – is to come up with a starting list of tools. And the good news is that many of them are ones that many people already have around the house, all ready to be gathered up and to serve their true purpose of foiling the sabotage attempts of the SFGs. Breaking these up into the must-have and the nice-to-have categories, the tools that form the core of a fencing repair station include:

The Must-Have of the Must-Have Tools:

As a starting point, check out Ask an Armourer: Your First Dozen Tools and the Georgia Fencing Academy: Fencing Tutorial: Armory. And then scurry over to your own tool box to repurpose these tools that you probably already own:

• Needle nose pliers
• Regular pliers
• Small fine file
• Wire cutters
• Wire strippers. If you have cheap ones that came in some multi-set, then invest in a better one. You will thank me the next time you fix a body cord.
• 8” wrench with a hole in one end. It’s actually the hole that you want, as this is an excellent way to straighten bent swords.
• Two standard screwdrivers – a large for tightening the connector for the incoming wire connector, and a small for twisting open the metal ends on body cord.
• Small scissors
• Foldable sewing scissors. Small sewing scissors are often overlooked but important. They are useful for such tasks as cutting zip ties left over from international tournaments, for splitting body cords apart when fixing wires broken at the connector, and a variety of other uses.
• Cotton swabs (Q-tips for epee swords; generic ones with smaller cotton swabs for foil)
• Super glue. Both gel and liquid are useful to have around. I highly recommend getting the small, single-use super glues (4 for a dollar or so at a dollar store) as the larger bottles tend to dry out after the first use.

Specialized Items You Might Need To Purchase:

• 90% pure alcohol. Don’t use lower levels of alcohol, as the high alcohol content allows you to clean without leaving appreciable water residue behind, which can lead to rust.
• Very small screwdriver for tip screws. These are sold at all NACs by multiple vendors. If your child fences epee, track down a 1.6x50 screwdriver online, rather than the slightly smaller ones sold at NACs, which are of a size that fits both foil and epee tip screws. It makes a big difference when loosening and tightening epee tip screws.
• Appropriate-sized Allen wrench for your child’s sword. Rather than using multi-size sets commonly sold at hardware stores, buy the dedicated fencing ones with the large handle that allows you to properly tighten everything. Again, these are sold by multiple vendors at NACs.
• Tip wrench for tightening the tip.
• Testing box. The ones that have two sets of sockets, to allow testing of body cords, are more useful than the ones with only a single set of sockets.
• Testing shim
• Testing weight. These are usually sold as multi-sets that screw together, with the smaller weight being for foil and the combined weight being for epee.
• For foil, tip tape.
• Sand paper, super useful for barrel cleaning and fixing clicky sword tips. My recommendation is 400 grit.
• Wiring chain. These are surprisingly hard to track down, so I eventually made my own. It turns out there is an I Can Haz Armory video on Making A Wiring Chain. Making this handy tool is as simple as finding the bulk chain aisle at the local lumber yard or hardware store and cutting off either a 25 ½” chain for pistol grip or 29” for a French grip. I do recommend using a PVC cap for the ends rather than the copper ends, as it works just as well and is easier to drill.

Fencing-Specific Parts You Need to Purchase:

• Pressure Springs (the larger springs that slide into the barrel)
• Contact springs (the smaller springs that go onto the tip)
• Tip screws (you will go through these quickly, fortunately they are very cheap)
• Extra tips (it is surprising how often a balky sword is fixed just by swapping in a new tip)

The Demented-Fencing-Parent-Who-Made-His-Own-Fencing-Bench Additional Tools

Beyond those basic tools, there also are some additional tools that definitely come in handy, even if they are not necessarily “must have” tools. To get some background on these, check out Ask an Armourer: The Second Set of Tools, which has to also get extra kudos for mentioning “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Also helpful is Ask an Armourer: The Final (Niche) Set of Tools I Recommend.

Some items to consider here include:

• A magnetic bowl to hold small parts while undertaking repairs is a handy way to avoid scouring the floor for tips that popped out when the tip screws were removed, preventing lost tip screws, etc.
• Soldering kit and soldering object holder are useful if you want to tin the ends of wires for body cord repair.
• A heat gun and shrink tubing, for reinforcing the wire at the connector end of body cords as a last step before reassembly.
• Another surprisingly difficult item to bind is a barrel scraper and handle, which is a last resort for taking barrels that are slightly out of round back to specs.
• Bolt cutter, if you plan on replacing blades.
• Larger file for smoothing the ends of the blade after cutting it.

So there you are – the definitive list of fencing tools, at least according to one DFP who earned his black belt in fencing weapons repair by building his own weapons repair station. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor, I guess you can say that I’ve always been a bit of a loose cannon in a China shop.)

So that’s a wrap, at least for now – the next few articles will get more in-depth on equipment maintenance and repair. By the end of the series, you will be fully armed with all the knowledge you need to fight the SFGs to a standstill. You’re on your own, however, when it comes to the Sadistic Airline Gods. They remain undefeated, particularly the mightiest of them all, the cruel and vengeful Lufthansa.

Fun Fact of Interest Only To Me. It is up to you to decide which is more impressive: a Y-10 fencer competing in the Olympics, or a Vet 70 competitor. Dimitrios Loundras competed in gymnastics at age 10 during the 1896 Olympics, while Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn competed at age 72 in the 1920 version. Both were fortunate to have lived before the Sadistic Airline Gods had come into full power.

Comments on the article? Just aching to tell me that you have found an even 100 grammatical errors in my fencing articles, and that your cat walking across your computer keyboard while drunk on catnip would have committed a good deal fewer? Send me an email at usfafencingblog@gmail.com.

If you missed any prior posts in this series that is growing even faster than my waistline, check them out at the USFA Parents’ Fencing Blog Website. For questions about your membership or tournament registrations – or just to request that USA Fencing please, please, please replace my articles with content written by a cat drunk on catnip walking across a keyboard – visit the USA Fencing Contact Us page.