What else do you need besides 1000 grit whetstone at home? Do you need finer or flattening stones too?

Not to be a pain, but, “it depends”. With a any grit stone you will get a “tooth” on the edge of the knife. The particles in the stone do their work by sort of gouging out some of the steel. See this excellent Electron Scanning Microscope photo from Ron Hock of Hock tools. This is from an 8,000 grit stone magnified 2,000 times. A 1,000 grit stone has particles of around 15 microns and 8,000 has around 2 microns. So your 1,000 grit edge will have larger and deeper “teeth” than this photo. So are the teeth good or bad?
It depends. Meat cutters prefer this tooth because it makes their jobs easier and they are very good with a blade and know how to keep it sharp by avoiding bones, the cutting board, the table, etc… But that’s all they care about: cutting meat—which is more of a sawing action than a push or chopping cut. If you chop veggies all day, that’s a push cut and you’ll want a different edge; if you slice fruit, different edge. You get the picture.

But no matter where you stop and call it sharp, you are leaving some microscopic “teeth” at the very edge which will bend over to one side or the other, and may break off. This is what causes every knife edge to go dull. This is what steeling your knife does, it straightens these little teeth on the edge back up before they can bend all the way over.
So my advice, along with all the other expert advice in this string, would be twofold: (1) after you finish with the 1,000 grit, de-burr it by running the full length by cutting into the end of a piece of softwood such as pine to take off the most fragile of these teeth, then (2) use a ceramic steel (I know, that’s an oxymoron… but ceramic works better for most of us occasional users) to straighten the edge every time you use the knife. Make it a habit. To see if you have the teeth straight, drag the edge sideways across your thumbnail. You can feel if one side “catches” more than the other. Lightly run the steel over that edge until the drag is even in either direction.
And the proof is in the pudding. Try stopping at 1,000 and use the knife for awhile. If it goes dull too quickly, or doesn’t push cut to your satisfaction, then invest in a 4,000. Rinse and repeat. You can take it as far as you want. You can get an edge so sharp that the only thing it will cut without damage is air. But that’s a useless edge in the kitchen.

Wanbasion Black Stainless Steel Knife Set, Sharp Kitchen Knife

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