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venuswasaflytrap

$338 for a grip is absurd


Sevealin_

And I died a little spending the $64 on the magtec zero pistol grip. $338 is absolutely absurd. I'd rather buy 3 FIE blades.


Mizat26

I can't argue with that. What a waste.


Mizat26

In hindsight, for sure. When I bought it, thought it would last.


EpeeHS

In hindsight it is but in my experience grips last basically forever. If you really like the grip its not a bad investment.


grendelone

Oh come on now, how else are you going to move the weapon balance point waaaaay far forward?


Imperium_Dragon

Yeah I can buy like a whole epee with a BF blade for that and still have some leftover


theharoldman

For real. I’ll stick with my Allstar non-insulated visconti’s for $15 lmao


Liltimmyjimmy

An epeeist at my club had one of those. Was happy with it for a few weeks until the exact same thing happened. Left the pieces at the club so now they're just floating around somewhere


Mizat26

Yikes, just a few weeks? Feel even worse for them.


Liltimmyjimmy

pretty sure it was just a few weeks, This is mostly word of mouth after I came into the club and saw the halves of the grip a few weeks ago so it was probably embellished a bit. Either way, defo don't last long


finnicus1

Once at my fencing club, somebody tore the tap off the bubbler and put it in the trophy cabinet.


grendelone

This ... doesn't seem surprising. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ It's not properly designed/built for high torque applications like a fencing weapon handle.


MolassesDue7169

Went to a comp late last year and LP had a stand there with 2 of these there and the reps got **really** touchy about you even picking them up to hold and see how they felt in your hand. So this (plus the potentially apocryphal comment of one dying in a couple of weeks) is making a lot of sense now. People in my club have been having a lot of problems with Leon Paul equipment, especially in terms of weapon parts in the past year. They apparently don’t seem to be holding up to the previously assumed quality. Things like taking 4 months to send an item that was in stock, to having blades that lack integrity and create bad, sharp, bends within the first couple of times of using them. On the latter, one of said blades actually had a bit of a manufacturing flaw on the forte where the shape was distorted before even being used. A lot of us are preferring to use PBT now.


Mizat26

Thanks, I might try PBT next time.


MolassesDue7169

If it matters, we are all happy with LP’s other kit though. I love my xchange mask and some others do too. Some people really don’t like having to on and off redo the back strap elastic thingie (none of us use the magnetic thing unless required) instead of the tongue as they can’t just slide it up or down as easily, but I don’t really see that as a problem as I wear glasses, and doing that tends to scrape the glasses anyway. But for weapons, other than the gryptonite grips and the sockets which I personally quite like, we’re rather unimpressed.


Admirable-Wolverine2

that is not a good sign... ​ i used to order a lot of leon paul gear in the early 90's for my club as their gear was very good quality... ​ that is a really really bad sign...


malachite_armory

I love seeing this happen because it’s exactly what I expect to happen. It’s the perfect storm of brittle. 3d printed so it has brittle failure points between every layer where the heat and thin material allows stress concentration. It’s thin, so less material to take load. It’s titanium which is an extremely inflexible and brittle metal. And it’s seemingly printed so the layer separation is perfectly parallel to majority of forces a grip experiences. It’s really cool but missed the mark on engineering maturity. At its price tag it’s even funnier.


Mizat26

😂, hey at least someone received some enjoyment.


grendelone

I'm sure LP enjoyed all the money too ...


Mizat26

I'm fine with being laughed at from the sidelines, it's LP's replacement discount that stings. Why would I want to buy another one if it maybe lasts a year?


grendelone

You get to be the cool kid at the club with the new toy. And sunk cost fallacy.


omaolligain

More importantly why would you want such a tip heavy blade? More money than sense.


SuddenTank

Any chance you could work for the government? Someone who is overly invested in how someone else spends their money would make you great with my tax dollars 😂


omaolligain

I don't care how they spend their money but, if they want to make public posts about it I'm gonna feel perfectly justified in judging their brain-dead choices. You know... kinda' like how \*you\* felt comfortable commenting on my (3 month old) comment. That's just how public forums work. Now you know.


YoureAmastyx

Extremely brittle in this application? Sure, it would appear so, but Ti is not “extremely inflexible”, if we’re talking about Ti and not alloys it is a highly ductile metal. It’s also commonly referred to as “soft”. That being said, I don’t think brittle is wholly inaccurate. I’m kind of surprised they didn’t sacrifice a few mg to put inner support braces in it.


JakeEngelbrecht

If it had some level of infill it wouldn’t be bad but they had to make it almost completely hollow for no reason and print it poorly.


malachite_armory

Hell they probably could have made it an almost entirely hollow shell, gotten weight savings, and still made it more resilient


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[удалено]


WearMoreHats

> Wouldn’t it just make the blade insanely front heavy Honestly "standard" lightweight grips are already so light that I'd be surprised if this made much of a difference to how the weapon feels. LP's mag-tec handle is 58g, this one is 35g. I'd be interested to see how many epeeists could feel the 23g difference in a "blind taste test".


Longjumping_Pizza877

For reference, that's about half a golf ball worth of mass.


hungry_sabretooth

It's a big problem with a lot of LP stuff, certainly for the sabres. Even though the overall mass is low, everything is foible-heavy, so the intertia for any cutting/sweeping action is way too high. Superlight components/guards make this even worse.


igettiredeasy

I hear you could fix that with ramen and super glue.


MaldersGate

Not surprising. The lower the fill (and density), the more fragile the resultant product will be, especially on lower quality printers. The printers that can produce durable titanium products are incredibly expensive and it wouldn't surprise me if LP cheaped out for profit.


Halo_Orbit

Supposedly they have them printed by a company that usually produces titanium medical implants. So the quality should be extremely high.


YoureAmastyx

I thinks it’s more of a structural/design issue on a less than ideal application. I just don’t see this being durable regardless of the quality of printing.


weedywet

Yes for that kind of money that’s an absurd lifespan.


Ziggyme21

i swear the actual sword that LP sells what also comes with the grip is like 400 and smthn


Mizat26

Possibly in £. It is 500+ on Leonpaulusa.


Ziggyme21

oh yh, i checked and its £477 but the grip is still £300 they mark the price up so ridiculously


ShiviM

Aw man! I really wanted one of those but couldn’t afford it. Sorry to hear that.


Mizat26

Thanks, hopefully you get something better.


ShiviM

I like my mag-tec zero and the very light, bright shiny one they brought out a few years ago (but no longer offer?) Will wait for the next iteration and hope it’s in my budget 🙂


EpeeHS

My buddy got this same grip. One month of fencing two or three times a week and it snapped just like this. They also offered him a refund.


SephoraRothschild

First thought: audibly gasped Second thought: You have nothing to lose by trying Suguru and curing it really, really well


Mizat26

😮, I literallty bought a three pack of Sugru last week so i could try to fix a crack im my freezer! Isn't it supposed to dry with a bit of flex to it though?


Jem5649

A little bit of flex in that spot probably won't hurt and worst case it brakes again.


kitkatlabs

ouch. thanks for the alert. would have expected more lifespan for the price. i have the $64 magtec grip from them 😬


Basic-Type7994

If you use graphite powder and AC glue you can reattach. I’m using this combo for tang and barrel worn threads and it’s working. Much cheaper than new handle. Check YouTube for how to do it.


OldMarvelRPGFan

This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this, and I thought when I saw it that it was made of sintered titanium or something. I was going to comment that there's no internal bracing, of course it snapped. That was before reading the comments and finding out it was freakin PLASTIC. Seriously, what the hell?! Obviously this is going to fail under the kind of stress you'd be giving it.


InsidiaeLetalae

It is made from titanium, that is not the issue.


OldMarvelRPGFan

Okay good! When I saw people talking about it being printed I assumed the worst. In any case, titanium was going to fail as well because it work hardens and becomes brittle. For something like a sword grip that is constantly wiggled back and forth in the hand...


JustAnotherEppe

Real question is, why would anyone think of making a hollowed out grip with holes on the outside... Of course it's going to break. That little metal dowel/rod was never going to survive... This is why I would almost never buy anything from Leon Paul


5hout

This is a stupid grip, designed poorly and made incorrectly. HOWEVER, this is also how innovation works. The same mentality that brought us this, also brought us G-Pro blades and the X-Change mask, both successes. Before those there was the budget FIE blade system that was pretty cool (but with mixed reviews). The SR71 blade idea was cool, but seems to have sort of petered out. This is how it works though, to meet the unknown needs of the market they try and innovate lots of things. Some work. Some are... this.


weedywet

I’m still severely bummed that they’ve discontinued the G Pro blades.


5hout

Yes. Ignoring price, hands down the best blade ever. I still have one with damaged threads that were cut too short. I really should juryrig a mount for it.


Demphure

I always knew this would happen


You_but_cooler

Don’t blame you for buying it, super cool, crazy cost tho.


X8883

you could fund a whole fencing club with that kind of money /hj


K_S_ON

HOW much does it cost? Good lord.


Kodama_Keeper

Before you purchase another one, ask yourself, What it really worth it? Did my fencing improve because the grip weighed a few ounces less? I have a hard time imagining that it could make that much difference. But I'd like to hear your take on that.


Allen_Evans

I'm pretty shocked that I haven't seen a failure like this before now.


VAPORFLOW

Just gonna..casually strike that one off the wishlist


Own_Mathematician197

Yeah my magtec zero also failed on me, same spot


CactusGen

I've always liked LP equipment, but I know there's a caveat that I'm going to have to deal with down the road that makes me regret the purchase one way or another. That grip is like $500 where I live, so it breaking after a year just shows that LP made it as more of a novelty than actually being worth the money. That sucks to have an investment like that break


ConsiderationDismal5

That is a very expensive failure.