Poll: How do you modify your epee pressure springs?

[mrbiggs]

How do you get a 753, 780, 800, or whatever weight?

All I use is a Coke bottle with 500ml of water in it....for épée, I just borrow a club weight to see if it passes.

[Artisan]

On epee tips: I just received some complete tips from the STM vendor, shopeli.com; and I was impressed by how smooth they are - and only $8.00 for a complete tip & barrel. STM wires: $2.00. I believe they are made to German specs.

[DHCJr]

How do you get a 753, 780, 800, or whatever weight?

All I use is a Coke bottle with 500ml of water in it....for épée, I just borrow a club weight to see if it passes.

First of all, do you KNOW what the club weight is. You will find many weights are not accurate. So if it has not been checked, suggest they check it. First of all get a weight that IS 750 grams.

Then add coins, which are of a known weight.
Pre-1982 pennies are approximately 3 grams
Post-1982 pennies are approximately 2.5 grams
1982 is anyones guess

Nickels are approximately 5 grams.

[mrbiggs]

That's genius.

Thanks.

[Artisan]

...then balance all 150 nickels on the tip of your epee. If the tip stays up, add one more...

[mrbiggs]

If the tip stays up, throw out the spring and buy a new one.

[wbowman]

I usually don't mess with the pressure springs unless they're soft -- which I haven't had happen much in epee, though it's sometimes a problem in foil. I figure I don't hit so softly that I have to worry about it. When a spring is soft, I stretch it with a method I learned from a clubmate: I stick the blade of a small jeweler's screwdriver down into the spring crossways, and then rotate the spring to run the blade up and down the length of it. That gets a more even stretch than just pulling on it.

[swordsen]

How about all of the above? (except the hit hard one.)

[cfaustus]

Ahhhh... what ever happened to the good ol' three finger bend....

[grotto]

Most of the above is very good, but I would like to clear up some things.

First, Grotto don't get caught, I know of a black card that happened because of that.

Eh? Could you elabrate? I have not heard anything about this being illegal. All my weapon pass weights and shims before and after the bout. ( I know because I check it.)

[DHCJr]

This is something that was found done in the Modern Pentathlon. What has been done in the past, is to literally burn one end of the spring. After the weapon passed, they would make a hard hit to the floor off the strip, just like everyone else to test their weapon. What this would do is break the spring and now the spring would not even hold up a Foil weight.

You will find that a number of new rules for Epee come because of experiences that occur in the Modern Pentathlon. For example, the covering on handles.

[grotto]

This is something that was found done in the Modern Pentathlon. What has been done in the past, is to literally burn one end of the spring. After the weapon passed, they would make a hard hit to the floor off the strip, just like everyone else to test their weapon. What this would do is break the spring and now the spring would not even hold up a Foil weight.

You will find that a number of new rules for Epee come because of experiences that occur in the Modern Pentathlon. For example, the covering on handles.

Ahh hell I don't do that! I Just heat the spring evenly then compress it a few times, I don't burn it that drastically, and not at one end. just warm it up a bit. is there a specific rule that I can reference?

[DHCJr]

The rule that was used was T.45.3c.

In fact, the first time I was one of the US Team Armorers, that rule could have been applied to one of the US weapons. The travel spring broke on the end and the loose piece was causing intermittent touches.

The weapon was confistated, but luckily they found it was a manufacturing defect.

[Monkeyboy]

OK so I'm a mechanical geek, but this must be known...if you cut your springs, you shorten the travel, but INCREASE the stiffness. Picture a fishing rod, held by the handle, in a vise. The tip would be very ease to push down, say, 10 inches. Now picture the rod being held in the center. The same rod would be considerably more difficult to move the same 10 inches. A spring is the same thing, only the "lever" is coiled. See why its important to pay attention in phisics class? I heat my springs, but I'm a metalurgest with quite a bit of expierience. I also think a clean tip and good fecing form are more important than spring pressure.

Keep up the good fight, Hadouken...you seem to be maturing at last

[DHCJr]

True, but have you considered when you press a spring it gets harder to press as you press it into a smaller area. Take a screen door, you adjust how hard it compresses by changing the length of the spring.

When a new spring is in a tip it is partially compressed. Take off some spring and you uncompress the spring.

It is best to compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges.

[Epeecurean]

Plus if cutting reduces travel & increases stiffness this can only be a good thing (I think) because the spring's higher resistence to compression means that it will keep it's "spring power" more consistently and longer. If you squash it or burn it, however, I think it makes the spring mushy and it leads to failure faster. So even if these methods are initially easier/faster than diligently cutting and reforming the spring, you end up having to go back into your point to replace or stretch the spring more frequently.

[telkanuru]

*sigh* Ok, a fishing rod is a poor example because its diameter is not uniform, thus the difficulty in bending it farther from the tip, much like the difficulty in bending an epee. A spring obeys the following: F=kx, which is known as Hooke's law. This simply states that the amount of force the spring pushes back with is equal to the distance the spring is distorted times K, which is the spring constant, and will vary according to material and construction *only*; it is independant of the length of the spring. Thus, when you cut a spring, you decrease the amount of distortion x needed to push the spring a sufficient distance to set off the light, and you therefore decrease the force necessary to set of the light, since F and X are directly proportional.

Fear the ME!

[SJCFU#2]

Since K (the spring constant) is a function of both material and construction changing the length will change the spring constant, thereby changing the ratio between force and travel.

[telkanuru]

True, if the dL was caused by contorting the spring. Merely shortening via cutting should not interfear with the spring constant at all.

[wwillis]

I splurge 30 cents on a new spring !!