Bring Out Yer Dead!

[Robert Smith]

Boy, I'm an idiot! Two years selling conductive thread and only now do I think of this.

There have to be lots of people out there with dead lames - dead beyond use for practice, too dead for patching or for use as patches. What does everyone do with them?

Our club has no club lames, and no money to go buy a bunch of new ones, so why not offer a reasonable amount (how much?) plus postage (cheapest surface rate, no hurry) to anyone who has a lame - foil or sabre - that's so dead that they no longer have a use for it? Cost of the lame plus at most a $6 spool of thread, and Frankenstein's Lame is Risen From the Grave. Only difference being, the electric shocks are applied after the reanimation, not before. A dozen lames would keep our beginners going for a good stretch.

Okay, let's test the waters. Anyone got one or more old "irretrievable" lames that they'd like to dispose of for a modest sum? Trade for thread (except I'm out of thread for the next six weeks)?

[fencerbill]

Robert:

Please explain what you intend to do. I have used your conductive thread in a quilt pattern (3/4 inch spacing) all over the front of old Foil Lames so people can use them for practice. But I tell them not to use them for competition. There still remain some dead spots.

Where I have found them useful is where stainless Lames develop opens where there are folds. Then you can zigzag across and restore function.

Also very useful for small stars on isolated dead spots.

Also on Sabre Lame armpits where you can get dead spots which cause the Lames to be rejected at NACs even though touches would never have been lost.

From a satisfied user who reordered after his first batch was used up.

[Robert Smith]

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Oddly, I'm selling most of my thread these days to fashion designers and people doing interesting electronic stuff. There's a guy bought some recently for use in bear and cougar deterrents. Weird, wired world. But the reason I started selling it was because the club I fenced at then had club lames that had gone well beyond the iron lung stage.

My lame is a good case in point. It was an Infinity three years or so ago, but it became a zero. Lots of good, strong Yorkshire sweat, nothin' like it for killing lames. I've covered the whole front face and [almost] as much of the back as necessary in zigzag stitching at an interval somewhere close to the width of a foil tip - just simple rows, back and forth, reach one end turn around and go the other way. Plain thread on the inside, conductive on the outside, and sewing through fabric and lining rather than dismantling and .. remantling? I think I used about 40 yards of thread, but I could be off by a chunk. I don't know if it would pass muster in a tournament, but for club fencing it's flawless - except for a two inch strip across the mid-back, which I need to do just for completeness and to shut up Mr. Whippy.

It's a tedious process, takes the main part of an hour, but I could probably farm at least some of the work out to willing[?] volunteers. Could maybe train monkeys to do it, or at a pinch sabreists... From experience, it's good for at least a couple of years even in the high sweat zones, and there's no reason we couldn't keep on doing it as the need arose. As a cheap solution to a potentially expensive problem, it's more than just sew-sew...

[Inquartata]

Originally Posted by Robert Smith

Could maybe train monkeys to do it, or at a pinch sabreists...

Forget it, needles are point-only weapons.

You might get us to cut the thread off for you, though. ( Hold still or you could lose some fingers. )

[twisterfencing]

Originally Posted by Robert Smith

Boy, I'm an idiot! Two years selling conductive thread and only now do I think of this.

There have to be lots of people out there with dead lames - dead beyond use for practice, too dead for patching or for use as patches. What does everyone do with them?

Our club has no club lames, and no money to go buy a bunch of new ones, so why not offer a reasonable amount (how much?) plus postage (cheapest surface rate, no hurry) to anyone who has a lame - foil or sabre - that's so dead that they no longer have a use for it? Cost of the lame plus at most a $6 spool of thread, and Frankenstein's Lame is Risen From the Grave. Only difference being, the electric shocks are applied after the reanimation, not before. A dozen lames would keep our beginners going for a good stretch.

Okay, let's test the waters. Anyone got one or more old "irretrievable" lames that they'd like to dispose of for a modest sum? Trade for thread (except I'm out of thread for the next six weeks)?

Robert,

Just an FYI

I use your product on mass amounts of lames, patches (on everything) and I think its some really great stuff.

Gary Spruill

[fencerbill]

Very important. Robert recommends you put the conductive thread on the bobbin because it is so hard to thread through a sewing machine

Trick to threading through a sewing machine or hand operated needle.

The old-fashioned wire needle threaders which I buy at Joannes (should be available at most sewing stores). You push the needle threader through the needle, it then opens up to a reasonable size loop, and then you can pull the conductive thread back through the needle. Warning, you have to rethread periodically because the thread frays.

[Joe biebel]

Originally Posted by fencerbill

Very important. Robert recommends you put the conductive thread on the bobbin because it is so hard to thread through a sewing machine

Trick to threading through a sewing machine or hand operated needle.

The old-fashioned wire needle threaders which I buy at Joannes (should be available at most sewing stores). You push the needle threader through the needle, it then opens up to a reasonable size loop, and then you can pull the conductive thread back through the needle. Warning, you have to rethread periodically because the thread frays.

Perhaps I could be of service. The products that my company manufactures are custom insulation blankets. We use a variety of cloths and materials and threads that can be very challenging to work with. Some of my people are very good at figuring out ways of dealing with delicate or friable materials. Threads are a constant challenge to us. I may be able to come up with the right needle or machine setup to make this thread work as the top thread instead of the bobbin thread. Let me know if you want to send me some to try. A drill point needle (leather) comes to mind as a possible solution.