> just want to point out that maintaining a knife is a whole hobby that requires a time investment of learning the skill and storage of additional tools and material.

You're right that's a hobby. But the hobby's definition of "proper maintenance" and what it "requires" is basically just people nerding out about things that don't matter the slightest in the real world.

To maintain a kitchen knife so that it cuts a tomato without squishing it, you don't need a book on knife science. Further, that nerdery is probably actively harmful, because instead of simple solutions, people are told they need an inspection microscope and a variety of jigs and other implements. So they buy an objectively bad electric sharpener and move on.

> just want to point out that maintaining a knife is a whole hobby that requires a time investment of learning the skill and storage of additional tools and materials.

Properly maintaining a knife does. Most people don't need to properly maintain a knife. You can do it good enough with a honing steel and some crappy automatic sharpener.

I enjoy cooking good food for my family and myself, but cooking is not a hobby of mine. So if my knife can slice a tomato without crushing it, then that's good enough for me. I don't need to shave a tomato so thin that the slice is transparent.

Does the crappy automatic sharpener work? Well the knife cuts better after I use it, so yes, it does.

it takes no skill to make a blunt knife sharper. To make a sharp knife sharper, sure, but in a good vast majority of home knife situations, just doing anything with any flat sharpening surface is an improvement.

I can attest to this as I have improved knifes day one of trying despite my lack of any sort of skill

I decided it was hard and never got very good at sharpening. Now I've got a Chef's Choice XV and my knives are sharper than they've ever been.

Sharpening a knife to r/sharpening standards is hard. But just honing frequently and occasionally using a cheap sharpener will get you further than 95% of home chefs.

my new favorite kitchen gadget is small deli slicer, $75 on amazon.

minor pain to clean, but MUCH faster than a knife, totally safe (pusher keeps fingers away from the blade) and you get precise thickness cuts every time, which means they cook precisely too.

Especially good for vegetables like potatoes, onion, eggplant, etc.

You need one diamond two-sided plate, holder for it, and a stropping leather. All of that can be bought for $60 on Amazon.

This is enough to get your knives to be sharp enough to shave hair.

Time investment is more individual. It took me about 3 hours to get good enough.

don't use honing steel. at best it doesn't do anything, at worst it damages your knife.

here's a closer look at it with a microscope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ReQ83CZOQ

They're really not. All you need is an angle guide you stick to the knife. Something like https://setamono.co.za/products/knife-sharpening-angle-retai...

With that all you need to do is pretty much go back and forth. Note that the whetstone eventually wears them out too.

Something to grab while you're at it, is a truing stone to take care of the whetstone as it _will_ wear out unevenly making the sharpening a pain.

I used to sharpen my straight-knife planer blades, planing irons, chisels, and knives with whetstones / water stones. It was too big of a pain in the ass over time, so I switched to diamond stones.

Biggest advantages is that you don't need to pre-soak them and diamond stones don't develop a valley / have to be flattened.

if you plan on getting into sharpening I would just start with a coarse, fine, and extra fine diamond stone and a leather strop w/ stropping compound.

Whetstones were hard 20 years ago. Right now there is abundance of quality info and products. The community actually figured out idiotproof and effective ways to deburr, to strop, resin bound diamond stones are affordable (or even cheap if you just buy the abrasive from China and go the diy route).