What am I doing wrong? Sharpening is a pain!

[preparedsurrey]

I find it helpful to cover the edge of the blade with a permenant marker then you can see where you are taking off material and where it is low. It is definitely a practise thing though, I can do my chisels to a shaving edge easily as I need to redo them regularly, but getting my knife to the same takes me ages. I bought one of the blade medics sharpeners which is great for regular touching up.

[featherstick]

Problem is a sharp knife is good and will hold its edge a razor sharp edge will often dull quickly and chip with ease...

I agree. Razor sharp is good for bragging rights and shaving hairs off your forearm, but sharp is good enough for me, the way I use my EDC knives doesn't require razor-sharp.

[commandosqueak]

All you need is a couple of decent water stones and plenty of practice.

[Dorset Prepper]

This may not be popular with the purists but I recently bought a Ken Onion WorkSharp. http://www.worksharptools.com/ken-onion ... pener.html

It is awesome. I've never been able to get my knifes as sharp as I wanted but I can with this. I was worried at first and put off buying it for a long time as it is electrically powered. I thought I might ruin some knives but I practised first on some cheap knives and after doing a couple of these I had it worked out.

You do have to be carefully on the coarsest belt but on the finer ones it's fine. I've sharpened some of my higher priced knives without any problem. It's easy and with the extras you can buy too it makes it very versatile.

I've done all our kitchen knives and also sharpened some for my family too.