Short answer: don't buy them a knife. Buy them the boring thing they keep meaning to get and never do. A flattening plate. A saya. A bottle of camellia oil. A strop. Every one of those is under $50, most are under $30, and I'd bet on all of them getting used before New Year.

That's my only real test for a stocking stuffer, by the way. Not "is it nice." More like, will they pick it up on a random Tuesday?

And I should get this out of the way. Our own knives aren't on this list, because nothing we make costs under $50 and I'm not going to dress up an edge guard as an Okami product. So everything below is other people's stuff. Most of it I own. Some of it I've watched friends wear out, which is honestly the better endorsement.

Stones, and the thing nobody buys for their stones

If your person sharpens, they already have a 1000 grit stone. I'd put money on it being dished in the middle too.

If they don't sharpen yet, a combination stone is how they start. Roughly 1000 on one side for bringing a dull edge back, something around 6000 on the other to polish it so it glides through a tomato instead of skidding. King and Suehiro have been the beginner stones in Japan for as long as I've been paying attention, and they sit in the $30 to $50 range. (If you'd rather buy one really good stone than two decent faces, a Shapton or Naniwa 1000 on its own is a fine gift too.) Our whetstone guide covers the rest. What I'd steer you away from is the no-name kit with the bamboo base and the plastic angle guide. Soft stone, wears into a canoe in a month, and I think it's put more people off sharpening than anything else.

But here's the gift I actually get excited about. A flattening plate.

I dished my first stone so badly that the edge on my gyuto came out curved, a slight smile along the whole length, and I spent a week assuming I'd ruined the knife. It was the stone. Stones wear unevenly, the middle sinks, and then the stone grinds that curve straight into your bevel. A flattening plate takes two minutes to fix it. The cheap route is a coarse 140 to 220 grit stone sold for the purpose, maybe $15 to $25. The better route is a diamond plate, which doesn't wear itself, around $35 to $50.

I get an email roughly every month from someone whose knives got worse after they took up sharpening. So I wrote up how to flatten a whetstone, mostly so I could stop typing the same reply. If your person sharpens and doesn't own one of these, stop reading. You've found it.

A honing rod that won't chew the edge

Almost everyone owns a grooved steel rod. It came free with a knife block in 2009 and lives in a drawer.

Those rods are fine on soft German knives. On hard Japanese steel they're a bit of a cheese grater, and I've seen them knock small chips out of an edge instead of straightening it. A smooth ceramic rod does the same job gently, a few light passes before you cook, and it buys you weeks between proper sharpenings. Figure $25 to $45, at least 10 inches long so it's longer than the knife. MAC and Idahone both make ones that have outlived every other rod in my kitchen.

One warning, which I learned the expensive way: ceramic breaks if it hits tile. Tell them that when they open it.

A saya, if you can find out the size

A saya is the wooden sheath Japanese knives travel in. Usually magnolia (ho wood), light and plain, with a little wooden pin through the spine to hold it on. It saves the edge in a drawer, saves fingers in a bag, and I'll admit it just looks nice sitting on the counter. Stock ones are $20 to $40.

The catch is fit, and it's a big catch.

Sayas are sold by blade length and shape, so you need to know if their main knife is a 210mm or 240mm gyuto, or a 165mm santoku, and roughly how tall it is at the heel. I once bought one a few millimetres too generous for a friend's gyuto and it rattled every time she picked it up, which drove her mad enough that she stopped using it. So sneak a photo of the knife next to a ruler if you can. If you can't, a gift card to a specialist Japanese knife shop and a note saying "for a saya" is the more honest gift. Seriously.

Oil, leather and a towel (the carbon steel kit)

This bit is really for people with carbon steel knives, the Shirogami and Aogami blades that go grey and then rust if you blink at them.

Camellia oil first. Tsubaki oil, pressed from camellia seeds, is what Japanese smiths and sword polishers have used on steel for a very long time. A thin wipe after drying keeps rust off, it's food safe, and unlike olive or vegetable oil it doesn't go gummy and rancid. A 100ml bottle runs $10 to $20 and lasts about a year. If every knife they own is stainless, skip it, they genuinely don't need it.

Then a tenugui or two. These are the thin cotton Japanese towels sold in about a thousand prints, and because the weave is so open they dry a blade faster than a fluffy terry towel does. I keep one folded next to my board at all times and it's probably the most used object in my kitchen that cost under $15. Go for plain cotton and a traditional print (waves, indigo dots, those overlapping seigaiha arcs). The cartoon sushi ones are cute for about a week.

And a strop, if they've started talking about burrs. A paddle strop is just a strip of leather glued to a wooden handle, $20 to $40, and a few passes after sharpening pulls off the last whisker of burr. It also lets them touch up an edge for weeks without going back to the stone. If it doesn't come with compound, add a stick of green chromium oxide, it's a few dollars. I'll be honest though: if they haven't got into sharpening yet, a strop is a slightly baffling thing to unwrap. Pair it with the stone or leave it.

The one knife I'd break my own rule for

I said no knives. The exception is a petty.

Most knife people own a chef's knife they love and a paring knife they quietly resent. A 120mm or 150mm petty replaces that paring knife within a week and then takes on a pile of small jobs nobody planned for (shallots, trimming chicken thighs, cutting a sandwich without squashing it). And a good one can still be had right around $50, which is a little absurd.

Two I'd buy without thinking. The Tojiro DP petty, VG-10 core with stainless cladding, made in Tsubame-Sanjo, a touch sturdier in the hand. And the Misono Molybdenum petty from Seki, plainer steel, lighter, very sharp out of the box and easy to bring back. Neither is a budget compromise. I've recommended both to people who went on to spend ten times as much on their next knife, and they still use the petty.

What I'd leave on the shelf

Pull-through sharpeners. I know they're $20 and they're right there by the till, and I know they work, sort of, on a cheap German knife. On a thin Japanese edge they tear more than they sharpen, and I've had people send me photos of a VG-10 gyuto with a sawtooth edge from one of these and ask what happened. That's what happened.

Same goes for the little electric sharpeners, only louder.

I'd also skip the knife-shaped novelty stuff (bottle openers, the "samurai" letter opener, the sushi-knife USB stick, which is a real thing I was once given). Knife people are a bit snobbish about this, and fair enough, because it tells them you noticed they like knives but not why.

And one that might surprise you: a magnetic knife strip, at least under $50. A cheap one with exposed magnets will clack the blade on every time you put it back, and that's enough to roll a fine edge over a few months. The good ones are wood-faced and cost more than this whole list. So if storage is the worry, edge guards now and a proper wooden strip for a birthday later.

Unglamorous, and I'd still give them

Edge guards. If their knives live in a drawer (and most people's do), guards are what stop the chipped tip and the cut knuckle. Clip-on plastic ones are a few dollars. The felt-lined magnetic kind is $10 to $20 each and doesn't scuff the blade. Nobody gasps. That's fine.

A bench scraper, though, I'll actually defend as the best gift on this whole page under $15. Watch anyone with a beautiful new Japanese knife and sooner or later they'll turn it sideways and sweep chopped onion off the board with the edge. Everyone does it. It's also the quickest way I know to dull a thin blade. A flat steel scraper with a handle along one side does that job instead, plus portioning dough and cleaning the counter. $10 to $20. It protects the thing they actually care about, which is more than most gifts manage.

And a book, if they read. The good knife and sharpening books tend to be written by people who've handled thousands of knives for a living, and a sharpening manual with decent photographs teaches more than an hour of video, in my experience. Hardcovers are $25 to $45. If you want a free extra to go with it, I'd point them at our knowledge base, and yes, I can hear how self-serving that sounds.

If I had $50 and one person to shop for

It'd depend entirely on what I knew about them.

Someone who's started sharpening gets the diamond flattening plate plus a stick of stropping compound. They've got the stone. They haven't got these, and the plate will outlast the stone by years.

Someone with one good knife and nothing else? Ceramic rod and bench scraper. One keeps the edge alive, the other stops them killing it on the board, and between them I'd guess they roughly double the gap between sharpenings.

Carbon steel owner: camellia oil, a tenugui, an edge guard. The towel's what makes it feel like a present rather than a maintenance kit, so don't skip the towel.

And if all you know is "they like knives," just get the Tojiro petty. I've never seen anyone open one and look disappointed.

Andrew Kuzmin · Editor-in-Chief, Okami Blades