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I was thinking recently to maybe buy a whetstone so I can sharpen my knives at home. I read all the threads here, on reddit, elsewhere.

I understand that:

  1. It is an art, rather than a simple process.
  2. It is very easy to curl your edge and ruin your knife.
  3. It is a good idea to get a stone with grit around 800-1000 for general sharpening and possibly a 3000 grit for refining the blade at the end. (I don't have a knife that justifies a 6000+ stone, yet.)

With regards to 1 & 3 there's not much I can do or say, things are what they are. But with regards to 2, I am a bit confused. All the comments I've seen say that with low quality stones (or with too-fine-for-what-you-actually-need stones) the problem is that you will need to do 50 passes and maintaining an angle is impossible, so you're bound to screw things up.

How come nobody mentioned angle guides? I see them everywhere on Amazon, and they seem to solve exactly this problem. Is there something "they're not telling us" about these gadgets? Are they secretly bad, or become useless very quickly as the stone wears down?

Ink blot
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    I don't see a question here @Inkblot. We cannot possibly say why nobody mentioned angle guides on Reddit. – GdD Jun 04 '20 at 19:50
  • Angle guides... FAH! I say ;-) I find that I have reasonably steady hands and can approximate the correct angle. And after a while of being very careful and going very slow I find that I can get a really nice edge on my kitchen knives. And if you have really *expensive* knives, go to your local second hand store and pick up a cheap kitchen knife for a buck or two and practice on that till you feel confident in your sharpening abilities. I would imagine that you, like me may have a little extra time to devote to learning this new skill. – Steve Chambers Jun 04 '20 at 20:04
  • @GdD: My question is in the last paragraph. Is there something inherently bad with them, are they one of those useless scams that they sell to novice users like those garlic peeling devices? – Ink blot Jun 05 '20 at 14:06
  • @SteveChambers: Okay, so what stones do you suggest I buy? – Ink blot Jun 05 '20 at 19:52
  • I don't as I am not an expert merely a competent (mostly) cook in my own kitchen. There are literally hundreds of websites that will review whetstones and which ones work "the best." As you are a beginner, why not go to Amazon and sort by best reviewed? That would be a not unreasonable place to at least start. – Steve Chambers Jun 05 '20 at 21:03
  • @SteveChambers: Because the results are cheap Chinese stones, which raise a lot of red flags, and all those websites indicate are either not rated correctly, or will be harder to work with, or whatever. So I am currently stuck in a state of analysis-paralysis. – Ink blot Jun 06 '20 at 01:05
  • Regarding 2, it takes a lot of work to ruin a knife because you can always grind a new edge. – David Ehrmann Jun 07 '20 at 04:33
  • I have cerax whetstones, but there are other good brands. They probably don't rank at the top on Amazon because they're more expensive, but they're well-reviewed. – David Ehrmann Jun 07 '20 at 04:38
  • @David: Considering that (1) I rather not send my knife out for grinding, (2) lockdown hasn't fully lifted at the moment, and (3) even outside of lockdown, I don't have the time to bring a knife to a professional (I do have time to sharpen my knife in the evening or the weekend, though), well, I rather just not ruin a knife to begin with. – Ink blot Jun 07 '20 at 10:09
  • @David: Do you have a recommendation that will not make me reach so deep into my pocket now that we're staring at what may as well be the worst global recession in modern history? – Ink blot Jun 07 '20 at 10:11
  • Where I live, the lockdown also isn't fully over, but there's a mobile knife sharpener that shows up at the local farmers' market, and sharpening is relatively cheap. He uses a grinding wheel, so he can take off more material than a whetstone (this is why it's hard to ruin a knife with a whetstone). I don't have other recommendations, but they do last a *long* time. Maybe read some of the less than 5-start reviews on Amazon on a cheaper stone? – David Ehrmann Jun 07 '20 at 18:25

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I found https://youtu.be/kwg18GUJ3nw?t=222 where he explains that angle guides are nice, but they can reinforce bad practice, take away your ability to sharpen by feel, or be flexible with regards to the angle at the tip. Moreover, the clip-on guides can scratch your knife, which is sometimes undesirable if it has a nice finish (e.g. Damascus or hammered).

Ink blot
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