Interesting that he uses the wood side of the block instead of the leather strop side, which is a lot easier/cheaper to deal with. I'm nervous though about the freehand feel-for-the-angle approach, I get too much random rounding with that, I'll stick with using a honing guide.
He also suggests using wet and dry sandpaper on plate glass if you don't have diamond stones. I've tried this too and it is cheap and easy, but I tore the sandpaper to shreds eventually and very happy with the cheap diamond ebay plates I ended up with.
It depends on the paper quality, a lot of Chinese sandpaper is backed by... I dunno, Chinesium again, and it tears way too easily even if you're just sanding down paint or similar lightweight applications. I inherited some cloth-backed paper which has an almost indestructible backing, but that stuff's kinda pricey to buy. Sandpaper meant for belt sanders usually has fairly tough backing, but given its intended usage it's only available in fairly coarse grits.
The diamond stones are actually cheaper than a roll of sandpaper if you get them from Aliexpress/eBay (as you point out), so unless you're in a hurry probably not worth fiddling with sandpaper.
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