I was doing some rewiring of foils for my club yesterday. Seven of the wires were Uhlmann and three were Allstar. Mostly, I've worked with Uhlmann wires. Those weapons went together just fine. The Allstar-wired blades, however, were completely dead once I got the wire in. All three of them.
I assembled them and tested, and stripped them back down to the blade and used my meter on them, and there was no current flowing through the wire. It was while I was attempting to get SOMETHING by using my tip screwdriver in the barrel that I started to get a normal response.
Cutting it short, it seems like all three had SOMETHING on the contact point in the cup. A coating? Once I scraped the surface with my screwdriver, all three began to work normally.
Is this common with Allstar wires? If it was just one, I would have written it off, but all three is a little unusual to me.
allstar wires have a resin-type insulation on the wire itself in addition to the thread, which needs to be burnt off - but i've never run into any problems with the contact on the cup...
Both Allstar and Uhlmann use a coating in addition to the thread. But I would avoid burning either as it weakens the wire. Emery cloth, sandpaper or exacto knife.
It sounds like what was on the contact is the rosin from the soldering. It is always best to test a wire before using it, even if you make them yourself.
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Donald Hollis Clinton, Jr. DHCJr@juno.com
To Teach is to Learn (Japanese Proverb)
Knowing the rule book by heart means nothing, if you don't understand the rules.
I thought I was the only one who had this problem with Allstar wires.
I was experimenting with this problem with a fully assembled tip but without having glued in the wire. I could not get any current through the cup and I eventually gave up and glued the blade, intending to keep fiddling with it after it was dried. When I thought a small amount of glue had run into the tip, I swabbed the tip out with a Q-Tip soaked in acetone. I immediately got current and thereafter there were no problems with the tip.
I assume the cups have some sort of coating on them. DCHJr's suggestion that it may be rosin makes sense to me. In the past I have used the spring to scratch the surface of the cup, but that was not always reliable.
Since posting my first message, I have had something similar happen with two Uhlmann wires. In my seven years of rewiring weapons, I've never had this happen, but I will be checking my wires BEFORE I glue them in from now on. Lesson learned!
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The Grim Riposter
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