Thanks again for the help. I worked on my Vapor over the weekend. First, I recreated the point that I had rounded of previously. That really wasn't hard to fix - I was surprised. I took the spine of the blade down slightly with a coarse (cheap) stone I've had laying around forever. Then polished up the spine a bit and resharpened the entire knife. I used the Gatco. It seems some of you don't care for these guided systems, but I thought I'd give it another shot myself. To be honest, I'm actually pretty happy with it. I'll hang onto my Sharpmaker as well. Maybe with more practice I'll get better with the Spyderco. I'm almost willing to bet that my problem with the Sharpmaker have to do with letting my blade get too dull between sharpenings. The Spyderco seems to take a LONG time for me to get anything done. I'm not kidding in the slightest when I say I've worked for HOURS trying to sharpen a knife. I probably got impatient, started pressing too hard to hurry up, and then bent, rather than filed off, the burr.

Well, the new edge on my Vapor certainly "feels" better to me. Somehow it just felt I did a better sharpening job using a very light touch with the finest stone to finish up. It's definitely sharp now. We'll see how the durability goes over the next few days. I have another of my infamous tomatoes in my lunch today. We're got a bunch of tomatoes at home, so by the end of the week I should know if my sharpening passes the "three tomato test", or fails miserably like last time! Whatever - with the help you all have given, it sure seems like I'm doing a better job sharpening. I feel much more confident. So if it takes more practice for me to finally get it right, so be it. I actually enjoyed this last weekend's sharpening - rather than dreaded it as I have in the past.

Thanks!