"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.