How to Take Care of a Fencing Blade

Most blades don't break out of nowhere. They corrode, take a set, or get quietly damaged at the bottom of a bag and then one day they fail.

Almost none of that is bad luck. A blade that gets wiped down and stored straight will outlast an identical blade that doesn't, by a wide margin, and the difference costs about a minute a day.

Nothing below is complicated. It's what we tell people across the counter, written down in one place.

The ten minutes after practice

This is where blades are made or lost.

Sweat is salt water. It sits in the wire groove, around the point assembly, and along the tang where the grip meets the blade - the three places you can't see, and the three places corrosion starts. Wipe the blade down with a dry cloth before it goes in the bag. Not a damp one, not a wipe. Dry, and along the whole length.

Then let it dry properly. A blade sealed in a zipped bag in a warm car is a blade in a corrosion chamber. If the bag got wet, open it at home rather than standing it in a corner until Thursday.

That's the whole daily routine. It takes less time than finding your keys, and it's the single thing that separates a blade and it can make a substantial difference in how long a blade lasts.

Rust

Light surface rust an orange bloom you can feel with a fingernail is normal on untreated steel and not a crisis. Take it off with very fine steel wool or a fine abrasive pad, working carefully along the blade and avoiding the wire groove on wired blades fine steel, then wipe the bare metal with a very light film of machine oil. Wipe off the excess; you want a film, not a coat.

Do not oil an electric blade near the point or in the wire groove. Oil creeps, and it will get under the glue and into the socket.

Catch it early, and rust is a five-minute job. Leave it, and it becomes permanent. If corrosion leaves small craters that stay after cleaning, the blade has lost material at those points, and that's exactly where it will fail. If corrosion has left visible pits or craters in the steel after cleaning, especially in a highly stressed area, retire the blade or have an experienced armorer inspect it. Cleaning can remove rust; it cannot replace metal that corrosion has already removed. This is the main reason we tell people never to buy a used blade they haven't held.

The set

A set is a bend the blade keeps. Sight down the blade from the tang, like sighting a rifle. A gentle, even curve is a set. It's normal, and it tells you how much work the blade has done.

A sharp local kink is not a set. That's a stress concentration; it will not come out, and every action after that loads the same few millimeters of steel. Retire it.

A gentle, uniform curve can often be corrected carefully. If you don't know how to straighten a blade properly, bring it to an armorer rather than forcing it back into shape. Don't straighten the same blade over and over across a season. Each cycle costs you fatigue life. If a blade needs straightening every week, it's telling you something, and the answer isn't more straightening.

Check for a set once a month. It takes five seconds, and it's your earliest warning.

Storage

Most blade damage doesn't happen on the piste. It happens in the bag, in the car, and against the wall at home.

Blades want to be straight, dry, and unloaded:

• Don't leave a blade in a bag with a mask bag sitting on top of it for a week.

• Don't leave one in a car through summer or winter - heat and damp both do their work slowly and invisibly.

• Don't store it point-down against a wall with the weight of the weapon on the tip.

• Keep it in something. Once the blade is completely dry, a  blade tube protects a bare blade from knocks, dirt, and moisture in transit. Never seal a damp blade inside one. For an assembled weapon, a soft cover keeps it off everything else in the bag, which is most of what transit damage actually is.

The parts that aren't the blade

On a wired blade, the steel usually outlives everything attached to it, so when a weapon starts failing, check those first.

Look at the glue in the wire groove. If it's lifting, the wire will move, and a moving wire will break where it enters the point. Check the wire itself at the tip; that's the failure point, not the middle. Keep the point screws snug and treat springs as consumables rather than permanent parts.

If a weapon is failing intermittently, start with the easy things: test the body cord, then check and clean the point, inspect the wire and socket, and use a test box to isolate the problem.

When a blade is finished

Care buys you time. It doesn't buy you forever.

Retire a blade if any of these are true:

• A sharp kink that doesn't come out

• Pitting that survives cleaning

• Any crack, anywhere, especially near the tang

• It snapped - including if it snapped and is still long enough to "use for footwork"

There's no repairing structural damage to the blade itself. Points, wires, grips and other components can often be repaired or replaced, but cracked or severely damaged steel cannot.

Bring it in

We inspect blades and test weapons, body cords, and lamés on site, and we'd rather rewire a weapon than sell you another one when the blade itself is still serviceable. If you're not sure whether a blade is done, bring it to the showroom, and we'll look at it with you. It takes a few minutes, and it's free.

Visit us inside Arena Fencing Academy in Waldwick, New Jersey, or contact us at sales@ferrefencing.com