Knife blade angles

[Line Dancin]

Last year towards the end of the season I bought a work sharp knife sharpener. It is awesome.  Question is what is the difference in knife angles? It came with a 40 and 50 included angle . They recommended a 40 in the instructions for fillet knives. and a 50 for hunting /outdoor knives. With the way we fillet salmon taking off the fillet and cutting through the bones would the 50 be better than the 40? I have a couple old knives and sharpened them with the 40 and 50 and they both seem equally as sharp.

[Mega Byte]

My guess is you won't notice much of a difference cutting through the bones.  You could probably argue that the 50 degree angle might hold it's edge longer.  You might notice more of a difference trying to get skinny and strip those rib bones off of your fillet.  I have the same sharpener (just ordered some bulk replacement belts last week) and I keep it simple and use the 40.  But hey, you should do some research on this.  Fish, fillet, report and repeat until we have a good sample size. 

[Line Dancin]

54 minutes ago, Mega Byte said:

My guess is you won't notice much of a difference cutting through the bones.  You could probably argue that the 50 degree angle might hold it's edge longer.  You might notice more of a difference trying to get skinny and strip those rib bones off of your fillet.  I have the same sharpener (just ordered some bulk replacement belts last week) and I keep it simple and use the 40.  But hey, you should do some research on this.  Fish, fillet, report and repeat until we have a good sample size. 

That's kind of the way I was leaning that the little bit wider angle may hold a little longer. But as you said I was worried about the fine cutting like skinning or removing rib bones.