I am on a quest to educate myself on fencing's protective equipment. I own a business that specializes in protective sports equipment cleaning (ie: football, hockey etc). I have a friend who is into fencing and mentioned that I should really look into adding the cleaning of fencing protective equipment to our list of services.
Now not knowing really anthing about the sport (sorry), I am hoping that people on this board can help me out a bit.
I would like to ask a few questions and hopefully get some feedback from all of you.
1. Do you think there is a need to have your protective equipment cleaned?
2. Do you currently have it cleaned? How?
3. If a service (like mine) were to offer equipment cleaning for your protective equipment (ie: helmets/masks, pads etc) would you have this equipment cleaned if it was affordable?
4. What would be a "typical" set of equipment cleaned?
5. How much would you be willing to pay to have all your protective equipment cleaned?
Thank you for any feedback you can provide. I am not advertising here, but rather am on a fact finding mission and appologize if this post is inappropriate for this forum.
Protective equipment isw basically broken down into three areas...
1) clothing items somewhat similar to "normal" clothes i.e. they cover the body: the jacket, underarm protector, knickers, glove.
2) Scoring clothing: the foil or sabre lame, sabre manchette, sabre mask.
3) The mask
For most of the clothing, you can just toss it in the washing machine (cold water), and hang dry.
For the lame and sabre mask, you need to hand wash it, otherwise you risk damaging it.
Regular masks are more of a prob. Some people actually put theirs in the dishwasher, but I don't know the best way to clean them, myself.
My guess is people might pay to have the mask done. They'd want to do the lames and other clothing themselves.
Keep in mind that fencer often workout or compete several times per week...your turn-around may not be fast enough.
I love armory stuff lol. (my advice is for blue gauntlet equipment only unless stated otherwise)
First off - the socks, non leather glove, jacket, pants, and under arm guard can be washed (i use bleach) but must drip dry outside to prevent shrinkage.
Mask - take a bucket large enough for the mask and fill it with water and about 1/2 cup of wool-lite. Submerge the helmet, take a britsle brush and scrub the areas to be cleaned, take it out after about 5 min of washing and spin with it to get rid of water caught in the steel mesh. Next, put it in a sunny area to dry.
chest protector - a damp cloth will do well
As for lames, take a bucket and put about 1/2 cup woollite in it and fill the rest with water. Put the lame in it and "agitate" it (manipulate it w/ your hands and move it around). for about 5 min. Take it out by the collar and drain the water from it, then put it into a rinse buket and rinse well for about 1-2 min. take out by the collar and drain it, hang it outside to dry.
For foils, 100grit sand paper will do to scrub it, then take all purpose oil , put a bit on a cloth and wrap it around the blade and wipe on for a layer of protection. If you have the money, use 100 grit emory (sp?) cloth and gun oil in place of sandpaper and all purpose oil.
Hope I helped a bit!
Thank you for your response. I appreciate it. Our machine and detergents are formulated to safely wash and sanitize protective equipment (including leather). It surpasses conventional cleaning whereas it will destroy and remove harmful bacteria (ie: MRSA) from the equipment. My understanding (through some reading) is that there have been cases of MRSA(staph) passed along through the sharing of fencing protective equipment. Turnaround time can be as quickly as 8 hours.
I will second all of the above statements with the exception of gun oil for the blades. I used to use it but moved onto a substance called Renaissance Wax. It does not leave any residue or make the blades feel funky.
I wash all my kit myself, have at least 2 full sets and I doubt I would ever turn it over to someone because I fence several times a week, if is easy to clean myself and since all my kit has to be custom made it would take weeks or months to replace anything lost or damaged.
It is an interesting idea but I think you will find that most fencers take a certain amount of pride in maintaining their own kit. Kind of a polishing your armor and sharpening your sword before battle thing maybe. Or they are just paranoid about their stuff and want it to be just right. I tend to fall more in the latter category!
Good luck with you efforts. I do not think you would find a lot of fencers who would be interested in the service, but you may have more success with clubs. Our club has tons of masks, lames and jackets that get pretty funky and no one has the time or facilities to clean them. I think that would be the place that a service like your would really thrive. At least more so than with the individual fencer.
__________________
Just another lost soul saved by the (hit) First Church of EPEE!
Good information, thanks. I was actually looking more towards the clubs and not the individual per se. It is the sharing of the equipment as well as perhaps the less than focused attention to keeping it clean and sanitization that we would be interested in.
I think you might have laid a finger on the one place you might be able to make a notch for yourself: clubs. I know that in my club, we have 30 or 40 jackets, masks, gloves, and a what-not assortment of lamees. Every year we look at the jackets in particular and complain that some poor soul is going to have to deal with them, and no one wants to. If you could offer cleaning at a good price, clubs might take you up.
Individual fencers, on the other hand, tend to wash equipment on a "as needed" basis as something begins to smell or look particularly grungy (well, some of them do, others revel in it ). I know I own two sets of full whites, and only wash as something needs it. Doing the washing myself isn't much of a chore, except a mask, which I can wash in my kitchen sink and put in front of the box fan to dry.
So I guess for me, I can't see paying to have my equipment cleaned when its fairly simple to take care of it myself.
If you could find a way to actually make my mask come clean without damaging it, I would pay as much as $15-20 every few months. I can never seem to really get it clean washing it by hand.
As for the clothing, if your prices only a little more expensive than a standard laundry service, I would use you instead. However, since standard laundry does the job pretty well, I wouldn't pay much more for the club's equipment.
The machine we use is a wet wash,not agitating front loading machine. It has a drum with cages that drive through the detergents and water. It is very effective in ridding bacteria, mold, dirt etc from deep within sports padding and foam. It should be able to clean a mask effectively. Conventional cleaning methods really only address surface the dirt and do nothing to kill any of the odor causing/unhealthy bacteria. If I were to provide this service, I would more than likely do the mask and all other protective gear as a unit. A cage could hold all equipment that has been mentioned in these threads, thus I think I could keep the pricing down. Thank you for your reply.
Just keep in mind that if you wash about 70% of Lames or electric saber gloves or overgloves, or electric saber masks there is an good chance of killing them. At least in a normal washer. The electric current used is very small so even a small amount of buildup from detergents or even hard water can keep them from registering or passing inspection at large events. Lames are also sensitive to being pinched, folded or wadded tightly as this can break the thin metal fibers that run through it. You should probably contact the various equipment manufacturers to get their thoughts and test it pretty good with some old kit before you risk it with lames. There are lots of different kinds of lames out there so what you can do with one will kill another. Not saying it’s a bad idea, just do some homework on it. I would hate for you to run a couple of grand of lames through a cycle and find that half would not register anymore!
The other stuff sounds great. I usually clean my mask in the dishwasher and hang it to dry, but for some reason this freaks out my fiancée so it would be nice to have an alternative and the jackets/lames at our club could use some scrubbing! By the way, what part of the country are you in and do you offer a pickup service?
__________________
Just another lost soul saved by the (hit) First Church of EPEE!
Thanks for the insight on the wiring. The suggestion on contacting the manufacturers was a good one. I dont think the pinching would be a problem with the way these cages and inserts are set up. The hard water however may come into play and we might have to consider a water softner...We are located in the Northeast section of Massachusetts. We do currently offer Free pickup and delivery service for our local area customers. Thanks again!
Thanks for the insight on the wiring. The suggestion on contacting the manufacturers was a good one. I dont think the pinching would be a problem with the way these cages and inserts are set up. The hard water however may come into play and we might have to consider a water softner...We are located in the Northeast section of Massachusetts. We do currently offer Free pickup and delivery service for our local area customers. Thanks again!
Well, you have a good location. There are a lot of active fencers in that area.
Start with the USFA at:http://www.usfencing.org/ Go to Info for members/where can I fence/click on MA. Not all clubs are USFA and to get an idea of ones that are not contact someone from your Division boards, which you can find at: http://www.neusfa.org/ They will also have a listing of clubs and such that could be a great place to start. I would suggest showing up in person for best results as flyers/cold calls may not be well recieved by some curmudgeonly/grumpy coachs (like me). Best of luck and let us know how it turns out!
__________________
Just another lost soul saved by the (hit) First Church of EPEE!
). I know I own two sets of full whites, and only wash as something needs it. Doing the washing myself isn't much of a chore, except a mask, which I can wash in my kitchen sink and put in front of the box fan to dry.
Linear Mode
