Best vendor for name on lame?

[KD5MDK]

I expect I'll tote my lame down to the Houston NAC and get my name put on it for the fun of it. From what I've gleaned already from the forum, Marx and Proprintwear both charge $20 for the service. Do they charge extra for long names? Any sort of guarentee it won't damage the conductivity of my lame? Finally, any reason I should choose one or the other?

[DJ Apostrophe]

I was talking to Phil (proprintwear) in Albuquerque. He was saying that he keeps all the invoices from stenciling, and when he and his staff are at NACs, if they notice a name running on a fencer, they'll look up thier invoices to see if they did the stenciling, if they did, they will replace the item (knickers, jacket, lame) for the fencer. As of Albuquerque, they had only had to replace one item, and that was because it was done on a different type of material on a jacket, and the surface needed to be treated differently.

-w

[CvilleFencer]

I would default to Phil personally for a couple of reasons. The names done by the Marx tend to fade badly being reason number one. I am not sure if they way Phil does it is better, but I will definitly give it a shot next time I need my name printed on gear. The second reason is that I am a bit put out by the fact that Marx is treating the US national colors as a copyrighted design. Since this is something that HAS to be done for international fencing I feel it is a pretty crappy thing to do, and since the USFA either botched the paperwork or knowingly conspired to chose a design that could be copyrighted, the effectively gave a single company a monopoly on something that is required for US fencers competing abroad. That really does not sit very well with me.

Sure, Phil is the sole vendor for t-shirts, stickers etc, at NACs but those are not required to fence. You can elect not to purchase an event t-shirt, but unless you want to start every bout a point down you have to get your country colors stenciled by Marx or break the law. The whole thing is rather BS to me and until they do something about it I encourage everyone who feels similiary to "vote" with their pocket books and let Marx Enterprises know that this was not a smart move on their part.

So I would say give Phil a try. Also Sam who is a frequent poster on this board offers a very durable embroidered option done on either jackets/pants or on a strip of cloth that you can stitch on and reuse on later gear.

[Purple Fencer]

So I would say give Phil a try. Also Sam who is a frequent poster on this board offers a very durable embroidered option done on either jackets/pants or on a strip of cloth that you can stitch on and reuse on later gear.

Uh.....I think you're confusing me with Tim Loomis (yeoldarmourer). TIM does the embroidery...putting names on stuff is not a service I offer.

Fencing Post also does stencilling, but I don't know about their durability vs Proprint or Marx....I DO know that my Marx-done jacket faded almost immediately, but it seems to have stabilized at the readible level. I always thought it was normal to fade....guess not!

[CvilleFencer]

Dooh! Sorry Sam. Yes, I was thinking of Tim. Saul/Fencing Post does a good job of stencilling also. I had a few rush order lames done by them this past year and they have held up pretty well so far. Still a nice dark blue.

[Purple Fencer]

Dooh! Sorry Sam.

Well...I could see the confusion....we both don't type so well....but Tim's got dyslexia...I'm just sloppy!!

[KD5MDK]

Thanks. I think I'm more interested in getting it put on our lames, which has anti-theft/confusion benefits in addition to the whole "required for nationals" bit. Might also intimidate some new fencers, which isn't bad. So embroidery wouldn't be as useful, unless Dan Dechaine swears to pass it.