I’m looking for a better knife sharpener for my hard steel chef knife. I think whetstones are the way to go, but most of the sets I see are 4 double sided stones. Do I need that many stones?
Is there a totally different type of sharpener that you have had success with?
Edit: I should add that I like my knife very sharp, and I have a few tiny chips in the cutting edge from a cheap drag-through sharpener.
I have some better quality kitchen knives I like keeping sharp.
I use a two-sided whetstone 400/2000 grit for basic shaping (400 is akin to those rolling sharpeners, to be used only when you fucked up real bad), a leather strop with green sharpening paste (~6000-8000 grit) glued to a piece of wood, a plain leather strop, and a honing steel.
Green sharpening paste is most of what I ever use, a couple of strokes weekly (more realistically about 20 once a month), and maybe polish it up with the plain leather strop. Keeps the knives wicked sharp, and then I just hone them after each use.
Sometimes I do stupid things and get burrs in my edge (like cleaving frozen bone), that’s where the 2000 grit saves me.
400 I guess is for when the apocalypse comes or your kids decided to practice chef’s knife throwing into scrap metal. It’s nice to know I can remake a whole edge, but rarely used.