thanks knife guy for the always detailed reply, as well as the links. Perhaps I got my terminology wrong as I always thought the belly of the knife was the curved portion leading up to the tip.

As for practicing on cheap knives thats the route Ive been going now. I was able to get a nice convex edge out of a Jeff White muk that I got on ebay for 20 bucks. The edge was about as sharp as the spine when I got it...






I also got lucky with my YKLE...and it came out great







But I tried with my ScrapMuk and never could get it quite right. Ended up sending it off to HornDog to correct. Right now I'm beating the heck out of a BlackJack grunt on some hard maple...and I'll practice bringing that edge back