I also enjoyed my class. We used a water stone, which I had thought about buying before. I also thought about getting a Belgian Stone (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgischer_Brocken)

The lesson was meditative, and I really liked it, but I realized that this way of sharpening knives is totally impractical for my day-to-day life.

In the end I followed the teacher's (also store owner) recommendation and got those two:

https://ioxio.de/sharpeing-rod-duo

https://www.windmuehlenmesser.de/en/product/streichriemen-ki...

That's enough sharpness for me, I don't need to slice a tomato horizontally without holding it with my hand. Although it looks cool on YouTube, and I certainly watched that more often than it would be sensible.

The best part: it's fast. Using the strop (before every use) is a matter of seconds, using the ceramic rod (every now and then) takes a minute or two.

Underrated comment. Even a cheap knife sharpened with a cheap sharpener every once in a while will do better than an expensive one not sharpened for months at a time. I wouldn't necessarily waste time on advanced sharpening though - it's not something you're going to do regularly, unless you're really into knives. I have a set of sharpening stones I used exactly once. The result was great, but it took like half an hour to sharpen a single blade - no one has that kind of time. A cheap Accusharp sharpener does a good enough job that I can slice homegrown tomatoes without any issues. And it takes less than a minute to sharpen a knife with it.

Thanks for the pointer.

I'm surprised serious eats gave a knife with a bolster #1 spot. That's a hard stop in my book. I can see their point, the fibrox is a thick blade, but now it is wandering into subjective territory.

One of my biggest problems sharpening is cutting my 8000 grit stone when finishing my boning knife at the S-curve by the handle. I sometimes just skip that part, but I like to sharpen the entire blade.

My routine is to give my knife a couple passes over a leather strop loaded with 0.25 micron CBN abrasive every time I use it. This approach can keep a knife sharp almost indefinitely unless something chips or severely blunts the edge.