I use a double-sided stone that's about 8" long, light grey for the coarse side and dark gray for fine. I still have it, one of the few things that survived all of my moving around between the ages of 13 and 30.

I could sharpen just about every knife that friends and family owned with a few minutes of work, but that Buck110 was absolute grief.

It was a known problem at the time (very early 80s), at least I heard from a couple of other folks complaining about the same thing.

Once you got it sharp, it stayed sharp for a *long* time. At least it had that going for it.

Anyway, a bit of a moot point now. I broke the tip as a kid and kept the knife with me through all of the years. 2013 (over 30 years later) I appealed to Buck to get it rebuilt with a fresh blade and they hooked me up for free.