just had a great idea for sabre blades!

[saberkid]

you all know how sabre blades (S2000) break really easy, well what if you were to chrigenicly dip them, they would still have the same bend and flexabilty but would last for years and years! do ya think that would work, i dont see why USFA wouldnt allow them, it might be expesnsiv to do, but worth it if you dipped like 50 blades you could sell them as "super blades" huh, im guna invest 15 blades into this to see if it works, i'll keep ya posted!

Chris

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Fence with the best die like the rest!

[Mergs]

I am assuming that you are talking about cryogenically treating the blades i.e. dipping them in, say, liquid nitrogen or helium, but your spelling is so atrocious so I'm not sure what you mean.

If so, why do you think this is a good idea?

[neevel]

Vniti blades are made using a cryogenic heat-treat process. While it can often yield good results, its effectiveness does depend (like any heat-treat process) on the kind of steel in question and the nature of the use the item would be subjected to. Paolo (if he's around) is the best qualified of folks here to answer metallurgy related questions, and I've got a club member who's a metallurgical engineer.

Still, given that it's not an expensive process (I found one place-- Pinnacle Cryogenic-- that has a base price of $8.50/lb for steel, $35 minimum order), it might be worth a try.

-Dave

[Christopher J Umbs]

Hmmm... we've been using the S2000 blades for at least 6 months now and I have yet to se any break.. and we are attacking with forceful molinets from the elbow.

Chris

[saberkid]

mergs thankyou for telling me my spelling suck, i know. seeing as how im 15 sleep and food deprived, sometimes i have trouble spelling, plus my mind thinks fastet than i can type so my spelling gets a little messed up, but thats ok, yes i mean "cryogenically" "liquid nitrogen" that is what i mean. also i have seen more than 50 blades break in the past 3 month's mostly due to the fact we have over 400 members in our club and thers a lot of fencing going on everyday, sorry i didnt know that blades were treated with "cryogenic" (good spelling?) i knew that they were heat treated, but didnt know that they used a "cryogenic" method

Chris


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Fence with the best die like the rest!

[Mergs]

Your welcome saberkid.

Dave, would like to see a discussion on the process you described. Minored in materials in the dark ages and went over to the project side of things and lost contact with those kinds of developments.

[edew]

I would imagine freezing blades will make them more brittle and easier to break. Better to use work or heat hardening to make it stronger. If anything, I would suspect the stiffness of S2000 blades do contribute to its brittleness, thus more likely to break as they do. And I have noticed them breaking more, and I don't even fence sabre much.

[DarkTransient]

They break more easily? No kidding. That's just how the vendors like them.

[Christopher J Umbs]

Question... and I'll try not to be insulting about it. For sport sabre, it doesn't matter if you hit with the edge or the flat. For classical sabre we only count cuts made with the true or false edge. Perhaps the S2000 blades just don't handle that kind of side stress well. Like I said earlier, we've been using them for quite awhile and really love them (though they are still a tad too light for us).

Christopher

[Kamagong]

Mergs-
Wow! Lighten up on the kid!
BTW...since we are being so generous with the grammar lessons:
It's "You're welcome," not your welcome.
Back to the subject- I would also like to hear more; I wasn't aware of using cryogenics to treat any blades at all. I did think it would be more expensive than what's mentioned here.

[edew]

Chris (J Umbs),

It doesn't happen when hitting with the flat vs. hitting with the edge. It happens when you're parrying, or when you smack the other guy right on the guard or forte, or when you make a cut to the head. It happens at all sorts of weird times. It could be because of the flat vs edge, but still, people are fencing more or less the same way they've been fencing the previous years and the blades weren't breaking as quickly as they do now, for some reason. And it seems to me that the stiffness is really brittleness.

[Gabriel]

chris j umbs-
help me out here, I don't understand how the S2000 blades are too light for you. It's not like there's a heavier blade for a saber, so how can you be used to anything but the old blades or the new 2000 ones? -Gabriel

[MikeHarm]

That would work almost as good as transmogrifying them.

Mike

[oiuyt]

Gabriel- I think Chris's point wasn't that they were used to anything better but that even the new blades are too light (although an improvement). Chris fences classical fencing, so think the actions that one would do if one had a real weapon. Any approximation with sport weapons ends up being too light and has all those "problems" that we sport fencers take advantage of such as whipiness. It's not that the new blades are worse than the old ones, it's that they still aren't ideal.
Hope that clarifies things.
-B

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"Oh but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

[space_cadet]

To MikeHarm,
The transmogrifier... you read "Calvin and Hobbes", eh?

To saberkid,
You should be spelling your alias as sabrekid (just kidding). But seriously, cryogenically treating your blades will make them last longer because the weak areas of the blades (prior to fencing with them) will become stronger. I believe, from seeing a documentary on cryogenically treating metals, that the atoms become less excited from the decreased temperature and they line up in such a way making the molecular bonds stronger.
Some people have mentioned it will make them more brittle. I don't think so. Improperly tempering a blade will make a blade more brittle.

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Cadet à Space

[Christopher J Umbs]

oiuyt,

Just so. Thanks.

Gabriel,

There are many heavier blades on the market. They just aren't FIE legal. I got to see M. Zakrzewski and M. Sinclair fight a spectacular bout with Polish curved heavy infantry sabres with blades that Zakrzewski is getting out of Poland. They are so heavy that they really do need the thumb ring to make them fly. There's been a few attempts by various CF groups to get a Radaellian sabre blade made. Last I heard Negrini was looking into it.

Chris

[neevel]

I brought this up to my metallurgy friend at practice last night. His initial response (subject to the caveat that his area of specialty is mechanical metallurgy, not heat treatment) was one of skepticism. The effectiveness of any type of thermal treatment (be it heat treatment or cryo treatment) is going to depend on the kind of steel in questions (i.e., 1086, etc.) and the sort of useage the steel will be put to. Cryo. treatment is apparently most effective on tool steels-- non-FIE blades are more likely to be simple carbon steels. The exact details for the treatment process are likely going to be different for different steels-- if they don't know what steel they're working with, they probably can't do it correctly. You also need to know the mechanics of exactly how the blade is failing-- it may be something that the cryo treatment will not have much effect on.

If he gets time, he'll do some more research/thinking on it and get back to me with a more detailed answer, which I'll post here.

Keep in mind that Cryo treatment businesses are trying to sell you something-- they're going to make as many claims as they can. Just because it's good for some types of steels and applications doesn't mean it's the trick for others. The knife industry, for example, is rife with claims about the latest miracle high-tech steel or process du jour-- most of that is at best dubious, at worst outright B.S. Similar things go on with golf club makers.

-Dave

[FencerInUS]

Mike Harm: Calvin and Hobbes or Red Dwarf?


Why dont we just wrap the blades with tip tape, tip to guard, and coat it in a layer of epoxy? Wouldnt that work? But I'm With edew on this one, In my experiance (limited as it may be) things tend to shatter after they've been deep freezed.

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F.I.US.
Parry, THEN riposte
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[DarkTransient]

Why don't they use titaniium?

[civiltech]

How does this cryogenic process work? I would assume that freezing a metal makes it tremendously brittle? Why not use a new metal alloy? Some combination of Titanium and Gold?!!

All I know, is that as a company increases the lifespan of a blade with "new technology", the price increases exponentially!!!