The kid who sold me everything said his friend sharpened his tools for him and said the no name knives (a gouge and a skew) weren’t worth sharpening.

I touched the gouge up with my 1" sander and used it to turn my first project, a cylinder mallet, from sycamore. It seemed like a valuable part of the collection.

I suspect the former owner wasn’t all in on his hobby. I turned a nice mallet (first real project) from a chunk of the several hundred pounds of sycamore I got from a craigslist free ad and it seems apparent sharpening breaks are a must, so sending knives out to be sharpened seems a quick way to kill a hobby before it starts.