Review on Enhance Your Edge with Kuromaku Ceramic Whetstone - Medium Grit for Superior Sharpening by Jose Schweigert

Like many people I have used useless sharpening products in the hope of getting good edges without much effort or the need to develop a new skill. . I've used both draw sharpeners and the very good Edge Pro Apex system and had trouble getting a good, safe edge with either. It was "good enough" for most kitchen tasks, but never as sharp as I'd like it to be for slicing really easily, especially thin-skinned veggies and the like. I always had to saw through a thin piece of tomato or onion. So I finally decided to get some quality whetstones and figure out how to use them since that's apparently what all the cool kids do. Despite this, for the beginner, these Shapton stones seem to be of very high quality. They come with a plastic case that doubles as a holder for the stones. It's probably not the best you can use to hold a rock, but with practice I get great results so I don't see the need to buy anything else. The stone also comes with a small piece of foam inside the case to keep it from bumping. This is a splash and go brick that doesn't need soaking, just a nice layer of water on top to keep everything smooth. I have stones no. 1000 and no. 5000 bought. I plan to get more later; both coarser and finer stone, giving me more options, especially for the harder steels I have. It takes a lot of practice, trial and error to get a good knife edge. It's not something you get perfect on the first try. I probably worked with rocks 5 times before I came up with a method that makes it easy to cut paper. I understand that in order to properly develop the burr and get a good edge, you need to spend a lot more time and use more passes than you think. Check out some tutorials on YouTube or read the billions of forum posts from every knife lover out there. Again, it takes skill and practice to get this working, but I get better results with these stones than other systems. They're not easy to use, but they're very effective and I enjoy developing a new skill.