Subject: Carbon content??

From: TOMBGUARD <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 1996 22:18:16 CST

I am a fencer.  Not as competitive as I once was, but I go to
competitions now and again.  (Okay insert your joke about chainlink or
barbed wire, etc. here.)  I am always finding broken blades laying
around a competition or a fencing salle and until I started learning
blacksmithing they were just that much junk, now I see a posible
source of high carbon steel.  I was wondering if anyone knew what the
carbon content of a fencing foil, epee or sabre was?  I have a feeling
that it will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer (the Russian and
Chinese were known for their cheap blades, both cost wise and quality
wise, I have one that I can bend at a right angle near the tang and
then bend back again).  This is also a possible source of steel to
anyone who lives near a fencing club.  Just ask the club to save all
of their broken blades and go by every once and a while and pick them
up, they generally get thrown into the garbage.

Anyway, the reason for the post was to find out the carbon content of
those blades if anyone knows.

r0bert

  Robert H. Neidlinger                      [email-masked]
  "The Tomb Guard"                          [email-masked] 
  "Ask me a question and I'll reply, Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie"
                                                Winnie the Pooh

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From: Steve Herrick <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 22:53:31 -0700 (PDT)

We had a friend that worked in a testing lab. The piece of a foil tested
out at as I remember, 1095 steel with a touch of vanadium in it. Hope this
helps....

Hrolthgar -   [email-masked]
           Steve Herrick