My son, like lots of kids since the dawn of time, would gleefully turn every stick or cardboard tube he came across into a weapon, first battling imaginary enemies and then later my accommodating wife in epic sword battles. For his eleventh birthday he asked about sword fighting for real... and after a trial lesson in épée at a wonderful local.

fencing academy in 2023 he was smitten, beginning his journey into fencing and my journey into being a fencing parent. His love of fencing eventually even drew my teenage daughter in as well when she saw how much fun he was having.

Like every fencer or fencing parent, I quickly learned how much equipment maintenance played a part in the sport. It turns out two people attacking each other with steel weapons on a regular basis leads to things breaking and wearing out quickly… shocking. At an early competition we had not one, but two weapons fail, leading to the

“can I borrow your weapon?!” scramble every fencer dreads… then at another competition, a fairly new and fairly expensive body cord failed equipment check unexpectedly. To try and proactively prevent equipment issues, I ordered a standard light up testing box. When I finally received it (with no instructions or information

included) I was excited to try out the failed body cord – only to find it showed no issues, all lights on.

At this point I investigated the high-end testers used at competitions but at a thousand dollars, those were out of the question. Undeterred, I decided to do some experiments creating my own tester. With a degree in computer engineering and decades of experience developing software coupled with an interest in 3-d printing, I was able to

churn out prototypes of a true resistance-based multi-channel tester that would fit in your pocket. The difference between a light up test box and a resistance-based graphical tester was like the difference between looking at something and taking an x-ray of it, a massive difference in understanding what’s going on internally. Even the very first prototypes I made became something I relied on regularly to test and fix my

kids’ equipment as I learned more about basic maintenance. After several iterations and refinements, I started giving early versions to the coaches at our fencing academy, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. At this point I started to think more about turning my experiment into a real product... something that could be made in

quantity, be intuitive enough for any fencer to use and understand, and easily accessible for end users to buy.

Touch Tester has been designed to be an intuitive, portable, handheld multi-channel resistance meter, able to check the internal resistance of body cords and weapons for épée, foil, and saber, as well as doing lame testing. Electrical resistance is the measure of the opposition a material offers to the flow of electric current… when your body cord

wires start to break, or your épée or foil tips start to get worn or dirty, electrical resistance increases – and being able to detect this helps you know when things are starting to break in your equipment, catching faults before they happen, something simple light-up testers can’t come close to doing. For more advanced fencers, it makes it easier to tune your weapons to the very edge, allowing you to see inside when

electrical contact is just beginning or ending. You can tune your epee or foil tip to trigger just at the edge of legal, giving a competitive advantage over equipment less well maintained. Touch Tester is small enough to fit in your pocket, so it’s easy to bring to

competitions and test on the fly, so you can double-check whenever there’s a concern or just in between bouts for peace of mind. It truly is the next generation of testing.

Find out more about Touch Tester at www.touch-tester.com.

Hi, I’m Ben Paul, Director of Leon Paul. When I first came across this tester, I was incredibly impressed. It’s a brilliant product. I hope one day to bring it to London for resale but for now I wanted to highlight the creator's great work today through this blog.

What makes the fencing community so special is the people who constantly innovate to improve our sport. I hope that by shining a spotlight on this product, the creators get the full credit they deserve. If you test equipment on a regular basis, I cannot recommend this product highly enough.