Having read through the thread I thought I'd put in a couple of comments myself. Most of JohnInKansas' stuff is, in my experience 'spot on' except where I don't know the brands. Even so, here goes.

The very sharpest blades are not made of steel of any type. If you look at an edge through a microscope (as I do when dealing with residue analysis and use wear) you'll always find that the finest edge on a steel blade is serrated. This is why even scalpel blade cuts leave scars. Glass (not often used for kitchen knives, true) is about the only material that forms a blade with no serrations. Which is why microtome knives for electron microscopy sections are made of glass. Although not common, knapped blades from obsidian have been used for eye surgery and have been shown to leave less scarring than steel scalpel blades.

Such arcane considerations aside, commercial kitchens, domestic kitchens and wilderness butchering all impose different demands on both the tools and the users. I've used a cheap stainless cook's knife for the last 40 years now and its blade is still straight and sharp enough to effortlessly slice through overripe tomatoes at 1/8" intervals. My mother kept all knves in the same drawer; even the 'sharp' ones were blunt and I vowed, when I moved out, that I would keep my own knives sharp.

I don't use a dishwasher; each knife is washed separately, rinsed hot and then wiped separately and stored vertically in a thing I made to hang out of sight on the back of a cupboard door. I won't use anything other than a timber cutting board and I prefer my kids to acquire necessaery immunities the old fashioned way.

When I ran school camps I got myself a couple of heavier carbon steel knives for more frequent duties and later added them to the rack. But although they required more care and teaching they were still the goods.

When I was at Kakadu, I was involved with the local Aboriginal community, investigating bush tucker, some of which was feral buffalo. ANPWS ran a workshop on identifying TB as part of the BTec programme and the "pet meaters' (as the guys who hung out of chopper doors and shot buffalo for the pet meat trade were called) ran classes on how to use knives. Because the meat might be contaminated with TB, utensils had to be treated with bacteriocides between uses. So, instead of using oils on sharpening stones, they used bacteriocidal detergent and washed stones, knives and stells in buckets of the stuff.

This was where I learned that stones are used for sharpening while steels and strops (not used here) are used for reshaping (and thus retaining) the edge. All this was done out in the scrub so the techniques were different and interesting.

Gotta go, daughters are getting restless.

Cheers, Rowan