Absolute Epee (dry) tips

[Alexander Kai]

Hi:

For my club, I purchased a number of dry Epee weapons. The rubber safety tips on these weapons have a tendency to come off very very quickly. As a result we have become conscious about the safety tips, putting new ones on as we go, and making sure that no one is fencing with an un-tipped blade, I'm also slowly buying electric blades and sockets, so the problem is mostly a non-issue.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has had the same problem with Absolute's standard Dry Epee Blades. Do the tips consistently come off quicker than other dry Epees? How quickly do the tips come off (of their own accord) with Dry Epees made by different companies?

Thanks

Kai

[Fencergrl]

I have some of their dry foils. From day one, I secured the tips with some electrical tape, running it down the blade a bit. I find this keeps the tips on & they tend to punch through before they pop off. You might want to give this a try.

[Purple Fencer]

It happens on almost every blade...foil and epee....have you ever looked at the tips after the rubber comes off? The head is almost never consistently formed...and some of the tips are almost impossible to get on (Fencing Post....I had to nuke a couple of them for over a minute to get them softened a little so they'd go on)

I'm advising my salle to buy unwired blades instead and just slap a cheap unwired point on...most beginners who use our dry weapons slap like bad sabre anyway...and a hard rubber tip doesn't fell much different from an electric tip.

I've also advised SwordPlay to replace the dry blades with FIEs (StM, typically)...at cost it runs about $50 per blade with a Russian screwless tip (we're talking foil here). Over the long haul it'll be a LOT better deal financially...it'll just take a lot fo time to make the tranasition.

[Alexander Kai]

With practice foils I have seen them used a LOT, and the tips would always stay on. With only one or two flying tip mishaps. Where with the practice Epee, its pretty consistent to say that they'd fall off once or twice a night.

We have been taping, and that helps sometimes....

Otherwise I agree with you, and I think I should have just bought unwired blades in the beginning, mah bad.

Thanks for the input though.

[Craig]

we've been putting a couple of drops of flex-glue inside the tip before mounting it on the blade

Craig