Sharpening my own knives took 3 years to actually get right

I kept buying whetstones and watching videos, but my edges never lasted past one service until I finally sat down and practiced on my old beater knife from a flea market in Austin for about 40 hours total. The problem wasn't the stone or the angle, it was that I was rushing the burr removal and then wondering why everything dulled so fast. Anyone else burn through a ton of practice steel before it finally clicked for you?

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jordanblack15d ago

My buddy spent two whole weekends on a cheap chef's knife from a garage sale before he figured out he was using way too much pressure on the final passes. He kept ripping the burr off instead of gently coaxing it away, so his edges were basically dead on arrival. Once he slowed down and paid attention to that last step, it was like a light switch flipped for him.