Looking to sharper pocket knifes, EDC and kitchen knives.

I’ve never tried stones or rods. Only used the horrible pull thru’s

What a good budget friendly starter set up?

I will prob get a higher end system someday but want to understand what I’m doing before jumping in.  

Any recommendations for where to start?

Looking at WS guided sharpener in the $50 range. Or their field sharpening system.

Spyderco Sharpmaker, add a couple of diamond rods.

Simple
Effective
Affordable

All you need is an 8” stone with course/fine and a steel. Plus a little practice.
Nothing else.

+1

Agreed. And I have thousands of dollars in different systems. This does a fine job AND IS EASY TO MASTER. I love good Japanese stones but their learning curve is quite steep. Start with a decent guided system like this and move on to a good set of stones later

This guy pretty much talks about sharpening, some about making knives and heat treatment, knife steels etc.  But his main focus is sharpening.  He has a lot of good info.

https://www.youtube.com/@OUTDOORS55/videos

Started out with a set by Lansky.  Never really liked mine but my FIL wore his stones down quite a bit.

When I bought a Spyderco Police model I needed to do the serrated edges.  Threw down what I felt was a lot of money (at the time) for the Spyderco Sharpmaker and never looked back.  Last year to deal with the harder modern steels I bought the Extra Coarse diamond rods and extra fine ceramic rods.

Paladin

I started out sharpening by hand, and as a watchmaker, you had to learn how to do it that way.
As soon as that portion of training was over, we all bought sharpening fixtures to take the human element out of it.

For standard blades I started off with a Lansky.  The stones wear fast, and the blade holder is not very solid, sometimes dangerously so.
Next I bought a Gatco with diamond stones.  Better, but the blade holder was still shaky.

A couple of years ago I bought a Ruxin diamond set from Amazon.
It works just fine for kitchen knives and my Exacto knife blades.
The blade holder locks blades of all sizes and shapes very firmly and as long as I get the blade set right, it stays put.
The stones do wear faster then the Gatco diamond stones, but I'm still using the first set of Ruxin diamond stones and they still work.

I down loaded an app for my cell phone that measure angles.  I can lay the phone on the Ruxin arm and exactly set the angle I want.
Another trick is to mark the edge of a blade with a magic marker and by lightly sliding the stone over the edge I can tell when the angle is set when the marker is removed fully.

By doing some minor alterations to the ball mount and switching rods around to allow a much steeper angle, I can sharpen chisels and scissors.
The Ruxin is sold under various names but they all appear to be the same tool.
Perhaps not up to a professional standard, but it works well and at a nice price..........

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08G4M9LBZ/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Lots of help here. I’m really just wanting to get more of a starter set up until I understand it a bit more. So some great choices were listed.

I could also be overthinking it a bit but didn’t want to drop a few hundred bucks just yet, just to realize it was a mistake.

That's what I was going to post.
He has lots of reviews on budget friendly setups and what not to buy.

Theres really 2 types of sharpeners.

Blade Sharpeners - sharpeners with the power the remove enough metal quickly to turn a dull af knife into a sharp blade.

Blade Maintainers - sharpeners designed to restore a pretty sharp knife to very sharp quickly, while removing a minimal amount of metal for max blade longevity.

The Lansky and Spyderco V style sharpeners are the latter, and ideal for maintaining your knife. IE your EDC has been used awhile, and still cuts paper, but roughly. A few minutes on the V, now it slices paper easily and can pop some hairs off your arm, similar to factory sharpness.

Get this. I bought one just to leave at camp and ended up using it more than I thought. Does a shaving edge and nit expensive at all.
Even my buddies that dont normally sharpen knives were using it well after a day...

Edited to add it actually has good/great reviews

https://www.amazon.com/Work-Sharp-Precision-Adjust-Sharpener/dp/B08L72P245

Attached File

I agree with those recommendations of the Work Sharp PA! It works really well and fast.

It's good for smaller knives, but too small, sucks for large kitchen knives in my opinio.

I never bothered with sharpening knives until a few years ago when we actively started to collect 'em, so am still not that good at it, have a bunch of stones, steel and ceramic rods, a 1x30 belt sander etc. and of course the pocket sharpeners like the Lansky quick-fix (which work great out in the field if you're using something other than super-steel, works great on 420HC).

But last couple of months what i've been doing works great and I finally started getting really good edges, it works for me but probably not the best way to do things. But thought i'd share anyway.

I have a couple of small diamond field sharpening steels, like 1 inch wide by 3 inches long. What I started doing is holding the knife in one hand, and stroking lengthwise on the blade, using this method I can hold an angle MUCH better than holding the steel and running the knife over it, and I can do it quick too.

Then I use a paddle strop, and do the same thing except I run the strop obviously horizontal strokes from top of bevel to edge, again holding the knife rigid and using the strop actively allows me far better control over angle. Double sided strop, one side with 500 grit compound, the other side 1800 grit.

Really super happy now with the edge i'm getting, shaving sharp and doesn't take long at all unless edge is seriously dull/rolled etc. Most of my knives I haven't had to use the steel on after the initial use, just have to strop for maintenance, I do it sitting in front of the TV at night, it's actually kinda soothing in a weird way if that makes sense.

I went through this problem about a year ago. Before that I used a pocket sized pull through sharpener for pocket knives. Realized it was an area I was lacking in as I couldn't sharpen fixed blade knives, kitchen knives, chisels, axes, or lawnmower blades. So I dug in and started researching.

First I bought a cheap stone and opened the drawer of cheap pocket knives I had acquired over the years. Somehow I made them even duller than before I started, so it was back to the drawing board.

Next up was the Worksharp Precision Adjust Elite kit. It made sharpening dummy proof and kept every pass at relatively the same angle. Now I was getting sharp pocket knives and fixed blade knives in about 5 to 10 minutes. Definitely recommend for a first sharpener.

The downside to it is it is almost all plastic and there is a little flex as you sharpen. Once you realize that it's easy to stop it from flexing. This didn't bother me at first but as I got more into sharpening it made me want to try other systems to see if I could master them as well and see if anything else was better.

Then came the Spyderco sharpener. Pretty good system and less flex. I recommend it as well. However if you can't make consistent passes or have unsteady hands then may not be for you. Easy to use but not as dummy proof as the worksharp. Definitely does better with larger heavier knives than the Worksharp.

Now I use the Worksharp for folding knives and smaller fixed blades as I find it dummy proof and grab the Spyderco for larger fixed blades and kitchen knives as it doesn't have the flex like the Worksharp.

If you have a 3D printer, you can print your own support for the PA, to alleviate the flex.

If you don’t have a printer, people sell them on eBay for about $20.

Alternatively, they now have the Precision Adjust Pro model with a metal frame ( for the buy once, cry once types. That said, IIRC, the Pro retails for $299. Now approaching TSPROF territory. I got the TSPROF because it handles my 10” and longer blades.)