Epee problems!

It was bound to happen, and surprising it hadn't happened sooner. I've finally had an epee break. Two epees, actually, both within 30 minutes! First the one I have been using the most. It suddenly stopped registering hits but nothing looked wrong. That happened while I was fencing David. I began the evening fencing Logan and had had a couple of rather large bends to the blade, so I thought it might have had to do with that. Anyway, after playing a little with it and not getting it to work I put it aside and got my other epee. After fencing George for perhaps 20 minutes we both heard the sound of the tip flying off. At first I thought just the tip had come off but soon realized the barrel had too—in fact the blade had broken inside the barrel. Marla came and helped look for the tip. She found it and was the first to realize a bit of the blade was stuck in the barrel.

And all this a week before a tournament, of course! It's a mixed epee vet tournament. Marla and I are both going. Knowing this she immediately gave me two of her epees (she has four), so I would have two working ones for the tournament. Now nice of her! We fenced a bit after that, which gave me a chance to try out her epees. The grips are a bit small for my hands but that is okay. One of them has an interesting paddle-like end and says "K1" on it, making me think it is a Zivkovic. She wasn't sure. Looking it up now I'm pretty sure it is a Zivkovic. But not quite. Zivkovic's website lists handles including K, KII, and KIII, but not "K1". And their K handle has fewer finger grooves than Marla's. But maybe the designs have changed a little since she got hers.

Zivkovic's current "K" handle

Zivkovic Z handle

Zivkovic ZII handle

In any case, the smaller size gave me a couple blisters after just 20 minutes—perhaps I will use my old leather glove instead of his newer, better fitting but thinner one—but I liked the "paddle". Now I'm more curious than ever about trying one of the Zivkovic's designed for larger hands, and without finger grooves, I think. Unfortunately it doesn't look like Zivkovic makes a handle for larger hands without finger grooves, except perhaps their Z or ZII, which don't have grooves but do have an odd extra-large "paddle". So, I still think I need to actually hold and feel the various Zivkovics rather than buying one sight unseen.

Anyway, on the broken epees. After Marla very kindly gave me two of her epees and left I sat down in the armory room to see if I could get my main epee working again. My secondary one clearly needs a whole new blade and tip (and wire, I think). But my main one looked fine—it just wasn't registering hits. It's tip looked a bit banged up, and I had been noticing the tip seemed to be less stable lately. So I figured I'd switch it with the relatively unbattered tip that had broken off my secondary epee (just the very tip, not the barrel). Well, that seemed to fix it. I noticed that one of the old screws on the main epee was hard to unscrew and seemed banged up. Maybe that screw had somehow caused the whole tip to malfunction. In any case I think I now have my main epee working, plus Marla's two spare epees, so I should be ready for this tournament.

This upcoming tournament is "RCFC Thursday Night Veterans Epee". There are currently 15 fencers preregistered, including 5 Us (me, Donald Lake, and others I'm not sure I know), 4 Es (Marla Clem, John Comes, Michael Chin (a great foilist—I didn't know he did epee)...), no Ds, 2 Cs (Johannes Klein and Serge Timacheff, uh oh), 2 Bs (Cynthia Glover and Martin Haase), and 2 As (Richard Glover and Mikol Ryon). Should be....interesting!