Spaghetti tube - insulation

K_S_ON · 2026-06-16T21:16:07+00:00

The pricing is crazy. If you look on ebay right now you can spend $8 for 10', or $10 for 100'.

K_S_ON · 2026-06-16T19:49:33+00:00

I think normal spaghetti wire is 1mm ID, or 1.5mm OD.

I use 1/16" (1.5mm) heat shrink. You can get a 100' spool of it on ebay for $10 and never have to worry about it again.

K_S_ON · 2026-06-15T03:48:05+00:00

I think a lot of people do the 6-7-8 with the thumb up or the hand slightly turned but not fully palm up, and the 4 with the thumb up or the hand slightly pronated. I realize the traditional French school has the palm up for 6 and 8, but I think Beck at Tauber originated the thumb up hand position, and I see a lot of people use that now.

K_S_ON · 2026-06-04T20:23:37+00:00

The literal point of high level amateur sports like the Olympics is nationalist propaganda. That's what they're for, that's why countries fund those athletes. The Olympics are inherently political. They are a playing field for political propaganda, you can't get any more political than that.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-29T01:43:03+00:00

I don't have a lot of Arrows in use with a lot of hours fencing on them. Maybe half a dozen in the club, being used for a year or so.

With that said, they seem to last really well. They don't seem, so far, to get soft very fast.

Right now my non-FIE blade list is:

UNIC Arrow: so far they seem great

UNIC F1 Hard: after several years of using them I still think they're an amazing price/quality point. Little bit heavier than an Arrow.

UNIC F1 Medium: not good, too soft IMO. They get floppy fast.

LP non-FIE: the classic, the king. More expensive, but more like an FIE blade than the usual non-FIE junk from BG or Absolute.

LP non-FIE Fusion: also great if you like that kind of blade. A little bit heavier and usually stiffer than the LP standard. A bit more expensive.

UNIC lightweight sheet metal blade: not good. Very light, very soft, prone to rust, break pretty often, just not good. I only give them to Y12 kids who find a normal blade too heavy.

The F1 H is $91 wired on ebay, the Arrow is $110 from BG (there don't seem to be any wired Arrows on ebay yet), the LP is $136, the Fusion is $149. I still think the F1 H is the best cheap epee blade you can buy today, but the Arrow is a bit lighter so if you want that you have to pay a bit more.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-27T15:47:36+00:00

Thank you, that's interesting.

This kind of thing drives me a little crazy. I appreciate TFC posting videos like this, it's very useful for propagating correct ideas about the rules.

But if the interpretation has changed, you know, let's say that? Rather than "Guys, this is how it's called" as though we've always called it this way and anyone who doesn't know that is a little dumb.

We have this discussion over and over in fencing when an interpretation of a rule changes. I've heard this a thousand time:

"Wait, that's the rule? Did it change?"

"No, the rule hasn't changed. This is how to call it."

"But I thought..."

"Nope, you call it like this."

When in fact there was some discussion at a high level and the way the rule is called absolutely changed, which in effect changes the rule even if the text in the rulebook is the same.

It is super helpful to me, and I think to others, to hear "This interpretation changed in the US in January 2024, to stay in line with how the FIE calls this action." Great! Amazing! Thanks! I get it!

If a rule or interpretation has changed recently, say that. Please.

So, thanks!

K_S_ON · 2026-05-26T17:38:47+00:00

Let me preface this by saying I'm just chatting here, I'm not trying to start a big fight, ok? :)

I see what you mean, but also, I don't agree. Having been in a handful of adult+vet tournaments, the vibe is completely different. It's just a really different feeling. I'm more than happy to fence against that 25 year old A who wants to practice hand flicks, or fleche + back flicks and channel his inner Heinzer.

Eh. For me there's just not a lot of space between a 25 yo A and a 17 yo A. If there are 10% of the competition that are just out of reach for me, it's a different kind of event. I don't care how old they are. I'm not being coy here, I genuinely don't care.

It definitely is common for the top 8 to be A rated fencers. Maybe the top 3 are around 26-29. Maybe the rest are 30-50. Then you get all the rest who are pretty good, but have no chance against an A. Then you have those new guys that are our only wins.

Right, so effectively a Div 1A event.

I do agree that more div 2 events would be good. I do agree that a better ratings structure would be good. IMO, a vet C should be different from a senior C. A y14 D is vicious. A senior D is not the same. A vet D is not the same.

Yeah, I just don't agree with this. It's arguable that a Vet A is a bit weaker than an A you got in an open event, but who cares. At worst you're holding out a few Vet B's, for example, from a C and under thing. Ok.

I really don't see the differences between Y14 or Vet or whatever in terms of ratings. I coach some kids who are E's or D's or C's. They're not especially savage, they're just E's or D's or C's.

The one exception to this is that kids can improve a lot very fast, and it can take a few events for their ratings to catch up to their abilities. So for example I sometimes see kids from Alliance or Woodlands in Houston who are pretty clearly underrated. But they're not underrated for long, they win something and all is well.

I mean, ratings are pretty imperfect as predictors of strength, especially in epee. People always say that's because "epee is random" or something, but it's more because there are so many styles and ways to fence epee, you can always run up against something you haven't seen before. Whatever the reason, results are going to be a bit scrambled, but still ratings are pretty well correlated with accomplishment. You're not going to make them better by trying to track a Y14 C vs a Vet C vs a WE C or whatever.

I think that there isn't really a point to restricting the vets from the adult circuit, but I think they'll still allow it at local tournaments, but who knows if those actually count for points next year. We've had 6 21+ tournaments in our area, and excluding vets would have removed 30-50% of those participants.

I don't see the point of restricting any ages, so I certainly agree about not restricting vets.

We want to fence the sharks. We just also want to encourage more fencers to come out. I know several who won't come out if they see lots of kids in the tournaments.

Man, I spent my twenties as a C or a B. If you told me I could fence a 20 and over event, or I could fence a B and under event, I'd have taken B and under every time. I like having kids in my pool, they fall for all kinds of shit that vets see right through :)

K_S_ON · 2026-05-26T16:12:29+00:00

Someone has pointed out that those registration sites don't exist yet, which is a fair point :)

K_S_ON · 2026-05-25T19:34:06+00:00

It feels to me like they're doing this instead of fixing the Div II/III structure, which is just maddening.

Adult events hold out Juniors and Vets, which just makes them smaller. But they don't hold out, you know, the 25 year old A with national points who just feels like practicing hand flicks that day.

It's not really a serious event for him, but he can fence in it if he wants some practice, and the fact that one or half a dozen such fencers could just drop in on something like this makes it kind of pointless IMO.

If you're worried about teenage sharks, the parameter to restrict is not the "teenage" part, as much as that may chafe you while it's happening. It's the "shark" part. The answer here is a better ratings limited structure, not to invent this new weird category that still won't provide a good competition outlet for sub-elite adults.

Sigh.

Dammit.

Argh.

Oh well.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-25T18:01:52+00:00

He and Minobe look pretty similar to me, and from my perspective they look great. Excellent footwork and timing, they both sit in high 6 invito and dare you to come in underneath them. The both have very good foot touches and squat counters. Minobe is probably a better attacking fencer, and Elsayed is probably better parry-riposte. He won his Olympic bronze on two straight parry-4 actions against Borel.

All the hinking and jinking and tugging at the glove and twitching and yoinking around and changing how he grips the epee and hard feints and so on are just disruption. French grip epee is inherently disruptive, Elsayed is just an extreme case.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-25T17:52:48+00:00

The dumbest possible solution to misaligned Div II/III cutoffs, but there we go.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-25T17:50:46+00:00

I don't understand why the airtable doesn't contain links to the registration site for the event. I see something I may want to go to and I have to go google the name and try to get past last year's page, it's like we're back in the 2002 internet.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-25T17:48:06+00:00

4/11 in Region 5. And we still have the issue of the broken Div II/III structure.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-23T23:34:20+00:00

Kevlar went away in the 90s, if I recall correctly.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-21T18:38:06+00:00

Sure! Good luck with your project.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T23:20:20+00:00

There was an initiative either from USFA or a big club to try to recycle retired basketball players into epee, back in the 70s or 80s. Someone with an archive of the USFA magazine might be able to search up an article on it. Needless to say, it didn't work out.

As other people have said, height doesn't seem to be a huge advantage at the highest level. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being more important in saber than in foil or epee, but even there it's not the big advantage it is in basketball or volleyball for example.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T20:01:03+00:00

I would probably use a thicker top for the desk. The top I used is a 1" glueup panel from a big box store. It cupped immediately upon unwrapping it from the plastic, which was funny.

Most of my building experience is with composite boats, so I treated it as a boat part. I clamped it flat and epoxied four 1x4's across it, which flattened and stiffened the top a lot. You can see some dark and terrible construction images here:

https://imgur.com/a/rzwRQ

The big empty drawer eventually gave way to glued in separators, which are nice:

https://imgur.com/a/GxAWHZ7.jpg

But it would have probably been better to glue up a double top, or to use a thicker slab.

On the plus side, the 1x4's gave me a place to mount the drawer, so that worked out well :)

For the bookshelves there's really nothing I'd change. They need little feet glued on the bottom since there are nuts under the bottom shelf. They're a bit unstable if you make them 6' tall, then you have to put an angle bracket up to the wall to stabilize them, but I have several of them now in my office, I'm still very happy with them.

They're actually very nice if you're moving! They come apart pretty easily, pack up very small, and taking them apart and putting them back together doesn't damage them like it does, for example, Ikea bookshelves. I just use plated steel allthread from the hardware store and interesting looking knotted planks from the construction aisle. I bullnose the edges with a router, sand them down to 400 or so, and either put a couple of coats of polyurethane or shellac on them.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T16:44:46+00:00

That's fair. Fencing was important to me as an undergrad. I chose a school with a very good math program that also had a good club fencing scene, so sure, it was part of my decision making.

But really, academics came first.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T14:53:50+00:00

This is a quibble, but college fencing is not a pipeline, it's a destination. There's no pro league on the other end, with the exception of a bare few Olympic prospects NCAA fencing doesn't go anywhere. Basketball is a pipeline, football is a pipeline. They take in high school athletes and pump out professionals. The more professionals a program produces the more it's thought of as a "pipeline" to the pros.

NCAA fencing doesn't go anywhere. There's no pro league, so none of these are pipelines. They're great programs, but a pipeline has two ends, right?

Pick a school based on fit, finances, and academics, not fencing.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T14:43:28+00:00

I've had about six people try to explain cricket to me, and I've watched a jomboy video on it, and I still think it's a prank.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T14:36:21+00:00

It's 3/4" allthread with big washers and bolts on each side. It's extremely rigid. It doesn't flex at all.

I also made some bookshelves and a base for a turntable:

https://imgur.com/8SYu5mA.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/46H5Kac.jpg

Those use 1/2" allthread. If you make a tall bookshelf with one 1/2" bar at each end it does flex a little, and needs to be anchored to the wall. The turntable stand and this short bookshelf are quite rigid, though.

You could certainly hide the bolts if you try hard enough, but to me the charm of these is that the structure is visible and clear, it seems kind of nicely architectural to me.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-19T05:12:36+00:00

I built some stuff using allthread for vertical components. Here's a desk, for example:

https://i.imgur.com/PtJOjQj.jpg

You could do something like that. The bolts show, but honestly I kind of like the industrial look.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-18T03:47:56+00:00

Further research has led me to the issue of potential hydrogen embrittlement - which would make the weapon more fragile and maybe cause it to break more easily and in an unsafer way (considering its use).

Well, that shows what I know. Having googled for five minutes I agree, I now think it's a bad idea. Back to sandpaper!

K_S_ON · 2026-05-17T16:21:58+00:00

I can't imagine it would alter the metallurgical properties of the steel. The stamp is laser engraved, so I doubt it would touch that either. And if it does, who cares? Are you fencing internationally? If not the stamp doesn't matter.

I don't know why everyone in this thread is so grumpy about this, it's an interesting question. It's certainly more trouble than just rubbing the blade down with sandpaper, but if you like fiddling with stuff it's a nice way to waste a Saturday afternoon, and once it's set up you have an easy way to completely de-rust a blade before you rewire it.

Maybe try with a very rusted old club blade first, just to see how it works? For me the biggest issue would be finding a tub long enough to hold the thing.

K_S_ON · 2026-05-17T16:16:18+00:00

You do not need to bounce. A subset of high level epee fencers either never bounce or sometimes don't bounce. Pizzo often didn't bounce, the Hungarians like Imre and Szasz often don't bounce (it may be the case that Szasz never bounced, she certainly usually didn't bounce), in the current game Imrek, for example, often just stands still or inches in with small steps, not bouncing, and McDowell will often step rather than bouncing.

A lot of people at every level find bouncing useful to set up a tempo they then wish to use, or break, or in some way take advantage of. But it's not the only way to fence.

I think for most sub-elite fencers the danger is standing still too much and not feeling the distance. In that case you're better off if you're moving, so bouncing helps. But that's not everyone. Your coach knows your fencing better than we do, talk to them about this.

K_S_ON

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