There is nothing quite like the feeling and reassurance you get from the knowledge that your blade is keen enough for any job it might be used for, or the feeling of dismay when you realize that it's more dull than a butter knife. So here is my question for y'all, what do you use to keep your blades in tip top shape be it belt grinder, a whetstone, carbide and ceramic, etc. and do you have any special methods to do so? Personally I have a nice Camillus carbide/ceramic sharpener as well as a whetstone every now and then. A plus as well, I literally just found this a few minutes ago, pretty interesting when you look up the stuff in the article.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/hunting/2014/01/knife-sharpening-knives-dull-edge-how?src=SOC&dom=fb

I actually mainly use either a whetstone or the two maintenance knives that are traditionally used with the Kukri. Both are a bit.... old fashioned, sure, but they are relaxing and are easy to use when out camping or some such similar circumstance.

I have a whetstone around here somewhere that I use when I need to sharpen my knives, although I do not need to break it out very often because I am firmly of the opinion that a razor sharp edge is a bad idea. A broader edge holds up much better under abuse, especially when you need to hack through things, and you can work it through anything you need to cut with either a little bit of patience or a bit of extra force. As such, I keep a fairly broad edge on my KA-BAR and consider it too sharp if I cannot apply gentle pressure to the edge without cutting myself.

I use a coarse edge whetstone, for a finer edge I actually use the bottom of a ceramic coffee cup. It works surprisingly well. I prefer a slightly coarse edge because the tiny serades in the metal help cut soft things better. My knives can slice through a tomato using only the weight of the blade.

4052946

One of these:

'
I like to keep it simple.

4052946 I use a Spyderco Sharpmaker. Easy to use and the set includes two pairs of high alumina ceramic stones, medium grit (brown) and fine (white).

how 2 use ^

4065042 I REALLY need to get one of those (my only issue is I free-hand all of my knives with Diamond Cards and usually to a more acute angle than the Sharpmaker can give you, which I think is 20 degrees per side...I think)
But ya gotta love dem Spyderco products either way

For my knives and swords, it's Wheatstone all the way, that way I can control my edge. Plus, there is just something satisfying to grind the edge yourself.