Welcome to the rabbit hole indeed!
White and blue do not need exotic stones because they are fairly simple alloys and have very fine evenly distributed carbides. They are not highly abrasion resistant like CroMoVa steels so you don't need super fast cutting stones to sharpen them. They take a very fine edge from high grit stones and show good contrast between hard and soft steel with minimal work.
Only drawback is that they don't have the edge life of more exotic steels.
They will sharpen easily on just about any set of decent quality stones, the choice is really what type of stones you prefer and how much work any of them take to maintain and give you the edges you want.
I bought my stones to sharpen A2 plane blades -- high wear resistance on the stones is very important in that use to keep them flat so you don't get curved edges or any significant bevel curvature. Not an issue with knives, especially easy to sharpen ones.
The old fashioned King stones work very will with carbon steel, so that's an option, but I'd just use my standard set -- King Deluxe 300 for steel removal (and a 220 grit if I need it), Beston 600, Bester 1200, either Naniwa 3000 or synthetic blue aoto, and a King 6000 for slicing knives.
Pluses and minuses for any set of stones -- the King Deluxe 300 is silicon carbide and you have to work really hard to get it out of flat, but it has to be flattened with loose grit on glass (or the sidewalk...) and with heavy use burnishes like an Arkansas and has to be freshened up with some loose grit. I flatten test stones that way, working on some sandstone pieces to try for knives.
The Bester/Beston stones require about 30 minutes of soaking, but stay flat a long time. I don't flatten them with the King 300 unless I want to refresh it after, it burnishes.
You can't go wrong with Shapton stones, espcially the Glass series. Naniwa traditional stones are soft, you will need to flatten a lot, especially the 220 grit.
Pick some and try them out, you need something coarse for chips and thinning, then a 1-2k stone for sharpening and 3 or 5k for polishing a little, and maybe something in the 6k range for delicate cutting like sushi. The rest is personal preference, don't get easy to dish stones if you don't like spending the time to keep them flat, if long soaking is an issue get splash and go stones, et.
White and blue do not need exotic stones because they are fairly simple alloys and have very fine evenly distributed carbides. They are not highly abrasion resistant like CroMoVa steels so you don't need super fast cutting stones to sharpen them. They take a very fine edge from high grit stones and show good contrast between hard and soft steel with minimal work.
Only drawback is that they don't have the edge life of more exotic steels.
They will sharpen easily on just about any set of decent quality stones, the choice is really what type of stones you prefer and how much work any of them take to maintain and give you the edges you want.
I bought my stones to sharpen A2 plane blades -- high wear resistance on the stones is very important in that use to keep them flat so you don't get curved edges or any significant bevel curvature. Not an issue with knives, especially easy to sharpen ones.
The old fashioned King stones work very will with carbon steel, so that's an option, but I'd just use my standard set -- King Deluxe 300 for steel removal (and a 220 grit if I need it), Beston 600, Bester 1200, either Naniwa 3000 or synthetic blue aoto, and a King 6000 for slicing knives.
Pluses and minuses for any set of stones -- the King Deluxe 300 is silicon carbide and you have to work really hard to get it out of flat, but it has to be flattened with loose grit on glass (or the sidewalk...) and with heavy use burnishes like an Arkansas and has to be freshened up with some loose grit. I flatten test stones that way, working on some sandstone pieces to try for knives.
The Bester/Beston stones require about 30 minutes of soaking, but stay flat a long time. I don't flatten them with the King 300 unless I want to refresh it after, it burnishes.
You can't go wrong with Shapton stones, espcially the Glass series. Naniwa traditional stones are soft, you will need to flatten a lot, especially the 220 grit.
Pick some and try them out, you need something coarse for chips and thinning, then a 1-2k stone for sharpening and 3 or 5k for polishing a little, and maybe something in the 6k range for delicate cutting like sushi. The rest is personal preference, don't get easy to dish stones if you don't like spending the time to keep them flat, if long soaking is an issue get splash and go stones, et.