Learning it 'freehand from the very start' is nice in a perfect world, IF you have a reliable source of instruction from the start. Some haven't been so lucky; I wasn't, and attempted to learn freehand for years with little progress. My epiphany came after picking up a guided system, which I'd actually owned and kept stored away for a few years, but didn't recognize for a long time how it might help me. I finally dug it out again and made myself stick with it long enough for it to help me learn the most important aspects of sharpening, like forming a burr. Forming the burr often can't happen if the user doesn't maintain the angle well, creating nothing but rounded and blunt edges which will never form burrs in the first place.
Learning freehand sharpening from the beginning is only as good or bad as learning golf by oneself, or learning to drive a car, or so many other parallels. If the source of instruction is good, results will be good. If not, one will be stuck for a long time learning and reinforcing nothing but counterproductive habits. The use of a guided system, for me, essentially 'cured' the one major thing I was doing badly for a long time, which was maintaining the angle. In seeing how much difference that made, it was the trigger that made the rest of it fall into place very quickly for me. It wasn't really an issue of first 'learing it one way, then learning it another way'. It was more about learning the correct way, of which using a guided system for a little while was the most effective teaching aid, for me.
All of us who've finally learned freehand can look back and say it should be easy, as the fundamentals of it really are easy, AFTER we've already learned it. But it's not so obvious until one goes down the path to learn it. And there are many ways to do that. Everybody learns differently, and some methods will help some people, but not everyone. Just do what works for you.
David
