To add to my home-cooking skills, I've decided to learn to properly sharpen knives. Like with sharpening "stones." I've kinda always wanted to know how to do it, so it's kinda exciting to finally be taking steps toward learning.
I thought about looking for a class of some sort but honestly, I think I'm getting all the advice I need from YouTube, in particular a channel called OUTDOORS55. Admittedly it's not as good as learning directly from a person because there's no guarantee my questions will be acknowledged and answered (so far the only luck I've had is in asking other commenters questions), but even so it's given me enough confidence to feel that the best way to learn in the long-term is just freehand. No cheap shortcuts, and no fancy, expensive contraptions that I can't be confident will even be worth the investment, as opposed to just ending up being gimmicks. Just a pair of rough and fine grit sharpening stones, a homemade leather strop for finishing, and most of all just developing a feel for it.
Since starting to look into all of this stuff in the past month, I've learned that those pull-through sharpeners really are CRAP. Using those things is basically like abusing your blades, and I honestly feel bad for using one of those for years. I'm really glad to be trashing mine and learning to do this properly now.
Most of the materials I need including my Step-2 fine grain ceramic whetstone arrived last week, and my main starting stone (a diamond one) should be arriving within the next few weeks. Soon I'll buy a piece of wood to create my own strop, put that together, and as soon as my main rough stone comes in I'll get to learning and practicing. Should be fun!
I'll probably also buy a new cutting board while I'm at it. I hear plastic really isn't great because of bacteria, but I also hear not all wooden boards are created equal, like bamboo is too hard, and glass is an absolutely fucking no never because it dulls the CRAP out of your knife. I really need to do some more research on the what/why/how on all that though to make sure I buy the best thing I can afford to invest in.
