Slightly different approach, which meets your original ask OP, but takes you in a different direction long-term.
1. Get an inexpensive guided system--I agree with the Sharpmaker suggestion--and start with that. Sharpmaker is always useful even if you move on later, lots of us use the white ceramic rods as finishing stones for example. They also make it REALLY easy and fast to sharpen things like serrated bread knives, and serrated shears, and recurves. Finally, they can be a good maintenance tool for family members who can't/won't learn to sharpen. ETA: forgot to add earlier, if you're going to do modern "super steel" sharpening on your Sharpmaker, you'll need their diamond or cbn add-on rods. Or the Congress Tools Moldmaster silicon carbide 1/2" triangle stones. You need these stones to handle high carbide super steels like S30, S35, M390/20cv, S90/S110, etc.
2. At the same time you are doing (1), ALSO start to learn freehand sharpening. Freehand sharpening, IMHO, is more fun, gives you full control over all the sharpening results, enables you to sharpen your knives anywhere without bringing/relying on bulky gadgets, costs less to get started, and reduces your reliance on gadgets and "lock-in" or dependency on a specific vendor or guided system. It's just satisfying to know that you can grab a blade and a stone, and put a great edge on it without relying on a machine. I would use (1) as a transitional tool to help you get by until you get to full freehand. Ideally you would just start freehand and skip Sharpmaker, but I get the desire to start with a guided system too, that's what I did myself. To learn freehand, I would get a couple different kinds of used knives you don't care about to practice on: a kitchen knife or two, a folder, a beater fixed blade hunting knife size. I'd get a couple of basic sharpening stones to start (you can always add fancy stones, diamond plates, etc., to do more specialized tasks like blade profiling and finishing/polishing later, but don't start by buying a whole bunch of stuff, the key thing is to develop your basic sharpening skills and make sure you like freehanding before you spend a fortune). What stones to start, that give you the widest range of useful sharpening capability? I'd suggest two. A
Norton Crystolon combination bench stone (the JB8 model, has coarse/fine sides, costs $23), this is the one you'll use most. And a second stone to give a slightly finer finished edge, two options here: the
Norton India fine stone, or the
Baryonyx Arctic Fox. Both of these are higher grit than the Crystolon, 360 to 400 grit range, and good all-purpose finishing stones. I think the Arctic Fox is well worth the extra $16 cost over the Norton, so that's what I use. Practice with these 2 stones, and a strop, on your beaters until you can hold a consistent edge and get good edges on a variety of knives. Then you can transition off of using Sharpmaker, add a few more stones to your line-up, and you're in business. Folks here on the forum are a great resource and will walk you thru getting started.
