How is a foil blade forged?

[angel]

What is the standard process for forging a foil blade? What do kind of metal do they use to make it and other types of fencing equipment?
What kind of forges do they use for something like that?

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Angelo16

[neevel]

I don't know the info for non-maraging blades, but Appendix A in the USFA edition of the rulebook gives the FIE's guidelines for the composition of maraging steel use in blades and the heat-treatment process, as well as the mechanical characteristics and tests required for FIE homologation of blades. Many companies use computer controlled automated forges to shape the blades-- Blaise Freres ( http://www.blaise-freres.fr ) has a couple of pictures of their forging machine on their website.





You'll also find the specs for FIE masks and clothing in Appendix A. Appendix B gives the specs for scoring machines.

-Dave Neevel

[Gav]

I read on another post that Blaise' make blades for Allstar. Is this true? Neevel do you know if you can order direct from them and if its cheaper? I would contact them via email but my french is very poor.

[This message has been edited by Gav (edited 12-06-2000).]

[neevel]

Yes, BF blades are badge-engineered by Allstar, Uhlmann, PBT, and other manufacturers. You can also get them from Triplette and Blue Gauntlet in the U.S., and Duellist in the U.K. I don't believe that they sell direct-- you'll need to go through a distributor.

-Dave

[angel]

The site is written in French (I don't speak French) and it's just a picture of the machine. It doesn't tell me a whole lot about the composition of the metal in the blade or the forging process.

[neevel]

Go to http://babelfish.altavista.com and use their web page translator--you should be able to get a reasonably comprehensible translation of the page there. Based on the text, they use a computer controlled forging machine to do rough shaping, followed by what I'd assume would be a CNC milling machine to do final shaping. The blue machinery shown is their forging machine. After that, blades go through heat treat.

As I mentioned in my first post, Appendix A in the online USFA rules gives guidelines for the steel and heat-treat for FIE blades. The heat treatment is in many ways more key to getting a good blade that the method of shaping it. Specs for masks are also given in Appendix A.

Although concerned with real sword blades rather than fencing blades, there are a few articles over at SwordForum that give a very basic into to heat-treatment of steel:

http://swordforum.com/sfu/primer/heattreatment.html

http://swordforum.com/metallurgy/ites.html

http://swordforum.com/forge/annealing.html


-Dave

-Dave