Hi all,
I thought I would just post a quick few Paragraphs on my experience of placing my first order for swords for Hema.
The reason I have ordered so soon after taking up Hema is that our club spars almost exclusively with Steel weapons, and though the club has feders for drilling, none of these (or it may be 1 of them) are safe for sparring with properly, and as such so I am not being a burden on club mates constantly borrowing their weapons I ordered one.
As mentioned in my “first impressions” blog post (if you haven’t read it please do), living in the UK almost all Hema safe sparring weapons are going to come from abroad. There are a large number of Manufacturers at various price ranges but the main three that seem to be recommended here in the UK are Ensifer, Kvetun, and the company I ordered with, Regenyei.
I chose Regenyei from these as whenever you ask around the Hema Community for recommendations for a good reasonably priced feder that will last it is a name that always comes up. Also with my intention of doing tournaments I needed something that will pass tournament safety checks so going with a well known manufacturer was a no brainer.
At this point I must stress that apart from being a customer I have no affiliation at all with Regenyei armouries, or any other brand or shop, I am independent and am only writing this to highlight my experiences with the company.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, on to how the ordering process went.
choosing my weapon
this was remarkably easy as the website ( http://regenyei.com/swords.php ) is very easy to navigate with clear sections for each weapon type and then some examples/stock build weapons in each part also, this was a distinct advantage as a complete beginner as the ease of which I could find what I wanted was a big help and a huge plus point in my eyes.
if I had wanted to just order the standard feder this would have been the easiest thing in the world of spot the one I like on the website, email and place my order, but this brings me to the second thing I loved about Regenyei as my choice for a feder.
Customisation
Something I hadn’t even really considered until I started looking around the website was the sheer amount of customisation you could do with a Regenyei feder and also that it didnt necessarily affect the price too much, or at all if you were very careful/didnt need many changes.
and as such I of course took advantage of this, as I have mentioned previously I love swords for their aesthetics and the Feder is no different despite being a training weapon.
Also from my time sport fencing I do have a preference I like in weapons and that is for the point of balance to be close to the hand so this is something I also strived to achieve by making the choice for the “wide Schilt” option on my feder which adds about 80 grams to the weapon all towards the hilt and as such will bring the weight and point of balance back a little, every little helps I guess.
I also shortened the blade length to 97cms (just over an inch off his standard length) as I am a tall fencer (6ft) and that slightly shorter than standard feder will increase handling which coupled with my adjustments for a heavier hilt section should hopefully make a nimble light tip feel which should offset the slightly shorter blade. This is a decision I would not necessarily recommend to a lot of people without knowing if they would like this change, but it was actually a decision I made after fencing a visiting member to our club who had done basically the same shortening to his feder and handling it I found that I really liked this shorter feel so i included it on my own.
I added a curved crossguard as this is an aesthetic preference over the standard straight one. A mushroom shaped pommel as I like the way my hand can rest against it a little better than the standard pear shaped pommel (this is a preference in the way I hold 2 handed weapons that I noticed early in my training, I like to rest one hand against the pommel and one against the cross guard).
This hand placement preference also meant I took a couple of centimetres off the length of the grip, and the final change I made was to add a 1 piece leather grip rather than the cord or spiral wound grips.
All in all these not insignificant changes only added a grand total of 30 euros extra to the base cost of the feder, with the shortening, the wide schilt, and the mushroom rather than pear pommel all being free upgrades/options. this ability to make the feder look very much my own as well as handle (hopefully) more like I wanted it to is excellent for such a small cost.
How to order
this was also really simple. and made very clear on the custom feder part of the website. It simply consisted in filling an email in with my choices for the various parts and sending this to Regenyei at the email address they provided. this all worked and it took them about a day to reply asking my to review and confirm. A second email sent and I had my order submitted for delivery at the end of July.
the other really good feature in this ordering process is you only pay when weapons are ready to dispatch. and this is without a deposit too, this is something I have never come across anywhere else and a facet that I really liked as it shows their confidence in you as a customer but also gives you as the customer time to plan your finances accordingly.
Adding a second weapon
this was not planned per se but shortly after placing my feder order, I made an enquiry to Regenyei to ask if they could do one of their polish sabres with a rolled tip. This seems to be required for a lot of tournaments so I asked on the off chance and yes it turns out they could do this though it shortened the blade by 1.5cm, and not only that add the Feder order rather than it being a second order. so as this all sounded very promising and simple I said yes, so suddenly I had a feder and a sabre en route. This addition however pushed my order back to the August construction and as such added about 4 weeks on to my order. This was acceptable to me as what I lost in time I gained in shipping costs as my weapons would ship together and with the way we rotate weapon lessons at the club would only be 2 weeks longer without my feder for sparring and maybe not even that.
The wait
this I suppose could be viewed as the first downside to this order and that is the wait it was around a 2 month wait from the point of order to expected dispatch which extended essentially to three months when i added my second weapon. this is not an insignificant amount of time and if I needed a weapon in a hurry I would not have placed this order, there were other companies that could delivery a feder faster (we in fact had another new starter at our club who did just this as he didn’t want to wait). but that said I did order custom work so expected to wait, would Regenyei have had the standard weapons in stock? I dont believe so given my friend went elsewhere for immediate delivery but it may have been a quicker delivery, either way I didn’t mind the wait so it was just something i came to terms with and went in to the ordering process with eyes wide open about the delivery time.
Communication
Given that Regenyei is based in Hungary and I would guess that English was not their first language, communication was/is excellent. They responded to emails very quickly and with very clear questions/information. At every point they were clear about the cost and delivery times, as well as their process for payment and delivery. This made the whole process seem very easy and though it is obviously not as simple as most online shops where you click order and fill in a form this level of prompt and clear communication made everything feel much the same even though it took a little longer to confirm the order.
Summary
I cant speak to the quality of the product until they arrive but what I will say is if it is as good as their order process I am expecting some excellent weapons to arrive. The whole process was simple and straightforward given I was dealing with a small company in a different country. They were informative, and prompt in getting back to me with any information I needed and though I have had no need to I would expect if I emailed them now with a question or update they would continue this excellent service.
All in all Regenyei have lived up to their customer service reputation.
Now all I have to do is wait for my swords to arrive when I will do part 2, and unbox/do first impressions on my new purchases
bye for now.
The Fat Hussar
The Fat Hussar 