From personal experience I can tell that once I went for the basic knive sharpener, the mean sharpness of my knives increased significantly. Yes, the whetstone makes them sharper, but it takes so much tile that I usually used my knives far too long before I sharpened them again. Once I got some basic knives sharpener (thebthings you pull your knive through), I suddenly started to sharpen the knives the moment I noticed they became a little dull.

Not really, no.

Water stones are designed to abraid off. Their reason they were the gold standard is that the slurry it formed from that abrasion is what removed material (and it did so quickly.). But it abraided only where you used it so it would eventually need to be lapped back into flat.

Diamond stones are diamonds that are sintered or otherwise imbedded into steel plate. Once they’re worn in (basically weakly bound diamonds rubbing off,) they’re generally going to last.

Sometimes there’s issues with them, and the thin ones (like what I linked,) sometimes get bent or whatever (which is why it’s common for woodworkers to glue them to a board,) but with a modicum of care, they’ll last a long time.

(keep some water on the stone, wash it off and dry it, don’t store it someplace it’ll get rusty,)

For the record, diamond stones are now the lapping plate for most people who still fork over for the water stones. Another option that was good enough was to go outside and find some concrete that looked flat.