Ah, I just ordered a Bark River Pro Scalpel 3V knife with natural canvas micarta handle scales.  Little by little, my collection is growing.  I hope some day to have one of each of the Bark River knife models.  They make such fantastic knives at pretty reasonable prices (considering they are still completely made in the USA).

The Pro Scalpel is a small knife, but it’s made from CPM 3V steel, which imbues it with enough strength for it to handle larger tasks.  I have a few of the pretty large Bark River knives like the Golock, Grasso Bolo I, Magnum Fox River, Bravo 1.5, etc. but I really find that their small to medium sized knives are the most useful.  I debated getting the newer “improved” Pro Scalpel II, but it’s “mere” A-2 tool steel and also cost $30-40 more.

Also, most of their knives are convex ground, which makes for very easy edge maintenance with a simple leather strop impregnated with the gray and green abrasives.  It took me a while to get the “feel” for sharpening with a strop, but I am now good enough that I can get and keep all my convex knives super razor sharp.  The trick is to obtain a feel for meeting the knife edge to the strop, and not applying too much pressure.  I wasted a lot of time “sharpening” my knives at too shallow of an angle, trying to avoid “rounding” off the edge.  However, this merely just polishes the “shoulder” of the blade, and doesn’t sharpen the knife at all.  I eventually learned how to feel when the edge is contacting the strop at just the right angle.  That skill combined with ever resisting the urge to apply too much pressure is what you need to be a good convex blade sharpener.  You can watch all the YouTube videos you want, but you still have to put in the “time” actually using the strop to get the feel and become good at sharpening.