Epee Specific Spare Parts/ Tool Kit

[peterlista]

I am looking to create a simple, but still comprehensive, tool kit for Epee maintenance. Because I am not looking to wire my own blades just yet, I really need something small that I can take with me to tournaments, something which will help me do minor (strip side) repairs to my weapon.

So, what do you suggest I include in such a kit? And, what experiences do you all have doing this yourselves?

[peterlista]

something which will help me do minor (strip side) repairs to my weapon

Yes, I know there is already a post about this in the Armory Section, however, it seems to focus on more at home repairs... I need something very strip side specific.

Plus, I am very interested in what other fencers actually do, as opposed to what we maybe "ought" to be doing!

[SJCFU#2]

Think about what stipside repairs you might need to do and that will dictate which tools you need.

Pommels will get loose and a loose grip will not only feel sloppy, it can also damage the wires so the first thing on my personal list would probably be whatever tool I need for tightening a loose pommel.

I generally check my travel after every bout so my personal kit would probably also include a simple weapons tester (no need for a multimeter), test weight and shims for testing tips, and a tip screwdriver for repairing those tips when they fail shim. Maybe also a wrench or pair of pliers for tightening loose barrels.

I might carry a bit of sandpaper or a sanding block for removing any oxidation or foreign material from the guard.

I might carry a screwdriver sized for use with the jacks on the guard socket and a knife for trimming insulation from the end of a broken wire (another use for sandpaper as well), plus whatever screwdrivers I might need to work on a bad body cord. I might not carry specific tools for this simply because much of this can done with one Swiss Army knife (something I generally have with me anyway).

Some people also find it helpful to keep a light colored blanket to work over (although I usually just used my underarm protector of a spare t-shirt). The soft fabric helps keep screws from bouncing too far when you drop them and light colors make them easier to find afterward. Some people carry a small magnet for this purpose.

Then once you get all these things it generally doesn't hurt to have a small bag or case to keep them in (especially if your fencing bag lacks enough pockets to allow you to keep them separate from everything else).

[DHCJr]

SJCFU#2 gave a very good answer. I will only add a few minor additions and modifications.

Normally I have a roll of Foil Tape to place the guard of the weapon in when I am working on that. You might have a roll of Athletic tape for the same purpose and it could also help if you get a hole in your glove. You can also use a spare guard for keeping the Epee in place.

On weights and shims. Get the weight weighed and make sure it is over 753 grams. I have seen heavy weights on the strips. You may check your Epee with your weight and it passes, but if it fails on their weight you lose.

The same with shims. I always suggest auto shims. These serve two purposes. One you can make sure it passes any shim, but also with regular fencing shims all you know it has passed. It might be set at 0.05mm instead of close to 0.5. Negrinni has shims with multiple blades. The thing is auto shims are cheaper and you get more variance.

[brtech]

DHCjr's tape needs more explanation.

When working on an epee (or a foil), you often find yourself struggling to hold the tip in a position where you can get the screws in or out, but the weapon wants to lean away from that position. A roll of tip tape can be placed under the guard, and will allow you to spin the weapon anyway you want to, and it won't try to rotate by itself.

My strip kit used to be weight, shim, tip screwdriver, barrel wrench, q-tip & alchohol for cleaning, super glue for wire pops, tightening tool for pommel nut, a multitool for misc screwdriver and holding tasks, a parts box with screws, both springs and spare tips, and aforementioned tip tape. 'course my parts kit has springs, screws and tips for foil also.

And, of course, I have my loupe. I can't deal with the screws without it
That's how you recognize me at a tournament: My clip on eyeglass frame, double loupe.

[K O'N]

I am looking to create a simple, but still comprehensive, tool kit for Epee maintenance. Because I am not looking to wire my own blades just yet, I really need something small that I can take with me to tournaments, something which will help me do minor (strip side) repairs to my weapon.

So, what do you suggest I include in such a kit? And, what experiences do you all have doing this yourselves?

Something to tighten the pommel. If it's a french grip use big vise grips, hand tight sucks.
Super glue for popped wires
Small wrench or vise grip to use with the big vise grips above for loose barrels
Shims and weight
Meter with body cord pins installed on the probes
Either everything you need to take out a tip, adjust it and put it back (tin can, roll of tape, screw driver, spare screws) OR Spare zip tip and tool
A few lengths of heat shrink, some spare wire, exacto knife and a lighter, to fix broken wires inside the bell
A couple of little screw and nut sets of the sort that hold the socket to the metal bit inside the bell, in case you lose one.
Spare body cords

I don't fix body cords on the spot, just switch out. I fix weapons on the spot because I get fond of the feel of a particular epee and want to keep using it, that doesn't apply to body cords so it's not worth the time to mess with them on the spot.

K O'N

[migopod]

I have a tester that I built into an altoids (licorice) tin (little 555 timer circuit with a piezo buzzer and LED). There's room left over in the box to include a pair of thin shims (one is .490mm and the other is .480mm) and an eyeglasses-repair screwdriver with a hollow handle full of tip screws. I keep that in a small toolkit capable of holding that, a test weight and a t-handle wrench for pommel tightening and a tube of CA in case of wire popping.

The night before I adjust travel so that the epee fails the .480mm shim and passes the .490 shim, and between bouts I just check the thicker one to make sure it still passes and that there are still two screws in the tip.

I used to keep a couple of spare tips, contact springs and pressure springs in a little zip-loc bag in the altoids tin, but I never ended up using any of those parts at tournaments so they've been returned to the home armoury kit.

[DHCJr]

[QUOTE=migopod;862485]The night before I adjust travel so that the epee fails the .480mm shim and passes the .490 shim, and between bouts I just check the thicker one to make sure it still passes and that there are still two screws in the tip.

QUOTE]

Suppose you get on a piste that has a shim that is 0.45. You have just guaranteed all your Epees will fail. What will you fence with then? (T.45) This should be T.44, not T.45. Thank you SJCJU#2 for giving the correct reference.

1) You would be much better off having a 0.45 and a 0.40 shim or even a 0.35.
2) Do you know how much work you would need to do on all your Epees to Fail at 0.49 and pass at 0.48. That is less than 4/1,000 of an inch.

I hope you were kidding when you said you set it that close. Even the difference between 0.45 and 0.35 is less than 4/100 of an inch. Which is pretty precise. That is the average thickness of a human hair.

[migopod]

[quote=DHCJr;862514]

The night before I adjust travel so that the epee fails the .480mm shim and passes the .490 shim, and between bouts I just check the thicker one to make sure it still passes and that there are still two screws in the tip.

QUOTE]

Suppose you get on a piste that has a shim that is 0.45. You have just guaranteed all your Epees will fail. What will you fence with then? (T.45)

1) You would be much better off having a 0.45 and a 0.40 shim or even a 0.35.
2) Do you know how much work you would need to do on all your Epees to Fail at 0.49 and pass at 0.48. That is less than 4/1,000 of an inch.

I hope you were kidding when you said you set it that close. Even the difference between 0.45 and 0.35 is less than 4/100 of an inch. Which is pretty precise. That is the average thickness of a human hair.

I'd have to double check the thickness of the shims I use, I was going off of memory. The purpose of the fiddling isn't to get as close to failing as possible while still passing, but rather to have the lighting stroke very quantified and equal on all weapons accurate to a hundredth of a millimetre. Not just "it passes", which can vary significantly.
They're made from automotive feeler gauges, and if you set them next to eachother on a table you can barely feel the difference between them. That said, since I've been doing this (maybe 3 years) I've never failed shims except with one tip and spring combo that was prone to moving around a bit during fencing. Passed on bout one, failed on bout two.

[K O'N]

The night before I adjust travel so that the epee fails the .480mm shim and passes the .490 shim, and between bouts I just check the thicker one to make sure it still passes and that there are still two screws in the tip.

Suppose you get on a piste that has a shim that is 0.45. You have just guaranteed all your Epees will fail. What will you fence with then? (T.45)

1) You would be much better off having a 0.45 and a 0.40 shim or even a 0.35.
2) Do you know how much work you would need to do on all your Epees to Fail at 0.49 and pass at 0.48. That is less than 4/1,000 of an inch.

I hope you were kidding when you said you set it that close. Even the difference between 0.45 and 0.35 is less than 4/100 of an inch. Which is pretty precise. That is the average thickness of a human hair.

If you use french tips you can make very, very fine adjustments in travel. That's not really as much an advantage as you'd think, since the reason you can make such fine adjustments is the spring turns very smoothly on the tip. Which means they often go out of adjustment during fencing. LP or FWF tips grip the spring much more firmly; LP tips and springs in fact are not supposed to be unscrewable, you stretch the spring. FWF tips grab the spring pretty good, which in my experience means you can't unscrew the spring in very fine increments. So good armorers who use good tips get used to a pretty coarse adjustment of the contact spring. Cheapasses such as myself who are used to french stuff take very fine adjustments for granted, but then either have to fiddle with the dam things all the time or use some sort of loctite or other trick to make the spring stay where it's supposed to.

But still, .48 to .49 seems a little extreme. I get it to pass a .4 shim, then tweak it as close as I can to that, then schmear a touch of loctite on it. Very stable, but it takes a bit of fiddling when you build the tip. If it fails anything at a competition I stick in a zip tip.

K O'N

[migopod]

If you use french tips you can make very, very fine adjustments in travel. That's not really as much an advantage as you'd think, since the reason you can make such fine adjustments is the spring turns very smoothly on the tip. Which means they often go out of adjustment during fencing. LP or FWF tips grip the spring much more firmly; LP tips and springs in fact are not supposed to be unscrewable, you stretch the spring. FWF tips grab the spring pretty good, which in my experience means you can't unscrew the spring in very fine increments. So good armorers who use good tips get used to a pretty coarse adjustment of the contact spring. Cheapasses such as myself who are used to french stuff take very fine adjustments for granted, but then either have to fiddle with the dam things all the time or use some sort of loctite or other trick to make the spring stay where it's supposed to.

But still, .48 to .49 seems a little extreme. I get it to pass a .4 shim, then tweak it as close as I can to that, then schmear a touch of loctite on it. Very stable, but it takes a bit of fiddling when you build the tip. If it fails anything at a competition I stick in a zip tip.

K O'N

I use mostly FWF tips with a couple of older Ulhmann ones still in use. Typically when I do the adjustments I stretch and compress the springs rather than screwing them in and out. Like I said before as well, I could be off on the exact thickness of the shims I use, they're at home and the markings are somewhat unreadable, but they're definitely a hundredth of a mm apart from eachother. Again my intention is not to be a hair's breadth from failing, but just to be very confident about how long the lighting stroke is and that it's consistent on all my epees. In essence to be a hair's breadth from failing my thicker shim, which should still be thinner than a regulation shim.

They do tend to stay put as well. I've almost never had to adjust the contact spring at a tournament, and my pre-tournament check doesn't require adjustment very often.

Edit: I'm sure I'm certainly wrong about the exact thickness of the thicker shim. I believe I selected it long ago to be comfortably on the thin side of the tolerances for the regulation thin shim.

[SJCFU#2]

But still, .48 to .49 seems a little extreme.

It wouldn't just be a little extreme - given t.44 states that the tolerance for shims is plus or minus 0.05 mm (i.e. a shim can be as thin as 0.45 mm), it could prove disasterous.

Of course why the tolerance for the shim is buried in the technical section of the rules rather than the material section is another question.

edit: I suspect when Migopod checks the shims he's using he'll find that they're closer to 0.38to 0.39, which allows a comfortable margin.

[migopod]

It wouldn't just be a little extreme - given t.44 states that the tolerance for shims is plus or minus 0.05 mm (i.e. a shim can be as thin as 0.45 mm), it could prove disasterous.

Of course why the tolerance for the shim is buried in the technical section of the rules rather than the material section is another question.

edit: I suspect when Migopod checks the shims he's using he'll find that they're closer to 0.38to 0.39, which allows a comfortable margin.

Ima bust out the micrometer when I get home


Edit:

Can't find the mic at the moment, but the labels on the shims are somewhat legible still. I was close, the thicker of the two is .483 and the thinner is .46?.

I'm not necessarily advocating that people do this, it's just what's in my mobile kit. YMMV.

[piste off]

I used to keep a couple of spare tips, contact springs and pressure springs in a little zip-loc bag in the altoids tin, but I never ended up using any of those parts at tournaments so they've been returned to the home armoury kit.

In other words, they are in "mint" condition...

R-

[fencerbill]

Maybe I'm just lucky. I check with my fingernails after checking with my special sanded down setup shim. My Epees always go off with the nail on my little finger and never go off with my first finger. Just have to figure out which of the in-between fingernails will make me sure that they will pass on strip.

[JacoKierkegaard]

In my stripside kit, I keep an Allen wrench (inside hex), large flathead screwdriver, small magnetized precision flathead screwdriver, spare tip screws, pressure springs, and contact springs, a spare wire, a wiring chain, a lighter, and a small tube of Superglue.

[SJCFU#2]

In my stripside kit, I keep an Allen wrench (inside hex), large Philips screwdriver, small magnetized precision Philips screwdriver, spare tip screws, pressure springs, and contact springs, a spare wire, a wiring chain, a lighter, and a small tube of Superglue.

You have Phillips tip screws?

[JacoKierkegaard]

You have Phillips tip screws?

*facepalm*

For both of my screwdrivers, read "Phillips" as "flathead." Small one for the tip, big one for the socket.