Quote:
Originally posted by VAFfencer
Could someone please educate me on this subject?
I am having an email correspondance with Mr. Triplette. In it he referred to white blades. What is this? Is this another coating like blue? If so, what are the advantages and how would one keep the finish on?
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I had a similar discussion with someone @ Triplette. I dunno if it was Mr. T or not. What I learned was that the BF blades they sell, White, Gold & Blue are all identical when they leave the forge. When they are tempered is when they aquire their different characteristics. He led me to belive that the offering of three types was akin to have multiple types of catfood on the grocer's shelf - by offering more variety, they sell more product by displacing competators... That said, he assured me that all three are identical in stiffness and balance. The difference comes to bear when the blades are over-bent. The Blue are batch tested to a slightly higher number of bend cycles before failure than the gold. This does not mean they will last longer in general, but that they can sustain a higher number of moderate flexes before failing. The white ones can sustain fewer, but actually hold up better in the case of a few extreme bends - such as when you collide with someone, or step into a counterattack. Gold are somewhere in between the two in terms of performance.
He recommended either the white or the gold over the blue for all but the highest level fencers, since the average fencer has a better chance of overbending a blade in regular and practice use than an elite fencer does in competition. That said, the Blue still outsells the others since thats what people see being used by top competators.
As far as the coating, it is but a thin veneer, and can be abraded off if one scrubs or sands the blade too vigorously. White is an uncolored coating.
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