One of my straights has been frustratingly difficult to hone because of a "twist", I would call it, in the blade. I am familiar with the "rolling x" pattern some have used with a normal bench stone, but I've never had very satisfactory results with that method.

I've had GREAT success with my Spyderco "Sharpmaker" with my folding knives, so that got me thinking-----if I hone my straight using just one rod at a time, the twist in the blade will not have near the impact that it does when a larger portion of the blade is in contact with the stone. In other words, since just a small section of the blade is touching the hone at a time, the twist farther down the blade won't hold the edge off the hone. A little imagination and visualization should make this clearer I hope. If not, just try it and you'll see what I mean.

To make a long story short, it worked great---I honed in the normal fashion, but since there was is such a short section of blade in contact with the rod at once, the twist over the length of the blade doesn't cause any problems. The beauty of this method is that you are not changing the spine/edge geometry or angle, just as with a normal non-twisted blade.

This has worked better than I could have hoped and if you have a blade with any twist that gives you problems, give this a try.