Some pals of mine and I are going to get together and consider anodizing some of our bell guards. We've read up on the process and it seems pretty simple, and generates decent results, but that's besides the point.
I am curious over how the rulebook would treat this. I've heard you're not allowed to paint your bell guard, but I don't really know how this would count.
Some pals of mine and I are going to get together and consider anodizing some of our bell guards. We've read up on the process and it seems pretty simple, and generates decent results, but that's besides the point.
I am curious over how the rulebook would treat this. I've heard you're not allowed to paint your bell guard, but I don't really know how this would count.
If the anodizing ends up insulating the guard, it'll be illegal, as hits to the guard need to be able to ground out (unless you WANT a hit to your guard to register as a valid touch...).
Now if you can come up with a chemical treatment that adds the color BUT still allows conductivity, THAT'S legal (some guards comes this way already....usually in gold, but I've seen other colors)...similar to the color on some blades.
Now....you might want to consider anodizing the INSIDE of your guards to prevent a bit of excess wire grounding out the circuit...just make sure you leave the strengthener un-anodized, since that's where the socket bracket needs to have contact to complete the ground connection.
The more and more I read up on anodizing, the worse and worse it seems like a good idea. I guess the anodizing process makes the metal non conductive, which would be very bad. A friend of mine has a colored guard, and I really want to figure out how to legally produce one of my own that I can compete with.
Well, our fencing club has about a bajillion aluminum epee bell guards that no one is using, so I am going to try to talk some people into experimenting with trying to anodize some stuff this weekend. I'll post my results in this thread, assuming that we get it done.
Heck, if they don't work, at least they'll look nice on our practice stuff.
Anodizing is non-conductive. Alodining is conductive, and can be tinted (to some extent) and is what gives aluminum guards the gold color. If you have a thin enough anodize layer to be conductive, you defeat the reason for anodizing, i.e. hardness and corrosion protection (which is ridiculous, IMHO, because aluminum oxidizes immediately)
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Decorating a guard that is going to be used is also folly.
A couple years back, F-net had several TI-AL colored guards on sale at one point and I bought a handful of them.
Great guards, good size, decent weight, very durable, and on sale at a great price. As far as remaining as pristine bling on your weapon, the colored coating starts to gather scars as soon as used in bouts. All in all the coating is pretty durable, but it does not remain shiny and perfect for long.
If you are making an art piece, go anodize, paint, gold-pate and cover in leds and swarovski crystals. pierce or whatever, mount it on the wall under the moose-head and the blunderbuss.
If you are putting together a working weapon, it's going to take abuse. Decoration is not going to last.
Some pals of mine and I are going to get together and consider anodizing some of our bell guards. We've read up on the process and it seems pretty simple, and generates decent results, but that's besides the point.
I am curious over how the rulebook would treat this. I've heard you're not allowed to paint your bell guard, but I don't really know how this would count.
Don't anodize. But if you want to quickly distinguish, for example to make the lefty epees visually different from the rightys in a big bag of club epees, you can color the bell with a big tipped permanent marker. I use red. It lasts a few months, and it's conductive.
I know that anodizing won't really last, my friend's colored bellguard is certainly not the shiniest and prettiest it once was.
I'm probably going to give this a shot on my practice epee and maybe a few of the old club guards and see how they work with an electric. I really just want to do this for fun anyway, it seems like a good way to spend a saturday afternoon.
If you are really hard over about playing with anodizing, you can mask off the front of the guard and about a 1" dia circle on the inside and anodize the inside of the guard, which is as good as the previous suggestion of having different colored bell guards. You can also play with saber guards and see what you can do with the 7 - 8 cm tang portion that has to be insulated.
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Remember those who put their lives in danger for your sake.
Just a guess, but I'd bet that any aluminum bell-guard you buy is already anodized. Very few aluminum products are sold un-anodized, if for no other reason than to keep them from oxidizing and corroding, for appearance.
Bare Al will quickly (depends on alloy and environment) become grey and fogged-looking if it is not protected in some fashion, and anodizing is the surface treatment of choice for Al - it's an inexpensive, quick manufacturing process.
We also offer powder coated practice guards utilizing the same type of powder coating used on motorcycle frames...this does insulate and thereby makes them illegal for competition but they sure look cool...
R
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