Not necessarily what you asked about but here goes from a chef :
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Most quality cooks knives are fairly high vanadium content to prevent blade oxidisation (rust). A good German cooks knife (renown for precision steel & knife design) will set you back about $250. I use one of these at home.
On the show I use my Sabatier 24 cm High Carbon Cooks knife. This is a French knife that has excellent strength and flex due to high carbon content but they do rust and are not very popular these days, although they are still available.
I never let professional sharpeners sharpen my knife, however after reading this you may want to consider grabbing your yellow pages and enlisting their services!!
I use three different grades of real Japanese wet stone (designed for knife sharpening: available at the Tokyo fish market). Basically I achieve a new edge by using a coarse stone and sharpening the whole length of the blade on both sides under running water at 33 degree angle, then repeat the angle on a medium stone and finish with an ultra smooth finishing stone to remove any irregularities.
I then repeat the whole process on the first 1 inch of the blade (heal of knife) at 45 degrees to get a stronger blunter edge to use for chopping through poultry bones and hard stuff (45 degrees gives you a cleaver style edge).
The metallurgy of the knife then needs to be realigned to maintain edge strength; this is achieved with a sharpening steel which aligns the metals into the same direction to provides strength and a long lasting edge. The sharpening steel is also used daily to keep the edge on the blade between stone sharpening...whew…The whole process takes about 30 mins every 8 weeks but I love doing it.
For home use I would recommend buying a diamond steel. They are an aggressive easy way to remove metal and create a good edge quickly.
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http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef/txt/s1853130.htm