Rewiring epee blade--flexed or straight?

[K O'N]

I'm going to rewire an epee blade soon for the first time since, well, the Clinton era, so I'm brushing up on what I need to do. I found this amazing video on YouTube which was a nice reminder of most of the steps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsvUCPP6Z4

However, I see he bends the blade significantly before gluing the wire--as in bending the blade into a half-circle. If I recall correctly, we always glued the wire down when the blade was straight. Which do people here do, and why?

I glue then flex, but flex then glue is fine too.

That is a good video. He made one minor mistake, insulating the barrel from the blade won't prevent the weapon from working. In some cases, such as where the tip is grounding to the barrel, it would actually do some good. Aside from that no one would ever even notice if a barrel were not grounded, the weapon would work fine. That's a minor quibble though, it's a good video and that was a very nice and fast rewire.

K O'N

[Lady Quindecim]

Even if you do an overnight acetone soak, you need to use the dremel...there will still be an acetone residue on the blade...you need to get it gone.

Yep.

Thanks everyone all for the good tips. Sometime at these small events, scary as it is, I was the armourer... and fencing. Yep, they are that small and I just had never done the quick glue, only the full clean-and-rewire.