In case of emergency...

In an ideal world, armor inspections are that brief moment before you fight when the marshals comment on how wonderful your equipment is, but in reality, armor inspection is when you discover your tip is shot or yes, you really did leave your gear out in the rain. These discoveries often leave fencers scrambling around, looking for the stuff to fix their problems. The answer to this problem (other than actually going over all of your gear before hand) is to have an emergency kit.

These don't have to be very large. In fact, all you really need is three items:

1. Spare tips. You need at least one, but I recommend one for each of your blades, plus one to share.


2. Scotch pad - for cleaning surface rust from your blades. Again, you need one, but it doesn't hurt to have a spare to loan out.


3. Tape. Remember: whatever type of tape you use, it must contrast with both the blade and the tip, so silver and black tapes are out. Which means that your basic duct tape and electrical tape are out, unless you get different colors. I recommend white athletic tape. It's durable but rips easily and is visible enough for use in torchlight tournaments.

Those are the basics, but some other items that would be a good idea are: a multi-tool (always a good thing to have),a set of needle files, and duct tape (if it's not part of your basic kit).

These simple items will fix just about any problem you'll encounter on the field. Of course, if you want to go overboard, you can throw in spare blades, spare guards, handles, pommel weights, etc. but those are probably just as easily left back at camp.