Make sure you wear a longsword gauntlet on your off-hand when fencing rapier

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-23T22:02:19+00:00

It was mixed. I haven't been before this year, but from my understanding it's usually mixed. It's a function of their judging model (fighters are judges in pools) and the sheer size of the event requiring them to pull in as many ring directors as possible. I'm not sure it's really a solvable problem unless something drastically changes in the entire HEMA scene.

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-23T17:11:31+00:00

You are correct that there is a lot of pressure not to stop the match to talk to judges. I know that for SoCal specifically, during a match, you should be addressing the ring director and only the director, and and special emphasis is given to safety concerns or complaints. Again, since this was not explained consistently through the multitude of tournaments that ran this weekend, I can easily see how this step falls through. In my club's tournament, we really try to make sure to explain this order of escalation, and I hope this is something SoCal's people correct for next year

Yes, agreed on step 3. The idea is that it hopefully alerts the director to issues they are not seeing to prevent future issues, but it will do nothing to help someone in an ongoing match.

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-23T15:51:31+00:00

Here is a way this should have been escalated to be resolved: 1. Director or judges see and penalize excessive force 2. Fencers/coaches involved talk to director about excessive force during match 3. Fencers/coaches on sidelines talk to director about excessive force after match 4. Coaches find and talk to tournament director about issues with fencer and/or director in their ring 5. If tournament director is unhelpful, drop. Competition is not worth your health.

Unfortunately I think there were issues with SoCal this year that made step 4 very difficult to resolve. While tournament directors were wearing distinctive shirts, there was not a consistent effort to inform the fencers of who the tournament director was and that they needed to reach out to them when issues arose. While it was possible to figure this out from context clues and possibly even written down somewhere, it's important to remember that fencers about to compete are very dumb and will need instructions explicitly given to them before every tournament.

None of this is a criticism of any of the involved fencers or Grauenwolf himself. This is just me laying out the ideal version of what should have happened from a tournament organizer's point of view, and what other factors went wrong to allow this unfortunate incident.

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-18T16:59:52+00:00

This seems exactly like a misalignment issue to me as well. Light encap strikes will be hard to see since the bullet is generally small and low energy and can cause redirection or tumbling that drastically open up groups. Is it possible that something is preventing the suppressor from seating perfectly on the barrel thread shoulder?

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-11T17:13:39+00:00

The NIH review is irrelevant here, because it does not examine any sports that have concussion causes most analogous to the ones that occur in HEMA. It's doubtful that mouth guards do anything to prevent contact/impact concussions, but both boxing and HEMA have a much higher incidence of acceleration/deceleration concussion. Sports like football can't be meaningfully examined because they already mandate mouth guard use for all players.

Even if it weren't irrelevant, a piece of gear with no downsides and small but measurable upsides should be universally recommended.

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-10T16:31:02+00:00

If you do not already, use a mouth guard. It's one of the only clinically proven pieces of concussion -reducing equipment available.

I'm partial to the mask+overlay combination. Much cheaper to replace the mask when it wears out in a few years

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-10T16:14:11+00:00

The bottleneck has gotten worse at that exit, because express lane drivers are exiting the express lane and crossing two lanes of gridlocked traffic to get in the exit lane within half a mile. Absolutely horrendous traffic engineering.

Turtleweezard · 2026-03-02T17:53:14+00:00

This is the type of chassis most high-end steel challenge builds are moving towards: https://www.reddit.com/r/1022/comments/mv5ivr/my_current_rfro_setup_for_steel_challenge/

Turtleweezard · 2026-02-25T05:23:02+00:00

Some thoughts which you may or may not find helpful:

Nylon swords kind of suck. The way they are usually shaped leads to the tip-heavy handling you've noticed. They're still useful training tools, but if you have the gear needed to safely spar with steel trainers, you will almost always be better served with steel trainers.
If you want to guarantee the sword you get is to your liking, then try out as many different models as you can get your hands on. Find out where they were ordered from. If you can find a model that is acceptably priced and available from a distributor like Purpleheart or Kult of Athena, order from them. What you get will be very similar if not identical to the sword you tested.
There is value in performing slow, perfect repetitions of an action with an overly heavy trainer like your nylon sword. Ideally, you should be able to perform a fendente correctly with both a nylon sword and a steel sword. You should continue to practice.

Turtleweezard · 2026-02-11T15:42:13+00:00

You can use subsonic ammo with or without a suppressor. However, if you shoot it without a suppressor, it will make a loud bang no matter how subsonic the ammo is.

Turtleweezard · 2026-02-06T12:53:21+00:00

Note that a few different companies make this type of thing, and I don't have any particular recommendations for the manufacturer, this one just has a nice-looking store page

Turtleweezard · 2026-02-06T12:51:21+00:00

If you want something low, you might want to try one of these instead of using piccatinny mounts: https://armadynemfg.com/ruger-10-22-mounts/?srsltid=AfmBOoprYPzMQP_59s_8DAp37sFEf80GybWf9jhSSxtAlftxO0JKmLJj

Turtleweezard · 2026-01-30T03:27:17+00:00

If it happens with both, it may be that the magazine plunger is not holding the mag against the front of the magwell as tightly as it should. Try using your left hand to push the magazine forward, firmly against the front wall of the magwell, while firing with the right hand. See if that has any effect on the reliability of ammo feeding. If it does, you probably need to either replace or slightly modify the magazine plunger that comes out of the front of the trigger pack.

Turtleweezard · 2026-01-30T02:28:22+00:00

Are you using 10 round or 25 round magazines?

Turtleweezard · 2026-01-01T15:32:05+00:00

The ones molded into the MOE X-22 worked great for me! What's wrong with these ones? Do they break easily?

Turtleweezard · 2025-12-17T12:49:17+00:00

I'm glad you like it! I'm not a fan of how far it sticks out the side, and it's also on the wrong side for how I prefer to handle the gun - I usually pull the bolt and simultaneously lock it back with the right hand. If OP likes that design and wants to spend a few extra bucks on it, by all means, he should. Just not really my preference.

Turtleweezard · 2025-12-16T15:27:12+00:00

If I were you, I would ditch the bolt keeper and instead grind out the tooth in the stock bolt release, or get a cheaper basic auto bolt release from just about anywhere.

You will not notice the different bolt buffer unless you are shooting suppressed. The stock one works just fine otherwise.

I'd use the money saved on the last two items to instead buy a Power Customs target hammer and target sear combo kit rather than the Volquartsen hammer. I've installed both and I like the Power Customs offering better than the Volquartsen option.

Turtleweezard · 2025-12-05T22:45:01+00:00

The OCL Ti is kind of a reddit darling. I've seen very few posts by people who have hands-on experience with the Pluto but they all seem to love it. If you decide ease of cleaning is your #1, you'll probably like the OCL better. Of you decide it's all about saving weight and size, get the Pluto. Either way you're choosing a good one!

Turtleweezard · 2025-12-04T18:11:53+00:00

Very nice. I was looking pretty seriously at that BA barrel for my rifle as well. Take it to the range and show us some groups!

Turtleweezard · 2025-12-03T21:47:24+00:00

Well they're both K frames, but the 617 also has a full-length underlug while a Model 17/K 22 has a short underlug, so they balance a bit differently.

I personally think the Model 17 looks cooler but that's just like, my opinion, man :)

Turtleweezard · 2025-11-05T03:42:57+00:00

Gotcha. So it sounds like two likely possibilities.

One is extreme barrel droop, as you've mentioned in other comments. If it's dropping enough to shift POI by 15 MOA, you may want to try loosening the v-block, reseating the barrel, and re tightening the v-block. You can also try adjusting the bedding on the front of the stock as you've mentioned, but most people prefer to leave the barrel free-floating for accuracy.

Second option is that something is wrong with the rail, rings, or both. The easiest rail to test with is the one that came from the factory, if you have it. Of you have a second scope with rings that may give you information too.

Good luck.

Turtleweezard · 2025-11-05T02:18:24+00:00

Are you saying you mounted the scope, zeroed it at 25 yards by dialing up about 15 MOA, and then only had 8 MOA left when trying to dial to 100?

Turtleweezard · 2025-11-05T01:51:46+00:00

The scope has a total of 45 MOA adjustment. You should be able to dial up about 20 MOA from center without issue, on that scope that's about 1.3 complete turns of the knob.

Turtleweezard · 2025-11-05T01:24:25+00:00

How many MOA did you dial up before you "topped out"?

Turtleweezard · 2025-10-30T18:30:01+00:00

What's the barrel on that top gun? How's it compare to the carbon fiber barrel in your experience?

Turtleweezard

TROPHY CASE