I went down the knife-sharpening rabbit hole a bit, too, but I only managed to make my knives duller with whetstones, even though I have good dexterity.

Eventually, I just took my knives to a professional sharpener and got the paper-thin, tomato-slicing sharpness I wanted.

Funnily enough, I had both an expensive "forged" knife and a cheap IKEA one, and the IKEA knife was sharper and held its edge much better.