French grip trouble....

[Miguelito]

I'm relatively new to fencing and use a french foil. The leather on my grip (Triplette's standard leather over wood grip) recently began to come apart, so I ordered their plastic grip to replace it. But the end of the plastic grip where it meets the pommel is square & too big for the pommel to fit just around the end of it to really secure it in place. Should I get a knife and shave the end of the grip down to make it fit? Or optionally is there any decent product I cound use to re-cover my original wooden grip? (I've been patching it w/ electrical tape) Any suggestions would be muy agradecidos.

Que penocha en la panocha!

[neevel]

Insert some washers between the end of the grip and the pommel so that the pommel will seat on the washers.

Check in the phonebook for leather goods repair or shoe repair businesses near you-- they'll have strips of leather (they may even just give you some scrap they have around). Crafts stores may also carry leather. Then you just glue the leather to the wood core; there may be leather glues around, but something like Duco cement or a not-too-thin cyanoacrylate would work fine.

-Dave Neevel

[Miguelito]

Thanks, Dave. I like the washers solution.

[HilandDoug]

I've got a friend who took a page from Aldo Nadi's book, and uses a cord handled French grip that he wraps with athletic tape. When the handle (tape) gets worn out, pull off the old tape and put on the new. Bingo- new grip.

[Lumberg]

First off, just stick with the plastic grip. If you get serious with fencing, you'll probably be switching to pistol grip and all your French grips will be so seventeenth-century it's not even funny.

------------------
Lumberg.
"...yeah...did you get the memo about the TPS reports?"