Fallkniven dc3 and dc4

[ateallthepies]

I have heard of issues with the newer Fallkniven DC sharpeners mainly that the ceramic side was too rough. Well I own the older versions of both stones with the black ceramic and rate them highly.
Yesterday I made a visit to the Bushcraft Store and I had a look at the new stones while there. The first thing that struck me was that the Ceramic side was rough and was a completely different material from the originals. I bought a DC4 to see if the issues were genuine.

I was mainly concerned with the performance of the ceramic side being used to the old ones polishing the edge to a razor. Well using it from new it would cut about the same as a 600 grit surface so I decided to dress it by using a cheap 600 grit diamond stone and lap it.

Well the outcome after dressing is a nice surface almost like the old ones! It came out smooth and flat with only one imperfection, a hole the size of a salt grain on the surface. I became more impressed and tried it out on one of my Opinels that was sharp but not hair popping sharp.

The ceramic feels like it has a bit more bite than the old ones which I liked but it easily put a razor edge on the blade with a few swipes! I was very happy with this new ceramic and rate it just below the original ceramic side in grit size which I think I will come to prefer as it could take a while to finish an edge with the older ceramic even though once done was first class?

Hope this helps anyone thinking these stones are not as good as before.

Steve

 

[Clouston98]

I've never had an old one, heard about problems with the new ones too. Mine was bought about last October if not a bit earlier, it's great gives tools a great edge! Gransfors axe stone is great too, all I need with strolling to get the tools paper slicing, just touch them up when they need it!

Be interesting to see others experiences, maybe I got lucky?

 

[Teepee]

A 5 minute session on a diamond bench stone brought my ceramic side nicely flat too. I reckon mine is 3 or 4 years old. It was supposedly one of the bad ones but is still a good tool.

Very rarely does it touch a knife though, most of its use is my axes.

 

[ateallthepies]

I just did my Leatherman Wave blade with the new stone and it too got a hair popping edge with little effort using the ceramic only!

Cant fault it yet.

 

[BigMonster]

My DC4 was ok. But when I tried the big one (DC521) it was one big dissapointment (there is a thread about it with pictures). I have ordered it from HH and returned it twice so I had 3 brand new ones in my hands. Very nice and smooth, but the assembly was horrible. How hard it is to glue two rectangles together? Missaligned, with edges sticking out. Badly glued, I could slide a piece of paper between the plates and actually shine a flashlight through the gap between two elements. All that results in uneven metal side which behaves like it have air bubbles underneath. That really killed a lot of my respect for Fallkniven...

 

[dwardo]

My newer ones has broken in and it is "better" than it was but it certainly more brittle and more coarse. Mine too looked like it had been glued together buy a three year old, actually my three year old would have got it better aligned. Its a shame the old one cracked in half when I stupidly dropped it on the floor