After stumbling across a blog post about how big brand kitchen products and appliances are mostly just hollow shells with little to no integrity, I found that same blogger/journalist has a robust list of brands that haven’t gone the way of capital sell-outs that goes way beyond kitchen utensils.
It’s worth taking a look at the list as well as the articles. The articles are conversational, but with lots of links to the source material.
So far I have sharpened a few times using the base of a mug. Its not a great surface to use but I have a few shitty novelty mugs no one is going to use so it works.
Got some clay in the garden, almost tempting to form it into a tile and use that as a sharpening stone. But stone probably lasts longer.