Estoc Screwless Epee Point
4 out of 9 people found this review helpful
Summary: Steer clear of this oneJuly 10th, 2003
The screwless epee points have made some waves in the fencing world. Imagine not having to replace screws after each bout, a point that you set in place, tune up, and then forget. Quite possibly every epeeist's dream.
Well keep dreaming, because this one is not going to solve the problem. I bought one blade from Estoc and it came with the screwless point mounted on it. The lady checked the point in front of me, in the store, for weight and shims. I took one lesson with the new blade, and the next week-end headed for a tournament. During my warmup I checked all my blades, and to my dismay I found that the point was not passing shims anymore. At this point, I tried to fix it, but you need a special wrench of a different size than the standard barrel wrench size. Luckily for me I had one of those variable crescent wrenches, so I was OK.
Once the point was open, I realized that there was no easy way to test if the spring was correctly sized, because you need to put the tip back in, and to do that you need to screw the tip head back into the barrel. Getting it right basically requires a lot of screwing and unscrewing of the tip head, followed by adjustments on a tiny spring on the tip head. Oh by the way, if you do get some of these points, the springs that control the residual travel of the point (the one you adjust for the shim test) are not the same length than the Uhlmann or Prieur springs. So you need to make sure you've got spare parts.
So basically, when I went home that night, I rewired my blade with a German epee point. Works great now!
It's a pity that such a good idea (screwless epee point) could not be executed better. I guess that in the future screwless epee points will improve and be worth investing in, but for the moment I'll stay away from them until I hear better opinions.
Well keep dreaming, because this one is not going to solve the problem. I bought one blade from Estoc and it came with the screwless point mounted on it. The lady checked the point in front of me, in the store, for weight and shims. I took one lesson with the new blade, and the next week-end headed for a tournament. During my warmup I checked all my blades, and to my dismay I found that the point was not passing shims anymore. At this point, I tried to fix it, but you need a special wrench of a different size than the standard barrel wrench size. Luckily for me I had one of those variable crescent wrenches, so I was OK.
Once the point was open, I realized that there was no easy way to test if the spring was correctly sized, because you need to put the tip back in, and to do that you need to screw the tip head back into the barrel. Getting it right basically requires a lot of screwing and unscrewing of the tip head, followed by adjustments on a tiny spring on the tip head. Oh by the way, if you do get some of these points, the springs that control the residual travel of the point (the one you adjust for the shim test) are not the same length than the Uhlmann or Prieur springs. So you need to make sure you've got spare parts.
So basically, when I went home that night, I rewired my blade with a German epee point. Works great now!
It's a pity that such a good idea (screwless epee point) could not be executed better. I guess that in the future screwless epee points will improve and be worth investing in, but for the moment I'll stay away from them until I hear better opinions.
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