>>1216476>>1216155>>1216487As a owner of many a Bucks, and being a part time knife sharpener... 420hc is one of the easiest steels to sharpen, it is a very good steel to learn on because it gives good feed back on the stones. On top of that it takes a very nice polish and surprisingly keen edge because it has a relatively small grain structure and surprisingly high edge stability.
420hc, VG10, well tempered AU8a, and CPM-M3 (maybe S35vn, but need to do more) are among my favorite steels to sharpen because they share these similar traits.
Typically knives don't get notably harder to sharpen until you get into the kind of steels people like to call "supper steels", basically really hard (61+hrc), large carbide, more brittle steels like CPM-M4, ZPD-189, CTS-204p, S90V, and then extreme cases like CPM-REX. But typically you don't see these steels for less than $150 or so.
>>1216487Steel rods are a whole separate story. They do not really sharpen a knife (as in take of material to form a new apex), but they correct the already existing edge. Kitchen knives, being intended for cutting soft mediums, have a very thin edge that is more subject to rolling, the rod simply corrects the roll.
The Rod is not going to sharpen something like an outdoor knife with a much thicker bevel, nor is it going to work for really higher end kitchen knives using higher hardness steels, because they do not dull from rolls, but rather micro-chipping of the apex.
