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A sharpening steel? https://cdn.cutleryandmore.com/products/large/36.jpg
Yes. The movement and blade placement is beyond me. I grew up in a tackle store and would watch my mom and dad sharpen filet knives super fast and i cannot replicate it
The average kitchen knife is sharpened at a 15-20 degree angle. So, hold your knife perpendicular to the steel. You're at 90 degrees. Go halfway down, you're at 45. Go halfway down again, you're roughly at 22.5 degrees.
This is close enough in my opinion, but you can always angle down a tad more for those last few degrees if you want. You want to be a little bigger than the actual angle it is sharpened at though, since you're focusing on the edge, not the whole bevel.
Not an expert, I use a whetstone with quite a bit of water and aim to "cut the water": the edge pushes water along the stone if it's properly (or at least usably) angled. Once I have the angle in, I adjust my grip, or support the backside of the knife with my thumb, or whatever else lets me keep that angle consistent.
Bear in mind the angle might "change" on you as you sharpen a curved blade - or that's my shitty technique. I try to keep thinking about "the normal" or what's perpendicular to the edge where it's touching the stone.
Also, tip courtesy of Ethan Chlebowski on Youtube. You can use a permanent marker and color in the edge of the blade. Dye left on the edge means you're off and its distance from the... uh... edge of the edge will tell you if you're too shallow or too steep.
I can usually get my knives sharp enough that I haven't bothered with the marker trick. It's clever, though.
When I bought my first fancy knife from a local kitchen supply store, they taped a folded post-it note to the box and showed me how to make one. Fold a piece of paper diagonally, one corner to the opposite corner, to make a 45 degree angle. Then fold it in half again by folding one long side of the triangle to the opposite long side. You'll now have a 22.5° angle to use as a visual guide to get you close enough.
Damn gonna try this