The truth about Fällkniven S1 Pro

I don't own an s1 pro, but have owned several A1's and A2's and I have never had any issues as discussed above. And I tend to be a little more abusive than the average knife guy. I would hope the S1 would follow in its siblings foot steps.

I did find a few video reviews that were complementary of the S1, so this one may just be a lemon. It happens.
 
Haha Danke has a point with his requests but I do think he does have some problems, maybe.
I can't really provide more data than this.

About the topics I started I really think they still have valid point, I do not get it why reference them to make "a case" against me. This is a knife forum after all, why not discuss knives?

I wish I had informed the vendor that the knife has problems I am trying to address and then come here for advice and grinded that knife for totally new edge if it indeed helps. But even then, I would expect a knife to arrive without needing grinding at the very start.

For me the saddest part came down to dealer getting stuck with the knife but I can live with it, overall they must make profit with FK products and their business is doing good so they can take the hit.
 
As a side note, if you look the video
at 3:04 frame by frame you can see that the knife tip has not "snapped off". Instead, the tip has been smashed against a rock (or equal) as you can see the rounded profile and scratch marks: it´s a bit difficult to observe as Lily has problems with camera focus, too.
 
veeteetee said:
As a side note, if you look the video at 3:04 frame by frame you can see that the knife tip has not "snapped off". Instead, the tip has been smashed against a rock (or equal) as you can see the rounded profile and scratch marks: it´s a bit difficult to observe as Lily has problems with camera focus, too.
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How dare you discount Lily! He did a throughout, clinical testing that is unsurpassed by anyone! :)
 
Knifegrabber said:
How dare you discount Lily! He did a throughout, clinical testing that is unsurpassed by anyone! :)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure Lilly is a "she", although I have no empirical data to support my claim....

I generally like her reviews, but she really needs to learn how to use a ferro rod (7:45). You don't move the knife along the fire steel, you keep the knife still and pull the steel towards you. That way you don't disturb your tinder, and it keeps the sparks focused in the area you want them to be.

This has been your bushcraft public service announcement of the day.

P.S. I despise the term "bushcraft" with every ounce of my body.
 
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Knifegrabber said:
You are right. I never told them that I only cut thin slices from the wood.

I said to them "I think the dealer will be in touch with you" to reference it politely, as he already had been in touch..

Here are the first 2 emails:
https://imgur.com/C9PVyLe
https://imgur.com/aOUyhpi
Click to expand...

Reading FK post, they seem like they are more than willing to take your knife in and have a look at it.

They would probably test it, and if your knife is a dud I bet they would fix you up the right way.
 
Without decent photos, it's not easy to know what the issue is. Threads like this are almost worthless without decent photos.

Early on in this thread, Steelhead Seeker suggested the problem might have been a burr. The OP dismissed that suggestion, but my own guess is that a wire edge (a big burr) was mostly likely the issue. I had a custom maker send me a knife once that had a wire edge sticking out an inch from the tip. They can be big. The OP has said nothing that I remember that tells me he/she knows how to recognize and remove a burr. And that is a very common problem. If the burr was as big as described, the OP might just have been straightening it out during sharpening.

Fallkniven makes very good knives. The company's warranty is not very good. We don't hear about this kind of problem from the beefy pro series, and we likely would hear about it if the heat treat was bad even occasionally.

In any event, the dealer took the knife back. Fallkniven was willing to examine the knife and fix or replace it if there was a problem.
 
353 said:
Why can't the dealer send it back to FK? It's under warranty?
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From the previous page:

Knifegrabber said:
I just checked the email conversation with the vendor. The vendor first said that they rarely get reclamations about FK, but later added that whenever they do get problems, FK is by far the hardest company to work with. He also said that the contact person at the FK is very unpolite.

And just to be clear, after the vendor WAS turned down by FK I contacted them and reported what had happened, suspecting some kind of miscommunication. But they just said that their knives arrive by the thousands and therefore if one were to be faulty, they would all be. I really have no idea how they are manufactured so I could not argue that point by knowledge and do not think it would be fruitful.

To be clear, they did not admit that I had a faulty knife, they just claimed that cutting 0.5 to 1" (1,2cm to 2,5cm) pieces from branchless birch was being too hard on it.

The vendor replied to this with: (translated) "...Nevertheless, this kind of knife should be able to handle freaking native birch! We will refund this to you and sort this out with them"

I asked him about 6 months later for any news about it and he said it is probably staying at the shelf.

Apologies for not sharing some information right at start, I hope this clears out the matter.
Click to expand...
 
Twindog said:
Without decent photos, it's not easy to know what the issue is. Threads like this are almost worthless without decent photos.

Early on in this thread, Steelhead Seeker suggested the problem might have been a burr. The OP dismissed that suggestion, but my own guess is that a wire edge (a big burr) was mostly likely the issue. I had a custom maker send me a knife once that had a wire edge sticking out an inch from the tip. They can be big. The OP has said nothing that I remember that tells me he/she knows how to recognize and remove a burr. And that is a very common problem. If the burr was as big as described, the OP might just have been straightening it out during sharpening.

Fallkniven makes very good knives. The company's warranty is not very good. We don't hear about this kind of problem from the beefy pro series, and we likely would hear about it if the heat treat was bad even occasionally.

In any event, the dealer took the knife back. Fallkniven was willing to examine the knife and fix or replace it if there was a problem.
Click to expand...
I had never heard of wire edge but I do know burrs. (I quick searched wiring earlier and found out it is probably like a long burr.) I thought of that when I was testing the blade. I only had fine stones with me and they really do not create burr like that, I only get burrs with coarser stones. I still did doubt myself and thats why I went there the next day.

And prior to starting to baton, the blade had seen light use so any factory burr should have been gone. I have never seen a burr on a factory edge, I do not know if it is usual but I did test the sharpness against a paper and it sliced it well, while usually burrs should begin to tear it. I do not however know if it is under their warranty :)

And that was part of the battle here, I could not get it to stay in shape so I hoped FK would just make diagnosis of whatever and send me a knife back. I totally did not expect for them to not take it in.
 
veeteetee said:
As a side note, if you look the video
at 3:04 frame by frame you can see that the knife tip has not "snapped off". Instead, the tip has been smashed against a rock (or equal) as you can see the rounded profile and scratch marks: it´s a bit difficult to observe as Lily has problems with camera focus, too.
Click to expand...
To quote the Dutch Bushcraft boys: "Nothing survives Survival Lilly".
 
This would probably be a good batoning knife.
dFvgot.png
 
353 said:
Sounds amazing, again I'd like to see the correspondence.
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So would I, but that would be a conversation between the dealer and FK.

At a certain point, we either have to take this guy at his word or not. No real reason to keep questioning if he's telling the truth or not.

There are plenty of similar stories out there about FK as a company and how they handle situations like this.
 
Yeah. I was quite stunned about how I could not get the knife to behave.
And after trying and getting frustrated that the luxury knife (debatable in hindsight) I bought could not keep up with a cheap one I just thought to oursource the problem to a more skilled person / entity.

Here comes the catch:
Had been a wire edge, faulty steel, moronic user, birch that was cryptonite to COS steel, bad movement of Venus and Saturnus in relation to northern twilight zone, the curse that was laid upon me when I was a child..

None of that mattered, if FK would have just received the knife to see or given some actual advice to vendor or me. I could have easily understood had they just emailed "Fucking idiootten, du moste removar den wire edge" and I would have carried on to totally refinish the factory edge on the €320 knife. But no, they said the knife is not meant for that task. That dropped my jaw.

I can never know the full story between vendor and FK but the vendor was very friendly and polite towards me, so I am guessing he did not go hard on FK either.

Their communication towards me was not bad, and they even suggested they could see the knife (while knowing I did not have the knife at that moment) but it did not help the vendor. Why, it remains a mystery.
 
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Knifegrabber said:
You are right. I never told them that I only cut thin slices from the wood.

I said to them "I think the dealer will be in touch with you" to reference it politely, as he already had been in touch..

Here are the first 2 emails:
https://imgur.com/C9PVyLe
https://imgur.com/aOUyhpi
Click to expand...
Honestly I do not see anything wrong with their reply. They offered to inspect the blade and see if there were any manufacturing defects which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I have the S1 pro and found the blade chipped easily. It first chipped when my friend was using it to hack up some yucca and since then it has chipped when batonning it through chicken and turkey legs. Only small chips that buffed out with sharpening and from what I've heard from other users this is normal for a new blade from them and once sharpened they don't chip easily any more.

IMG-20220126-051120-983.jpg


I've not tried batonning wood with it as I use my bigger BK 7 for that but I will give it a go later and see how it holds up. DBK battoned the crap out of his though and the edge held up spectacularly.
He did have other issues with the handle and finger guard coming loose, a problem which Fallkniven acknowledged and fixed in later production models. He decided to try destroying it and it was very very durable.
 
So I went and did some batonning with it and was impressed. The thick profile of the blade meant it was impossible to get the smallest of kindling but also that it punched above its size. Not the best knife for batonning but it does the job well. Recommend wearing gloves as I got some reverb through the handle. No damage at all to the edge, no chipping or rolling and still razor sharp. Either the OP had some fake replica or a lemon.

 
Shaolinfist said:
So I went and did some batonning with it and was impressed. The thick profile of the blade meant it was impossible to get the smallest of kindling but also that it punched above its size. Not the best knife for batonning but it does the job well. Recommend wearing gloves as I got some reverb through the handle. No damage at all to the edge, no chipping or rolling and still razor sharp. Either the OP had some fake replica or a lemon.

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A rounder handle would really help take a bit of the shock out of that handle. Gloves never a bad idea doing that kind of work in any case.
 
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