This is an interesting post and confirms my own experience. My first two and longest serving field knives are in ATS 34 - a folder and a heavy 8 inch blade. The folder was a razor sharp ideal 20 degrees either side when bought and keeping the edge on that was "the way to go"....a little and often rather than let it go too long without restoring the razor edge.

The bigger knife took me a whole weekend to re-profile the edge as it came with I would say a 25+ degree grind and I wanted it to take as fine an edge without "rolling" as it could. I decided to take it to 23 degrees....got out my Lansky System and made up the flask of tea....litterally hours and hours of patient work. I thought I was going no-where....went out at lunch and bought a heavy black marker and popped into a jewellers and bought one of his spare eye glass pieces cheap after reading some "tips" on sharpening on BF I think. Marked up the blade edge with the marker and let it dry and then began again. Using the eye glass I could see it gradually getting there but if I had'nt got a dark reference line to go off I would have thought I was cocking the job up....

Anyway....once done it was like a scalpel....and topping it up has kept it like that ever since. About 2 years ago I took it down to 20 degrees either side and it was even better. But go for the rough diamond stone to take stock off or you will be there hours. I did my first job on it with a Lansky system which had only a coarse stone to work with. The second time I had a coarse diamond stone and this was much better. No wonder I have never sold many knives.....you become deeply attached to something which is a marathon labour of love to "get right". <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The last job I did like this was the Enterek Destroyer....similar to HD's re-profile but not quite as steep....got to say that after hours on the stones with this....I feel compelled to keep it a while to benefit from some of that hard work <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />.