In this blog post we discuss our tournament grip option. This is a wooden core grip bound by glued cord its full length. This provides a good sturdy grip that stands up well over long term use in training and sparring. We first started to see the leather covered grips start to show excessive wear when the hard plastic lobster tail style gauntlets gained popularity.
Grip Wear
This style of gauntlet often extends well beyond the depth of the hand and the edges would ride against the leather quite badly. The use of this style of gauntlet may have lead to the second trend we began to see in the needs of our customers. This was the increased wear from blade strikes on the grips. This seemed to happen most on the upper grip or areas that would be between the hands. The extra hand protection may have allowed folks to use the grip as a parrying devise more than they had in the past.
Tournament grip shown on extended grip length Fechterspiel
We started providing custom grips of different configurations for folks to combat the issue. The most economical has been the cord wrap over wood. Not impervious to damage but works pretty well in heavy use where one may not always be able to choose their partner. this option is available on our Fechterspiel, Fechtbuch and Spada da Zogho Trainers.
PS: We know the video is slightly tilted and I cut my head off :-) still working out some kinks in our high end production studio.