France Lames blades

[hondo_jr]

So whats the deal with FL blades? I bought a foil about 5+ years ago, when I was trying to get into fencing (memphis at that time had little opertunities for a broke student to get into fencing). It's still in great shape but I do have another foil I can use. I use it because I really like my FL bladed foils grip though. Plus it would be ashame to toss a perfectly good blade.
I know that FL was having problems with quality or something several years ago. Would you suggest that i replace my FL blade on my foil with something different? Is there a safety problem or something else I should know about? I am almost finished with some beginner classes and will shortly be joining some others for fencing in memphis. It is a foil blade and again, it is in very good shape.
Any advice?

Cheers

[40Saberthieves]

I believe that france lame went out of business, because they had poor quality control

They basically had lower quality, and slightly above average price.

[Strytllr]

I've heard the same thing as RogueNine.

To further answer the (I think) question, however. If your blade is working well for you. Use it. I'm not sure when their quality really started to stink, nor if every blade was bad.

If it breaks, get another blade and put your grip on it (if it's the grip you really care for). As far as I know, there was really no safety concern other than that the blades weren't good quality (and thus were prone to breaking). But if you've used yours for some time and it's held up... by all means, continue to do so.

[veeco]

The quality of France Lames blades was definitely not up to par with some of the other vendors; however, the reason they went out of business is because of some shoddy business that went on in the company, which was basically controlled by one family who kind of hid a lot of things under the carpet.

Once the said carpet was removed, they found nothing else than to sell their business to Prieur, who's got a lot of work on their hands to get the France Lames business up and running again.

Actually some of the Prieur folks didn't really agree with the France Lames merger, so they set up their own shop, Cartel Escrime (http://www.cartel-escrime.com)

[FlamingDeth]

FL blades are sort of hit-and-miss in quality. The majority of them I've had have been garbage and bent or broke within the first three or four months of owning them, but then there's one that I've had since I started fencing. Probably would've tried a different brand, but at the time they were the only folks I could find that made Italian blades, and the newer Uhlmann blades just blow the FL ones out of the water, so the point is moot.

[Pho]

Well having a plethora of blades, I have to say that since Prieur have taken over the france lames forge, I have been pretty satisfied with their blades.

In foil, I tend to prefer the france-lames blades over the BF blades. I find that they tend to be lighter and are more conducive to a flicking game (but not so much that they are hard to control for straight attacks). While they do take kinks more readily than a BF blade, their cost (almost half of the BF blades) more than makes up for it. So far, I've been using the new blades for over four months (about 3-4 times a week) and it still seems to be in decent shape.

In epee, well, BF all the way. The F-L/Prieur blades tend to be a bit too flexible and tip heavy. They aren't as well balanced as the BF blades, anyway after a month of so, the BF blades find a nice medium between flexibility and stiffness. Durability wise, I haven't broken either of my blades in the six months I have had them but I think it varies from batch to batch (my prior bf maraging blade broke in three months).

So the moral? While F-L blades might not be as durable from popular accounts, their lower costs make them an attractive alternative. As for me, F-L for foil and BF for epee......