Hi!

I've been lurking on this sub for a few months as kind of a passing side-interest with trying to up my cooking game.

I have long been frustrated with my inability to sharpen blades. So earlier this year, I got tired of mediocre results while trying to improve basic vegetable prep in the kitchen and bought a basic set of stones. Link below if anyone cares, but basically is a 240, 1000, and 3000 grit set. https://www.cookshopplus.com/1909-21902/SHARPENERS/CUTLERY_SHARPENERS/Wusthof-Tri-Hone-Water-Sharpening-Stone.aspx?origin=serp_auto

Anyway, I've tried to focus on my somewhat cheap chef's knife for starters. It's like a 9" rolled steel Wolfgang Puck thing, probably from a knife set once upon a time. I know it's not an amazing knife, but part of me hesitates to drop money on a nice knife if I can't even get a hang of maintaining an edge on an "okay" knife.

I'm not interested in getting it ridiculously sharp. It's fun to see videos of people here shaving their arm hairs with their hatchet blades or cutting toilet paper as it falls onto the blade. All I want is to be able to hack into a squash, cleanly dice an onion, chop a pepper without having to drag the blade through the skin, or effortlessly mince garlic--just reasonably sharp for kitchen tasks.

But despite following videos closely and trying a few times now, I have yet to achieve sharpness that really feels like a huge improvement. And the little improvement I do feel seems to go away after a couple dozen uses, almost feeling worse than what I had before. (And yes, I do use honing steel every couple uses, but even that might be what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I'm honing wrong and ruining the edge.)

I recognize it might be hard to give any feedback without watching my process, but are there common pitfalls for beginners that might prevent them from making noticeable improvements to the utility of something like a chef's knife? What hurdles did you have to get over when you first started learning this skill?