Hej Soren, I needed to repair both the spine and the cutting edge, but I carefully removed as little steel as possible to maintain the original geometry. (You can see the original knife as I found it in this earlier post.)
I did all of the repair, modifications, and sharpening on my knife-making belt grinder, so the final sharpening was easy in comparison to the rest of the work. I would agree that the goal of most commercial stainless steel knives is rust resistance, which usually means softer steels relatively high in chromium. These types of steels can feel “sticky” or “gummy” compared to other knife steels. And I would also agree that edge-holding is less important than rust resistance in these types of knives.
BUT – this type of steel is a better choice if you’re going to pound your knives with a hammer to get through something that’s too hard to cut only using your hands. 
A friend recently sent me this picture of the knife his wife broke trying to hammer it through a large squash. 
