Pro tip: a $15 sharpening stone outlasted every electric sharpener I ever bought
I was reading the owner's manual for my grandfather's old pocket knife and it says he bought it in 1974 and only ever touched it up on a whetstone, no machine ever. That knife still snaps open clean and the blade is dead flat, while my $40 electric sharpener ate a chef's knife down to a sliver in about two years. Does anyone here actually get good results freehand, and how long did it take you to stop making the edge worse?
Disagree on the stone being the reason that knife lasted. Your grandpa's knife survived because he used it to open letters and cut string, not because whetstones are magic. A $15 stone will absolutely wreck a blade just as fast as an electric one if you hold the wrong angle every time you touch it up. Freehand takes months of ruining cheap knives before you stop making things worse, and most people quit way before that. The electric sharpener gets blamed for eating your chef's knife, but a chef's knife used hard for two years gets thin no matter what you sharpen it with.