As shown in my photo above, I have the Gen 3 vise upgrade. I’m quite pleased with it so far – it works wonderfully with the FFG blades I have – but there are a couple of areas I think could be improved.
On thin knives, like my Delica, the lower end of the clamp pivots outboard slightly, limiting the lowest possible angle to about 17 dps. I never dabble in the more acute angles but decided to try a grind recommended here by someone to reduce chipping in hard steels and use a 15 or 16 dps primary bevel with a 22 dps micro-bevel. Couldn’t quite get down to 16, much less 15, so I went with 17 and 21.
I’ve decided I don’t particularly like the slotted version of the locating key. In the upper position, the key cants downward quite a bit. The lower position works well. The upshot is that the Gen 3 vise isn’t as adept at finding repeatable positions. I have several very narrow-bladed pocket knives which need the upper position.
Tonight I ran my batch of eight cheap pocket knives (of which 7 are all identical Grizzly Z-knives) I use around the house. Once I decided on the blade position in the vise and the rod angles. the process was slam, bam, thank you Ma’am. That clamping lever works slicker than deer guts on a doorknob. It does, however, limit your options in where to mount your RAM rig.
Like Josh, I think it’d be neat to have the handy choice of which rig to use at any time
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