"The Lady in Red"

Another step in the creation of a custom Classical Fencing foil, "The Lady in Red" is a commissioned weapon ordered by one of my local fellow fencers.  The grip for this foil was my third attempt to get the thickness and spacing of the under cord just right to allow the wire and leather windings to properly nest on the main leather body.  Thinning the edges of the red glove leather at the overlap points was an education in itself.  The decision to completely tear down the first two efforts wasn't an easy one since the under cord and main leather wrap are cemented with tanners' glue.

This foil features a German Figure 8 guard from Andrew Chin, a fused layer pad and one of the few remaining carbon steel blades from the original Blaise Frères forge before it was sold.  Of course, every lady should be properly dressed so I included a red wrap for the blade guard.

The foil also showcases one of the six urn-shaped pommels that I recently made.  As mentioned before, while each pommel in the set is similar, each one has a distinct feature to set it apart from the rest.  The six were named after the stars in the Constellation Orion and this one is "Alnilam," which is Arabic for "String of Pearls."

As always, many thanks to Joel Mason of Jacob's Armoury, whose design inspired the "Fabulous Machine" that made the windings on many of my grips possible and to Scott Wright, a member the Classical Fencing Group, for inspiring me to add color to my leather grips.

"El Paladín" (The Paladin)

This is the first of six new guard designs in brass for the Classical Fencing foil.  Originating from the Latin palatinus (of the palace), "Paladin" later came to refer to high level officials in royal courts.  In later romantic folklore and legend, the name was used to refer to the closest companions of Charlemange and were comparable to the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian legend.

The name was chosen because the center bar supports the strength and stiffness of the guard and allows it to be made of thinner material than the traditional Open Figure 8.  The guard is cut with jeweler's saw blades from 1/8 inch brass rather than 3/16 inch as would normally be required.  Even with the center bar, the guard weighs only 51 grams.  The center hole has been drilled but will not be squared until custom mounted on the tang of a blade.

As with many projects done for the first time, there was a lot of testing and hand work required so the completed product took more time than I anticipated.  If I can't reduce that time significantly, the six designs may turn out to be "one of a kind" items.  Still to be tested is the life span of the guard under regular use.  So far, I haven't seen any significant impact on guards made of the same brass alloy.  I plan to make a similar guard in a vertically shortened form.

For the curious, the playing card shown is the Knight from the Spanish card deck.  As with early similar decks, there was no Queen in each suit so the three face cards were the Knave (or Page), the Knight and the King.