After stumbling across a blog post about how big brand kitchen products and appliances are mostly just hollow shells with little to no integrity, I found that same blogger/journalist has a robust list of brands that haven’t gone the way of capital sell-outs that goes way beyond kitchen utensils.
It’s worth taking a look at the list as well as the articles. The articles are conversational, but with lots of links to the source material.
if you want to learn how to sharpen by hand on stones, buy a “sharpal 162N double sided diamond stone” and then get a leather strop on a wooden block and put some chromium oxide on the strop.
If you want easy without learning how to sharpen by hand, get the “Work Sharp MK2” electric knife sharpener.
Most everything else besides those setups are way more expensive, a rip off, or take too long to use.
So far I have sharpened a few times using the base of a mug. Its not a great surface to use but I have a few shitty novelty mugs no one is going to use so it works.
Got some clay in the garden, almost tempting to form it into a tile and use that as a sharpening stone. But stone probably lasts longer.