Originally Posted by
Mauser308
Ahhhh, realistically blunt?
What I'm meaning, is keep a (diamond) steel with you and every so often a couple of licks on the stainless to keep scraping off the work area on the blade profile before it can turn into the hardened lump that you have to wear off. I dunno if that makes it more logical to write it like that?
I had one very expensive stainless filleting knife that was an utter cu*t to do anything with - tried everything to keep it sharp but once you went over the spine or through some pin bones a few times it was gone. I had an expensive smooth steel that was awesome for everything else, it was an annealed mild steel and you coated it with oil. A little counterintuitive as the knife was hardened and you were rubbing it over a softened steel object to sharpen the blade but it was awesome. Absolutely useless for the stainless filleter though. Just blunted it. Ended up dealing to the edge of it with 200 grit wet and dry and working up to 1000grit and then stoning it (this was before the days of whizz bang sharpeners). Worked good for about a week. Then had to do it all again. Prick of a knife... Don't know what happened to that knife, might have given it away as a bad investment. Don't know what happened to the steel either for that matter, but I have been meaning to make another. Knowing what I know now, I think I would have a better run out of that blade - by changing the maintenance regime to what suits that knife rather than trying to deal with it like the rest of the carbon steel blades.