In einer eMail vom 10/20/2005 10:18:43 PM W. Europe Daylight Time schreibt
akhilleus13@yahoo.com:
I also have a question on children's foils, having never seen one up
close. Would the handle on such a thing be suitable for smallsword
practice? I'm looking around for a very utilitarian (read: "cheap")
pair of smallsword simulators, and while I recognize that a modern
foil is hardly ideal, I'd just be happy with a weapon that let's me
work in pronation comfortably. Any info would be appreciated!
On the whole, childrens' foils aren't sturdy enough to serve as smallsword
simulacra. I learned my lesson when I battled German sport fencers early in
my stay here. My poor little electric childrens' did nobly, but it took an
awful beating. By preference and habit, I use a 30' foil all the time
anyhow--with cut-down Triplette blade and crown guard--that is extremely quick and
provides really crisp parries, while demanding attention to technique. An
opponent with a standard foil is at no advantage, believe me, once you get used
to the # 0 blade. You achieve a hit, you and they know it. Some folks I know
use #2s to achieve the same effect. If my recollection is accurate, Kim has
seen cut-downs in use by members of the St. Louis Classical Fencing Society
and Salle Mainzer (Champaign-Urbana).
I would caution you not to let novices or even reasonably advanced
intermediates train with the shorter blades, however. Our folks all know about it,
but until way down the line in their training they won't touch one. They
should master basic foil techniques with the standard blade first.
Either--#0 or #2--will give you a rough smallsword parallel, although maybe
not so rough at all if they are cut-down's from #5s....We can perhaps make
too much of length reduction: if you look carefully at Rowlandson's depiction
of the Angelo salle you can use it as a very rough guide to foil blade
length for attempts at duplication (I stress "very rough"). It's easy to
neglect--and as Jeanette Acosta-Martinez rightly points out in a note in her
commentary in the Kirby-Martinez edition of Angelo--that foil was the training weapon
for smallsword. It is also easy to forget that the foil is the only
historical sword still in use for what it was intended, by the way. Foils in the
17th century could be longer--we should not look for an industrial age
standardization. Yet attention to foil conventions should not be downplayed for
mistaken notions of their irrelevance to the duel.
Bill Leckie
Klassisches Fechten Soest
_flanconade@aol.com_ (mailto:flanconade@aol.com)
_soestfechten@aol.com_ (mailto:soestfechten@aol.com)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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