Hi all
Excuse my English. Not my first language
Another blade-smith/blacksmith here. For sharpening I have tried natural stones, abrasive belts (slow), synthetic stones and various diamond solutions.
As people have mentioned all have their place. Blade steel varies quite allot. Some modern stainless types are incredibly difficult to sharpen and would need very "strong" abrassive surfaces and then some carbon knives (chef knives ...) are much softer and easier to maintain with a few strokes on natural type stones.
The method of stroke on natural stones also contributes to how much you deform them over time. I have some old ax stones that are concave on both sides and thus useless for my chef knives. I use water only on my stones. I reshape the natural ones occasionally with a special flat stone for that.
There is one low cost solution to sharpening very effectively and that is using sandpaper and water.
1. Get an extremely flat surface (piece of glass, stone, marble, tile...) and on a table put a towel under it.
2. Put water on glass and then your sheet of sandpaper on top. Then water on top and then you can start. The water "glues" the paper to the glass.
3. Depending on the blade you could start with 300grit and move up from there..400, 600,800,1000, and then jump to 1600 or 2000 for a final super fine edge.
The paper always needs to be whet when the strokes are taken.
The angle you hold the blade to the paper needs to be consistent. This takes some practice of course. Some people find it useful to fit a kind of roller jig onto the blade to keep same angle thru out.
