Doc, glad you're feeling better..... All the repetative motions required for stock removal on a knife blade could be hell on an aging hand.... I know mine (not yet aged, early 30's) require frequent shake-out even when sharpening a new blade... Any fine work tends to cramp'em up.
Here's a tip for ya, Doc, though it involves using power tools for stock removal: Alot of us enjoy hollow ground blades, but most think this to be beyond the tooling of the average joe. It's not.
You can hollow grind a blade with a hand-held angle grinder. Here's how I do it. First, have the outline of the blade more or less finalized. I often use a bench grinder for this. Just shaping the spine and profile of the edge. I use the bench grinder to put a 45 degree per side edge on the knife. This gives me a guide so I can visually see how much edge thickness is left as I grind the hollows...
Now I C-clamp the knife by the tang to a piece of angle iron that I can chuck in a bench or post vice. I try to set the knife at about mid-belly level, point towards my belly. The point is over the angle iron, making things safer.
I get the angle grinder and install a heavily glazed surface grinding wheel on it. Badly glazed wheels cut slowly and leave a relatively smooth surface compared to a fresh wheel. You can cause a wheel to become heavily glazed by surface grinding a piece of steel with excessive feed pressure, and allowing the work to become very hot. The glazed wheel will look like many of the spaces between the grains have been filled in. I like to ensure that it has no sharp corners on the grinding surfaces too, as I prepare the wheel.
Now brace the back of the angle grinder in your lower chest, with the wheel at an angle to the face to be ground. The higher the back of the grinder is held, the deeper the hollow grind will result. Bracing the grinder allows you to maintain maximum control. Move your whole body to move the wheel, keeping angles consistant. Grind first one side, then the other. Try to make'em match. Try to end the hollow grind in a pleasing way.
Finish with filing/sanding by hand, of course.
I use a 4.5" machine for my hollow-grinding needs. Smaller wheels would produce a deeper hollow.
Here's a resulting grind:
J