My research included the book The Professional Chef's Knife Kit by the Culinary Institute of America, browsing product reviews, and searching on the internet. I was 90% sure I wanted a wetstone if I wanted to really treat my knives like the investment they've become. To get to 100%, I decided to consult a professional to hopefully confirm my suspicions. On a side note, the CIA Book is an excellent reference for developing your knife skills.
After a little hunting I came across The Knife Guys and made my way down to their shop. There I talked to a couple of the guys for about 20 minutes and picked up a few tips, and a new wetstone. They pointed out a number of tricks and things to avoid. They also mentioned that their primary business is commercial knife sharpening, charging $3 a knife which seemed very reasonable.
With my new wetstone in hand, I set about the task. My approach was to soak the wetstone in water for 10 minutes (per the manufacturer's instructions), use a few drops of dishwashing liquid for lubricant (per The Knife Guys) and the catch the metal shavings, and maintain a 22.5 degree angle moving tail to tip. The angle is found by halving 90 degrees (45 degrees), and halving that again. I used 10 strokes on each side on 1000 grit, and then repeated on 4000 grit. The knife guys pointed out two things to be very conscious of: first, make sure to sharpen all the way up to the bolster; second, avoid the natural tendancy to change angle at the knife tip. Consistently, the three most important techniques I picked up were to maintain the angle, pull the knife (don't push), and always sharpen in the same direction (either tip to tail or tail to tip). Tail to tip was my preference and after a little practice with a disposable paring knife (l'econome), I found that the motion felt at little like "wax on, wax off" circa Karate Kid. Really, it's a sweeping motion with only moderate pressue on the knife. Another trick from The Knife Guys was to keep your eye on the place where you start from so you do the same thing every time. One last thing that I was careful to avoid (due to a mishap with a past experience having someone else sharpen my knives) was to NOT sharpen the bolster. It's an easy thing for a novice sharpener like me to do accidentally. As I found in the past, if the bolster is sharpened at all, you're much more likely to cut yourself; it's surprising how often I touch the bolster in handling the knife, especially when cutting with my index finger overlayed to the outside of my cutting direction, but it's a habit I suspect others have as well, so keep that bolster dull.
The 22.5 degree angle worked very well on my Wusthof, Henckel and miscellaneous knives. For the Shun, I found that starting at 22.5 and then doing a second full pass at ~40 helped achieve that just out of the box razor sharpness. To test the sharpness on my first Wusthof knife sharpening, I shaved a little patch on my cheek and found that it was pretty close to straight razor sharp. For the Shun utility knife, I tested with an overripe plum tomato, these buggers are notoriously tough to cut without a serrated edge. With just the weight of the knife (which weighs almost nothing unlike the German knives), I cut clean through on one pass. To finish the knives, they were washed in hot water, dried, and honed with a honing steel. The knife guys recommend honing with the steel positioned down onto a cutting board or table, however after a lot of practice I just free handed this; maybe not perfect, but I have yet to bow or chip a knife and pretty much set in my ways on this, plus it is way faster when you're moving quickly to get a meal done.
With more than 20 knives sharpened today, the wetstone has already payed for itself, highly recommended. The 1000/4000 wetstone I purchased is available on Amazon.
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