A properly balanced weapon offers significant advantages to the fencer who uses it. Blade movement is faster and more responsive to the hand, with improved control and accuracy. The place on the blade at which the weight of the inner, middle, and outer sections of the blade will equal the weight of the pommel, tang, grip, and guard is determined by the simple test of balancing the blade on a fulcrum, typically the index finger. This is the balance point or the center of gravity. The blade becomes more and more point heavy as the balance point moves toward the tip. A similar but opposite weight shift occurs as the balance point moves toward the guard. In the first case more work is required to move the blade and to control its trajectory. In the second case, as weight moves to the guard, the lighter blade may become very difficult to control.
One might expect that balance would be considered a critical issue for the fencer. It is relatively easy to alter the balance of the blade by changing the pommel and/or the grip. However, less than half the fencing manuals sampled for this post addressed the balance point on the blade for foil and sabre. Only the Italian sources for the spada provide a center of gravity that applies to the epee. The following are the sources that addressed the balance point:
1884: Maestro Masaniello Parise specifies that the balance point of the spada should be 4 fingers from the guard in his treatise that became the standard for the Military Fencing Masters School at Rome. The same center of gravity applies to the sabre.
1885: Giordano Rossi, a practitioner of the Radaellian School, specifies that the spada should balance in the double strong of the blade, approximately 4 fingers from the guard. Similarly, he advocates that the sabre blade should balance at the same point, in the double strong 4 fingers from the guard.
1886: Maestro Adelardo Sanz specifies that the balance point in sabre should be approximately 3 fingers from the guard.
1891: Alfred Hutton, a prolific advocate for military training with the sword, describes the ideal balance point of the foil as being on the blade just above the guard.
1892: Maitre Louis Rondelle suggests that a foil is correctly balance when the balance point is approximately 1 inch from the guard.
1904: Maestro Generoso Pavese, a graduate of the Military Fencing Masters School of Rome, places the foil balance point at 2.5 inches (4 fingers) from the guard. The same measurement is used for sabre.
1905: Professor Leopold Van Humbeek, a Belgian trained fencing master, taught an Italian based style of sabre fencing in the Netherlands. He specified that the balance point on the blade should be a few centimeters from the guard.
1912: Maestro Salvatore Pecoraro and Maestro Carlo Pessina suggest that two factors are key in the balance of the sabre: maximum ability to manage the blade which is achieved by the center of gravity being closest to the hand, and power in the blow which is achieved by the center of gravity being as far away from the hand as possible. As a result they cite the range of balance points in various texts as being from four fingers from the guard to right against the guard. They suggest 2 fingers from the guard as a reasonable compromise.
1920: Maitre Ricardo Manrique, trained in the French School in Cuba, describes the foil balance point as approximately 1 inch from the guard.
1934: Maitre Felix Grave, a Master of the Academy of Arms and the Academy of the Epee of Paris, specifies that the balance point of the foil should be 15 millimeters from the guard.
1936: Maestro Luigi Barbasetti sets the balance point for the sabre as 5 centimeters (approximately 2 inches) from the guard.
1941: The Breckenridges, father and son French School students of Maitre Francois Darrieulat, define the foil balance point as immediately in front of the guard so that with a #5 blade the weapon is slightly point heavy.
1948: Maitre d'Armes Clovis Deladrier, a Belgian trained master, uses different criteria for the balance of the foil. In a normal guard position, the foil is properly balanced if the tip of the foil slowly lowers when all of the fingers except the index finger (which serves as a pivot point) are detached from the grip. For epee, his primary focus about balance is on the impact of the off-center bell mounting on stability, not the relationship of the blade to balance. For sabre, the test is similar to that of foil - when the last three fingers are released the tip will drop slowly.
As Maestri Pecoraro and Pessina remarked in 1912, the range of balance points runs from a maximum of 4 fingers to immediately in front of the guard. Allowing for the fact that a "finger" is a measurement that will vary with the anatomy of the fencer, we are using Pavese's equivalent of 2.5 inches for 4 fingers, we can develop the data below. We do not know whether the finger measurement is with or without a glove, but we assume it is without. Note that it is important to use the inch or centimeter equivalents as increases in hand size over the years could push the balance point out into the point heavy range.
Range: approximately 2.5 inches, approximately 6.35 centimeters - 4 fingers (Pavese's inch equivalent) to immediately close to the guard (we use a 0 centimeter value for this).
Distribution (including both foil and sabre as the two are routinely describe as identical in the sample sources):
- 4 fingers (approximately 2.5 inches, approximately 6.35 centimeters) - 6
- 3 fingers (approximately 2 inches, approximately 5 centimeters) - 2
- 2 fingers (approximately 1.25 inches, approximately 3.2 centimeters) - 1
- 1 inch (approximately 2.5 centimeters) - 2
- a few centimeters from the guard (an imprecise measurement, our assumption is that this is less than 1 inch or less than 2.5 centimeters - for calculations we assume that value as being 2 centimeters) - 1
- 15 milimeters (1.5 centimeters) - 1
- on the blade just above the guard (0 centimeters) - 2
Mean (average): approximately 3.99 centimeters or 1.57 inches or 2.5 fingers.
Mode (most frequently occurring value): 4 fingers from the guard (approximately 2.5 inches, approximately 6.35 centimeters). This value may be skewed by the size and distribution of the sample in terms of French or Italian sources.
Sources:
Breckenridge, Scott D. and
Breckenridge, Scott D., Jr.; Sword Play: Based on the French School of the
Foil; [fencing manual]; A. S. Barnes and Company, New York, New York,
United States of America; 1941.
Deladrier, Clovis; Modern
Fencing; [fencing manual]; United States Naval Institute, Annapolis,
Maryland, United States of America; 1948.
Grave, Felix; Fencing Comprehensive; [fencing manual]; Hutchinson and Company,
London, United Kingdom; 1934.
Hutton,
Alfred; The Swordsman: A Manual of Fence for the Foil, Sabre, and
Bayonet; [fencing manual]; H. Grevel & Company, London, United Kingdom;
reprint by The Naval and Military Press, Uckfield, East Sussex, United Kingdom;
1891, reprint no date.
Pavese, Generoso; Foil and Sabre Fencing (Scherma di Spada e
Sciabola); [fencing manual]; Press of King Brothers, Baltimore, Maryland,
United States of America; 1905.
Rondelle, Louis; Foil and Sabre: A Grammar of Fencing in
Detailed Lessons for Professor and Pupil; [fencing manual]; Estes and
Lauriat, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America; 1892.
Rossi, Giordano; Theoretical-Practical Manual for Sword and Sabre
Fencing; translation by Sebastian Seager; [fencing manual]; Milan,
Italy, translated edition by the Melbourne Fencing Society, Carnegie, Victoria,
Australia; 1885, translation 2021.
van Humbeek, Leopold J. M. P.; Manual
for Fencing with the Sabre; translation by Reinier van Nort; [fencing
manual]; Amsterdam, Netherlands; translated and reprinted by Reinier van Noort,
Hagan, Norway; 1905 reprinted 2017.
Copyright 2021 by Walter G. Green III
