I am by no means an expert at sharpening knives but I can get my knives to razor sharp edges on a 20 dollar whetstone and an old pair of jeans glued onto a piece of plywood with some polishing compound on it as a strop. really isn't rocket science to do it right and it would take decades of daily sharpening(no one does this outside of chefs maybe) to make any kind of noticeable dent in the metal. if you can push it through paper(not just slice it) it's more than sharp enough and even a slicing cut on paper is fine.