Making A Custom Fencing Grip?

[jyl]

This is the grip for a fencing foil.



A friend of mine is a fencer, and has not found a grip that suits him. Grips are very personal things, your femcing style, wrist flexibility, hand size/shape, all play into it. So I'm told.

The grip should be light, stiff, and strong enough to hold the blade in a deep rectangular slot. This grip is cast aluminium.

We were wondering how to make a bespoke grip for his particular needs, using a material and method that would not require special or expensive equipment, or unusual skill, and that would be repeatable enough to allow several identical grips to be made after we find the right shape for the prototype.

Any ideas? Carving wood sounds tedious, difficult, and likely to result in a grip that is too weak. We could maybe use clay to arrive at a trial shape, but how to translate that shape into an appropriate material?

[HelmetHead]

You might try sand casting....coming up with the molds is the tricky part

[LWJ]

6063 t5 aluminum is soft. A nice rasp should remove lots of material. A carbide blade is no problem.

I would model up in something easy like balsa wood or foam and then replicate with power / hand tools.

Shouldn't be a big deal.

[J P Stein]

Look into "Lost wax casting".

[sc_rufctr]

What about a polymer like two pack epoxy with glass fibre reinforcing?

Have you ever seen or heard of "kitty hair"? It's very fine fibre glass hairs that's also mixed with epoxy and it's used to make prototypes by hand.
It's very strong when cured but you could make a simple alloy insert for the blade to make it even stronger.

You could make a two or three piece mold with a proper molding polymer backed with fibreglass for strength.
After mixing and filling with epoxy and glass fibre you bolt the mold pieces together. Sounds messy because it is but the results can be very good.

[porsche4life]

Bet schumi can tell you how to make it from CF....

[id10t]

That is a euro style foil grip....

Strangely, my son (age 8) is into fencing. Did some reading. Turns out, the grip for the foil is what the Luger is based on - Euro cav officer gets a pistol, should feel like the sword he has been carrying. Additionally, the grip for the saber is what the 1911 grip style is based on - again, US cav officer gets a new pistol, should feel like his sword.

That said, there are moldable puttys out there - have your guy get some and an old broken foil w/ missing grip (tang should still be there) and see what you can come up with. Once molded in hard putty, shoudl be fairly easy to dupe

[David]

Foil grips have sure changed since I last held one decades ago.

If you think carving wood is tedious you really won't want to work with metal.

I like id10t's idea of putty or maybe some clay that will harden and then send it out for a mold and sand cast aluminum.

[stealthn]

I'm a fencer and i have to ask...why? The grips are so good these days and the only change i would like to see is a slight compression/indent at the finger placement (front of the grip). You really can't take weight off it because it'a all about the balance.

Bob James