SABRES... How do you tape them and why!?

[thedova]

so I was interested in knowing how everyone tapes their sabres b/c I have noticed everyone does it different.. so not much consistency across the board..

So there must be a reason why..

some tape the whole blade white

some tape just the top white showing the blade on the bottom

some tape just the bottom with white showing the blade on the top

some tape everything white from the spotter.

etc!

So please tell me how your guard tapes their sabre and why?

Im trying to figure what the best way would be

[ATXguard]

I always say the best way to do anything like taping a sabre is what works best for you.

We've changed the way we taped sabres each year, no rhyme or reason. Sometimes we just like one look better for our show. The only taping we do consistently is rifle taping- to reinforce the "weak areas" of the gun.

[ATXguard]

oh - and we tape them so they are easier to see when they are tossed. I am not sure why others tape them. although some sabres are taped to create a more even balance, so they look more "stable" when spinning in the air.

[PC]

Aren't we all trying to figure out what the best way would be?

I have to assume the questioner is asking about shiny metal sabers and why some guard designers or staff would tape over the shiny stuff, usually with white electrical tape. The answers would vary depending on where one was on the food chain. Top-tier IW winterguard staff would tape shiny saber parts only for aesthetic reasons - the design staff prefers whatever look. Long, thin mirror surfaces spinning in the air just twinkle occasionally in the hard directional overhead lights (we are talking about indoor guard, aren't we?) and then land. This hides a lot of dirt but doesn't make clean tosses actually look CLEAN, because the audience can't visually read most of the travel path through the air. A strip of white non-shiny electrical tape down the back side of the blade and wrapping down about a quarter inch or more onto both flat sides of the blade makes a saber's travel somewhat more readable in the air without sacrificing "twinkle" because those surfaces usually wouldn't catch the light anyway, unless the saber was logrolling significantly. The rounded "sharp" edge of the blade catches more reflections and provides most of whatever blade twinkle there is. Aesthetically, I can't think of any reason to alternatively white-tape the "cutting-edge" part of the blade instead of the back edge. But folks who want to sell "clean" often tape the whole blade white and forgo "twinkling" altogether. Taping the shiny hand guard and black handle with white, black, tan or whatever color tape is done for similar visual reasons, i.e. wanting the equipment to contrast, compliment or blend into the background, costumes and performers.

But in the real world lower on the food chain where 99.9% of the rest of us struggle for survival, a whole lot of other concerns come into play. Back in the old days, we had to tape sabers for the same reasons we still tape wood rifles - to hold the pieces together when (not "if") they broke and to reduce the loud rattling noises all the lose pieces made. There was a lot of taping sabers various colors and to hold the streamers on (one or both ends), and WGI inspectors required substantial padding on all equipment to prevent any conceivable damage to the bare gym floors - and frequently held back performers at competitions until their equipment padding was fixed. Modern sabers don't break very often anymore but even the King's get loose and rattle annoyingly so it's still pretty common to see conspicuous or inconspicuous wads of tape used in various ways to dampen the racket. It's a lot more bother but I prefer to disassemble the King's, bend or flatten the parts back to their proper shape and reassemble with super locktite. King warns not to do this or it will void the warranty, but the warranty is just a sales gimmick that doesn't cover bending and rattling, which all his sabers will do, just complete breakage, which never happens.

There are also instruction and performance concerns. The rest of us don't have weapon lines of Rogain addicts who've been spinning for eighteen years and counting. We have to teach and repeat and drill over and over again. With these concerns the typical saber taping strategy I've seen is to tape some kind of mark at the center of balance point on the blade as a "spotter" that helps kids read the parabolic trajectory of a tossed saber more easily, sometimes heavily taped as a tactile reference point too, along with another heavily taped tactile and visual reference point further out toward the tip of the blade that tells the performer where to grip for a blade toss. Sometimes the tip and butt of the saber are also conspicuously visually marked but these are the parts of the saber that move fastest and most erratically in tosses and I doubt these visual markings help the performers read and properly predict the saber's motion to put themselves and their hands in the best positions for a good catch.

And, finally, there are good reasons to "tape" sabers for the best interests of the kids and the organization. Metal sabers have a lot of thin sharp edges and points that can do a lot of damage to people and objects (like gym floors) when they impact them at high speed. I've taken kids to Med stations for stitches more than once and I've twice had to spend all night on my hands and knees patching and refinishing dozens of holes, cuts and dents in a wood gym floor - all of the damage done, despite a heavy floor tarp, by a single unmodified all-metal saber being used in a rehearsal (unbeknownst to me) for just a few hours. For independent units, getting access to gyms for the long rehearsal times needed is critical to organization survival. Putting a bunch of holes and dents in a gym floor is likely to get an organization banned by every gym manager in their area (they talk to each other), if they are lucky not to get sued to replace a $60,000 gym floor.

At the moment, WGI seems to think the usual double layer of vinyl floor tarp (theirs plus the performing unit's) are sufficient protection for gym floors. Anybody who has ever tried to paint a used floor tarp (or even just held one up in the air in bright light) knows how full of holes that notion is. But the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward rationality. I've seen WGI practice sites where the hosting school system had saber-spinning winterguard units of their own and chose to put plywood over their gym floors before letting anyone practice on them. Props have been getting a lot closer inspection and equipment inspections might come into vogue again.

Little wads of electrical tape on the tips and butts of sabers won't last long or provide anything more than a puny amount of protection. With King sabers, I start by pounding a 5/32" aluminum cable ferrule over the tip of the blade until the tip is completely embedded, and drill and pin it in place with a 3/32" roll pin. The resulting fatter tip, rounded over a bit on a grinder, holds a 1/2" rubber or vinyl furniture tip pretty tightly and several layers of tape go over that to make it last longer and keep it from flying off. A strip of white electrical tape down the back edge of the blade and folded over the sides provides at least some slight padding for the performer over what are usually the sharpest edges of a King blade. I cover the edges of the metal hand guard with a semi-clear plastic grommet edging (Panduit part #GES144F-C) and secure it with plastic pull-ties and clear vinyl tape where it ends at the strap-like front part of the hand guard, which gets covered with a piece of split clear vinyl tubing and more vinyl tape. I then take a "Do it" hardware brand 1" vinyl leg tip (part #209481 O/M 1-10), cut a 1/4" wide vertical slot three-quarters of the way up the side of it, warm it up with a heat gun or hair dryer til it gets rubbery, mash it down (wearing gloves - it's hot!) over the butt of the saber (the slot goes over the hand guard end) and hold it for a minute or two until it cools off and hardens up. A lot of layers of electrical tape (whatever color they're using that year) goes over it to further protect it and hold it in place.

Rehearsals are very tough on equipment. I usually have to replace everything but the aluminum fat tip at least once or more on every saber over the course of a season.

This is probably at the extreme end of the spectrum of common practice, but our performers seem to like not having chunks of skin regularly taken from their knuckles, wrists, arms, heads and other body parts. And I haven't had to repair any divots in gym floors in recent years.

[Jeremy Denzer]

Not sure which model of King sabre you are using, however I have had mine for over 9 years and spin it pretty much daily. It has never shown any signs of looseness or a rattle.

[PC]

Not sure which model of King sabre you are using, however I have had mine for over 9 years and spin it pretty much daily. It has never shown any signs of looseness or a rattle.

I've been spinning the same rifle (just for exercise) since 1994. It's not the spinning that stresses guard equipment - it's the incessant DROPPING. And I suspect that you, like me, put the thing away if you start getting the dropsies and don't give it even remotely the kind of pounding it would get from a typical guard member.

Outside of his product display booth I've never seen any other saber models of his in regular use by any colorguard unit in my area, except for his $200+ top-of-the-line "King Saber", of which I've repaired probably close to a hundred and have been in charge of regularly inspecting, maintaining and repairing a set of ten for several years. I've never seen a King Saber that wasn't developing "issues" after just a week or two in heavy use by typical guard members. Blades begin to be not quite straight, especially the alignment of the handle to the blade because the tang is an inherently weak point, and handguards start to bend and flatten slightly, which puts a huge amounts of stress on the points where the handguard attaches.

The stainless steel alloy in King Sabers seems to put up a pretty good fight "resisting" bending, but not completely. It doesn't seem to want to bend very much at any one time, but it does appear to bend just a little bit with repeated impacts, which eventually add up to significant warps. Since the stainless steel is still slightly malleable and the handle parts are held tight by only the tightness of a sleeve nut on the threaded tang, it only takes the parts changing shape by a few thousandths of an inch to loosen up and eventually rattle. But sometimes they don't rattle for a while because continued flattening of the handguard tilts the angle of the points where it attaches to the handle and takes up the slack.

Don't get me wrong. The King Saber is a huge improvement over the old Zubco sabers from Spain and Taiwan. After years of heavy use, the stainless steel still puts up a lot of resistance when I try to straighten it or bend it back to proper shape, which indicates that isn't getting appreciably weaker and I can probably keep restoring them to good serviceable condition for many years to come. After refurbishing the ten last year, one of the guard directors said they looked almost brand-new again and that they had previously expected to need to replace the whole set years before. So they've been a real bargain for the equipment budget. I haven't even had to buy any replacement parts and don't expect to - except maybe the sleeve nuts that hold the handle together if the screwdriver slots start stripping.

Still, you can't tell me these things don't normally bend or rattle - or get me to like it that they do.

[coach#1]

I've been spinning the same rifle (just for exercise) since 1994. It's not the spinning that stresses guard equipment - it's the incessant DROPPING. And I suspect that you, like me, put the thing away if you start getting the dropsies and don't give it even remotely the kind of pounding it would get from a typical guard member.

Outside of his product display booth I've never seen any other saber models of his in regular use by any colorguard unit in my area, except for his $200+ top-of-the-line "King Saber", of which I've repaired probably close to a hundred and have been in charge of regularly inspecting, maintaining and repairing a set of ten for several years. I've never seen a King Saber that wasn't developing "issues" after just a week or two in heavy use by typical guard members. Blades begin to be not quite straight, especially the alignment of the handle to the blade because the tang is an inherently weak point, and handguards start to bend and flatten slightly, which puts a huge amounts of stress on the points where the handguard attaches.

The stainless steel alloy in King Sabers seems to put up a pretty good fight "resisting" bending, but not completely. It doesn't seem to want to bend very much at any one time, but it does appear to bend just a little bit with repeated impacts, which eventually add up to significant warps. Since the stainless steel is still slightly malleable and the handle parts are held tight by only the tightness of a sleeve nut on the threaded tang, it only takes the parts changing shape by a few thousandths of an inch to loosen up and eventually rattle. But sometimes they don't rattle for a while because continued flattening of the handguard tilts the angle of the points where it attaches to the handle and takes up the slack.

Don't get me wrong. The King Saber is a huge improvement over the old Zubco sabers from Spain and Taiwan. After years of heavy use, the stainless steel still puts up a lot of resistance when I try to straighten it or bend it back to proper shape, which indicates that isn't getting appreciably weaker and I can probably keep restoring them to good serviceable condition for many years to come. After refurbishing the ten last year, one of the guard directors said they looked almost brand-new again and that they had previously expected to need to replace the whole set years before. So they've been a real bargain for the equipment budget. I haven't even had to buy any replacement parts and don't expect to - except maybe the sleeve nuts that hold the handle together if the screwdriver slots start stripping.

Still, you can't tell me these things don't normally bend or rattle - or get me to like it that they do.

Our school purchased 16 "top-of-the-line" King sabres in the fall of 2003. They have been used/spun/dropped (and dropped quite a bit) by typical high school colorguard members for 7 years and I only have 1 that rattles the slightest bit. None of the 16 sabres have bent blades...and they get slung around in guard bags, on the equipment trailer and under the bus all the time. I don't understand how yours rattle after a week or two.

[PC]

Our school purchased 16 "top-of-the-line" King sabres in the fall of 2003. They have been used/spun/dropped (and dropped quite a bit) by typical high school colorguard members for 7 years and I only have 1 that rattles the slightest bit. None of the 16 sabres have bent blades...and they get slung around in guard bags, on the equipment trailer and under the bus all the time. I don't understand how yours rattle after a week or two.

I have to concede that I don't get to examine the largest and most random sample of King Sabers. Most (but not all) of them are brought to me by people who want them "fixed" so I'm seeing a disproportionately larger number that have something very obviously wrong with them. And I have to concede, since I don't know what alloy of stainless steel and what tempering process he uses or how much variation there could be, that it might be possible for some King Saber parts to have a stronger temper and be more resistant to bending than the ones I see. But none of the blades or handguards from the set of ten of widely varying ages that I examine all the time has shown any propensity to NOT bend. They don't bend very much from just one application of force, but they all bend at least a little tiny bit from any strong force.

Alignment, distortion and straightness problems in individual King Sabers aren't always all that easy to spot. The parts are all bent or curved by design and don't offer any obvious strait lines from any one visual angle that you can easily eyeball and compare for alignment. Nevertheless, the performers who use them often know when they're significantly bent or out of alignment and bring them to me before I've spotted the problem. I've stripped every one down to parts at least once and been able to check their straightness or alignment with some precision. And, like the hundred or so others I've been able to check, to a greater or lesser degree all of them were not quite flat, straight or still holding their original shape, in the case of handguards (King calls them "hilts", which isn't quite right). Just laying the bare blades on a precision flat surface revealed conspicuous ripples, waves, broad bends, and combinations thereof. None of the tangs (the narrow part of the blade that runs through the handle) were straightly aligned with the blade. All of the handguards showed small to large signs of changing from their original shape. Some were bent into a flattened D-shape like they were regularly dropped the same way - these usually didn't rattle, presumably because the progressively bending handguard kept taking up the slack in the handle parts as it developed. Others had small bends or kinks but still maintained their general round shape as if they got more random blows that were somewhat counteracting each other - these usually rattled because their ends weren't spreading or bending enough to take up the slack. Most of the blades could be straightened just by bending them over my knee and leaning on them hard, but not too hard. Sharper ripples or kinks, and all the tangs and handguards required padded tools and more fiddling around to straighten out.

In contrast, other brands of sabers using tempered carbon-steel blades instead of stainless steel are usually still straight and flat as a pancake on my alignment table despite years of similar abuse. And I usually can't make them take any kind of bend just using my knee and bare hands alone, even with a lot more force than I ever dare use with a King blade.

I have to concede the possibility that there might be significantly stronger King Sabers or even sets of them out there, but, if so, they must not be very common because all the King Sabers I've ever checked seemed to be pretty consistent - stiff but not quite unbendable. And I'm slightly skeptical that your set of King Sabers would look quite as straight to my eyes as they appear to yours. But I'm prepared to be surprised. If they are I would like to know what Rockwell hardness their stainless tests out at so I can hunt for similarly special specimens and not have to keep straightening out this set.

I don't want to sound like I'm endlessly badmouthing King Sabers. I don't have to do straightening maintenance on them all that often, maybe on average not more than once or twice per season and maybe not that often with some individual performers weapons. It is, after all, pretty remarkable that they can last for so many years without breaking completely or just wearing out. But I think it would be misleading people to suggest that they never or only rarely bend or not to any significant degree.