/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Hello anons
So I eventually decided to get some whetstones to sharpen my knives. I got really into cooking about 4 months ago and I have some nice knives, nothing too fancy but I like 'em

Anyway, I literally never sharpened them. Now I went to work at pic related for like 40 minutes so far. First on the 800 side, then on the 5000, then realized it's nowhere near sharp enough, and went to the 240 and got better results. Around 15 minutes on each grit

I just have to keep doing it right? I'm a bit worried because I thought I'd see improvements faster
I'm also using the helper thingy for the angle

General guidelines/advice? My aim is to get it to a state where it passes the paper cut test, where you just push the knife and it cuts through a sheet of paper, but I have a long way to go