knife sharpening. plus my choice in knife.

love/hate thing for me.

as some of you all are aware, I have taken to ocean fishing.  fish are tastier and less...round-uppy.  I have a difficult time eating a striper out of the Ca
-Delta when I see the boats spraying herbicide on the floating mats.  (I think I saw a plane dropping pellets once)

fish butchering requires a sharp knife more than most other tasks.  its all a slippery mess and a knife that bites predictably is wonderful. 

enter my new way of taking down fish.  I usually eat more whole fish presentations, so my knife reflects that.  I can cut clean fillets as well, and i have.  but I know some other knife would be better.  I use a Japan Deba knife.

but EUREKA!!  a single bevel is way easier to sharpen!!  I need to true my stone to get a better result, but I dont suck. 

my pocket knifes are still a moving target.  some days I nail it, some days I make it worse. 

you?

Pic

Cool knife! I have one that's a similar shape, probably a little shorter, at about 5" or so. Mine's a little short for cleaning fish, but I don't often do whole fish presentations.

I have a couple fillet knives, and I usually just hone the blade with the steel rod before starting. I should probably get a bigger whetstone and actually sharpen all my knives...

When I was a kid my grandfather had a big polishing wheel that he sharpened knives and tools with. He could get anything crazy sharp, and as a youngster I was terrified to use his tools, haha.

I still use the filet knife of unknown brand that I inherited from my father.  It's not the best, but it feels good to use and remember who got me hooked on fishing.  I do all of my sharpening on whetstones.  A single bevel would be awesome and now ya got me thinking of moving away from the nostalgia.

For those that are intimidated by whetstones and being able to maintain angles, I'll take the opportunity to shamelessly plug the Lansky kit that I'm still selling over here: https://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=103443.msg1154639#msg1154639

Last weekend I spotted this book at a cutlery shop in SF and was skeptical but broused a bit and brought it home

I cleaned too many fish and swore off everything but salmon and the stripers now and then. I’ll probably stick to my usual approaches but maybe find something to make it interesting again



Sad story, out of laziness I dropped my wife’s beautiful Japanese single bevel with a sharpener and when I picked it up it was double bevel

Sad story, out of laziness I dropped my wife’s beautiful Japanese single bevel with a sharpener and when I picked it up it was double bevel

I have yet to see a "professionally" sharpened knife that wasn't just a bench grinder murder case.  My mother in law dropped off her favorite knife to the guy at a farmers' market that came highly recommended in her social circles.  Now she owns some ceramic stones and sharpens her own.

This reminds me I need to go visit my Chinese fish butchery master friend who is probably past his 95th birthday. He was chef (galley bitch?) on ships at sea for a lot of years and whoever those crews were they probably never ate so well

I can clean a salmon as good as the next person but it was always better to see him do it Watching mastery in action, scary sharp knives cutting up a fish without slicing the paper underneath it

He showed me ways to cut salmon which if only I’d had the presence of mind to do a video