I got a few hours with a business advisor and dutifully promised to start blogging regularly… and not just about new products either. In theory, that sounds great, because I love telling stories and have plenty to share. If only I had taken the time to edit the video material before the next deadline *ahem more interesting things coming up ahem*
Anyway, because of this I decided to write a few words about a new product after all—the seemingly uninteresting “Diamond File”, or simply the diamond file.
So why, oh why Ola, are you bothering us with such a boring product?
The reason is simply that many roller skiers have trouble sharpening the carbide tips on their poles (very, very hard material), and have bought our regular sharpeners for this purpose. While they work well for knives, it can take quite some time to sharpen a really worn carbide tip that has been slammed into asphalt thousands of times at full force… so I got requests for something a bit more aggressive!
After testing different diamond sizes, we concluded that a good compromise was monocrystalline diamonds at 150 microns with a lot of structure. These provide aggressive material removal without “jumping” like the 250 micron version did. When testing these prototypes, I of course tried them on more than just roller ski pole tips—such as lawnmower blades (often hardox steel… quite tough), axes, knives and other garden tools—and found that it works very well as a general-purpose file. An added benefit is that it can handle very hard materials like ceramics and even glass.
This led me to launch it as a general file and not just for roller ski poles. To make it even more versatile, you can now choose the size and whether you want two identical file sides or one file side combined with our regular coarse diamond stone. The latter combination is particularly practical and quickly earned a place in my own toolbox after testing.
