Foil/Epee Test weight

First off - the TCA combination weights I've seen have all been stainless steel, not brass (they once sent me a brass weight, but that was Prieur - not TCA).



All of the TCA steel weights I have examined have been acurate to within a gram (which is a definite improvement over many brass weights - I once weighed two seemingly identical brass weight and found that both were out-of- spec, one heavy, the other light).



The TCA steel weight works well as a foil weight. The 250-gram top portion screws onto the top so it tends to be a bit top-heavy as an epee weight, but it is still usable (personally I prefer weights where the 250 gram portion attaches at the bottom, such as the Uhlmann combination weight).



It takes a few seconds to switch between foil and epee due to the need to screw the 250 gram portion onto the post. This can get annoying if you constantly are switching between the two - however if this is a problem for you then you might just consider getting seperate foil and epee weights (or the Leon Paul combination weight, which snaps together and apart).



One nice feature of the TCA weight is that the end of the screw post used to connect the two segments is ground to a 4-mm radius hemisphere. This allows the foil portion to double as a probe for lame testing.



One potential problem is that I don't see an option for ordering individual segments. This means that if you loose either segment you have to buy a completely new weight (and judging from the number of odd pieces I've seen in lost-and-found bins there are a lot of people who are missing one portion of their weight or another).