SFWA Musketeers: Safety & Equipment

David Watson, Weaponsmaster Comments on Suppliers & Equipment:

I have done business with American Fencers (1180 Folsom St. in San Francisco) They are helpful, have a nice supply of Renaissance looking weapons, and their prices are competitive.

Lately I have been buying from Triplette because they are a bit cheaper, are very experienced with SCA type fencers, and have a funny catalog. The Triplette starter set, using epee bell and a robust foil blade, is a good set to start with and the tunic they offer should be pretty safe to work in. It meets the requirement of some of the SCA kingdoms, and not quite for others, but it's a reasonable deal. You can of course make your own tunic or doublet of about 3 layers of substantial broadcloth, or some of the heavier split leather or suede from Tandy and get the same results for a bit less.

Leon Paul is the big British supplier of fencing equipment. Their reputation is very good.

Blade Fencing Equipment is mostly a supplier for modern fencing only. They might be very helpful, but I have not dealt with them.

Allstar is a German company. Their equipment enjoys a good reputation. The top of the line in modern fencing equipment is usually considered to be Uhlman (German, of course). Their reputation may be better than the product, but the product is undeniably very good!

Blades:  We will be using several types of blades, including, but not necessarily limited to: foils, sabres, and epees.

There are now extra long, extra heavy epee blades available. TCA sells a very robust epee called a Musketeer blade, and they have an extra long Musketeer blade that is 40 inches rather than 35 inches in length. The standard length musketeer blades are a bit stiff, and hit pretty hard, but the 40 inch is a bit softer (thanks to its extra length), and really gives the impression of a long rapier. For people who already have experience with epee, this might be a nice change to a longer, slower blade with similar handling characteristics to what they have used in the past.

If you are inexperienced, figure on starting with a foil. Foils are lighter and do not require as much wrist strength to use effectively. I would suggest that you get one of the more robust practice blades, but if you have an old competition weight foil in good shape, that should be quite useable. Talk to your proposed supplier and tell them what you are planning to do, and suggest you would like a pretty robust blade as some competition blades are very light and whippy. Whippy blades will create control problems for you. If you whip the dung out of your opponents, they won't want to play with you!

There are a couple of heavier types of blade that are seeing a lot of use with SCA, particularly Schlager blades and Del Tin blades. These are heavier, longer blades that are closer to the weight of Musketeer rapiers than modern fencing blades. They hit harder, but are much more difficult to break, and they require rather different moves and tactics. They require greater control, and move much more slowly than standard fencing blades. Slow movement is good for onlookers, as really fast blade work requires a martial arts trained observer to follow.

The heavier blades are a real eye opener to people trained with foil and epee. I think it would be good if we could use as many of these blades as possible, because it makes the fencing style much more realistic, but they are rather more expensive, and you will probably have less opportunity to use them. I would rather we did not try to mix them with the lighter modern fencing blades. These heavy blades require the gorget protection for the neck, and more experience and wrist strength to be safe.

Generally speaking, most French blades are good, with the possible exception of France Lames. I have seen some pretty good Polish blades, but that was years ago. The new Russian blades enjoy a rather good reputation, and their prices are very reasonable. There are now Chinese fencing blades available. I have serious doubts as to their quality, but you never know; they may turn out really fine. Talk to your supplier and see what they will tell you about blade quality. Be sure and tell them what you are proposing to do. (A few suppliers will look down their noses at you if you aren't doing strict modern fencing, but if they are too snotty, you can always take your money somewhere else.)

From Your Captain and the Weaponsmaster:
General Equipment Requirements

Masks:   Most recently-made fencing masks are made to withstand a 13 kilogram punch test. Any 13 kg test mask will be fine, whether it be foil, foil-epee, sabre, or 3-weapon. We will have several safe, spare masks available, but we won't have LOTS of them. Foil-epee masks are made a bit more robust than foil masks, as epee blades are stiffer and hit harder. sabre and 3-weapon masks are more robust still, and have extra reinforcing and padding around the edges, as sabre fighters strike around the edges of the masks with cuts, rather than just thrusting head on. They are more expensive and they last longer in better condition than foil or foil-epee masks. Persons who have only a foil mask will be urged to borrow a 3-weapons mask, or will be allowed to fence only against other foils. All Musketeers will use masks at all times while fencing.

We will want to put some manner of tying cord, or strap on the back of the mask to help it stay on. The little elastic or velcro strap you see on modern masks is often not quite enough to keep the mask in place when you roll under a table in your duel. We might encourage people to make up a hood of perhaps 3 layers of reasonably solid broad cloth to keep the mask tight and offer extra neck protection.

Neck protection:  Fighters will be urged to use (and required to use, for heavier blades) appropriate neck protection. Fairly new fencing masks have a substantial bib of tough material below the mesh part for extra neck protection. A metal or heavy leather gorget (neck protector) will be necessary for using the heavier blades. Gorgets will be available for use, though members might want to get their own for a more comfortable fit.

Body Protection:  You will want to wear a fairly substantial shirt with long sleeves. The purpose is to keep from getting raspberries or abrasions and scrapes from slightly roughened blades.

The fact is, you can do a lot of fencing in just a shirt and get away with it. You get more little round bruises but you don't get hurt. I would recommend putting a fencing jacket under your shirt, or some sort of slightly reinforced padding. Most SCA groups require a doublet (essentially a vest) of light leather or about 3 layers of substantial broad cloth for body cover. (The musketeer mandelion will be of some help for preventing injury, but I doubt it will be sufficient by itself over a shirt.) This reduces the number of little bruises you get and substantially reduces the chance of being impaled on a broken blade. Yes, it happens occasionally.

Chest protection is more a matter of how much bruising you like to deal with. Personal choice comes in here, since the SFWA Musketeers will all have had enough experience by then to know their own bruise tolerance. Probably standard fencing chest protection would be invisible under the costume and could also work, though it might spoil the costume effect. Or maybe not.

Guy Stuff:  Guys, you might want to consider wearing an athletic cup. The narrow, deep ones they use for martial arts work pretty well, and are reasonably comfortable. Honestly, I have done a lot of fencing in my back yard without a cup, and you have to be hit Just Right for it to really hurt, but when you get hit Just Right, it's pretty bad.

Legs and Feet:   I have seen people work very nicely in tights, particularly the heavier types, in fencing bouts. Heavy sweat pants, pulled up to the knees, with long socks down into boots or shoes make pretty good jiffy Musketeer pants. Those will give you pretty good protection. Remember that the lower torso needs to be well protected. If your leather vest, cloth vest, or fencing jacket doesn't go down low, be aware that the lower abdomen is even less well protected than the upper chest.

Gloves:  Gloves will be needed for *both* hands (since the use of the off hand for batting away the blade is both period-appropriate and a standard open-melee combat technique.) sabre gloves from a fencing supplier are generally the best, because they fit well, are supple, and have a bit of padding for the back of the hand or arm. Foil and foil-epee gloves work well too, but have no padding. Riding gloves, deerskin or goatskin work gloves, and "tig" or "mig" welding gloves (the light ones, not the great heavy ones) make good gloves for fencing. They work better with a large cuff, so you can get the ends of your sleeves into the gloves. Welding gloves have long cuffs. Some work gloves don't, but it is pretty simple to put on cuffs, and they will look more like musketeer gloves that way.

Footgear:   Shoes or boots should be skid resistant. You could do an involuntary split and hurt something. Appropriate boots can be found in riding catalogs, as can half chaps that will look quite spiffy with flaps attached at the top.

Weapons:  All blade will be inspected prior to the event. Rusty, overbent, nicked, and otherwise damaged blades won't be used. New blades should generally be tested against a tree or door or something with a couple of hard shots before you poke your friends with them, because One in Ten Thousand could be dangerously flawed. If we inspect the blades before we use them, and try to limit the most outrageous behavior with the blades, we should be quite safe. We wear the neck and body protection just in case. I personally have been hit right over the heart with a broken blade. My leather doublet stopped the blade without a scratch. It probably wouldn't have gone through my sternum anyway, but I wouldn't want to do an instant replay without the doublet. It would be good if we made sure that the body cover actually comes down over the lower torso, or that the upper part of the pants is similarly robust.

David Watson on equipment and safety

The biggest two points for safety are equipment safety and behavior in the match. If people behave like utter idiots, leap on one another and whip the bejabbers out of each other, all the safety regs in the world won't save them from harm. Then again, if we insist on using pretty good equipment and are not total idiots on the match floor, we should be just fine. The truth is, it is pretty hard to seriously injure anyone with fencing gear, so long as you have a reasonably intact mask.

There will be some risk in this game. If you don't want ANY risk, you shouldn't play.

Remember that the point of this exercise will be to have fun, and not to win everything! A good fencing demo is like a good Con panel. You can try to look smarter than everyone, and argue with everything, and end up looking like a jerk; with a little understanding and cooperation everybody on the panel can come out looking like a winner.

Please send comments, suggestions, or corrections to C Cameron

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