For me the problem with these angle guides is that you have to sharpen the knife in portions equalling the width of the angle guide and only going straight up and down.
I personally far prefer free hand sharpening where you sharpen almost the entire blade in one long smooth stroke.
Do I have the talent and steady enough hand to sharpen precisely at 15-16° angle or 19-20° angle (depending on the knife brand) ?
No !
Is maintaining this acute precise angle very important to have a very very very sharp kitchen knife ?
No !
People exaggerate wildly how important a precise angle is during sharpening.
It’s the same with honing.
Do chefs like Gordon Ramsay and others with 25+ Years of experience as a chef have the talent to hone a knife in the air doing quick honing motions while talking to the camera at acute precise angles ?
No !
Do you need to have very acute precise sharpening angles to sharpen kitchen knives to be very very very sharp for daily kitchen tasks ?
No !
You can perhaps feel it, if you sharpen straight razors for your shaves, but even still there people tend to over exaggerate how important this sharpening angle is in my view.
Of course sharpening angle is a key factor in getting your knife sharp, when sharpening on whetstones and honing on ceramic rods, but people tend to wildly exaggerate how important holding the knife at a precise angle really is.
I’m telling you - once I have sharpened my kitchen knives, whether they are Japanese or German knives, I can cut through thin paper like going through hot butter and without any tugging or ripping.
When you can cut like this, the knife is very very very sharp.
Perhaps if you look through a microscope to inspect the blade, I might have an angle of 16 instead of 14 on certain parts of the blade that I’m sharpening, and this can in the long run lead to an imperfect blade geometry, but so far after many years of free hand sharpening my knives, they all are in pristine condition and very very sharp.
That’s enough for me.
If you worry about scratching the blade during free hand sharpening, just do like I do - I put on masking tape to protect the top 80% of the blade. You can then also see how well you have guided the blade during sharpening by looking at the marks you have left on the masking tape.
Unless you’re using very coarse stones with grid 600 and down to 200, holding the knife at the correct angle will feel very natural to most people, unless you have reduced feeling in your hands.
Same when you hone a knife on a ceramic honing rod - you can feel the correct angle, when you hold the rod straight up and hone the knife in a motion going from top of the rod to the bottom of the rod.
