I’d like to get some input on how you guys sharpen serrated knives.
I’ve been using the edge of a very soft, thin cloth or a film belt. It works pretty well and I like it because of the grit control of belts. But I’m curious of how other people are doing it.
I’ve heard of people using a cotton wheel on a grinder with compound. Anyone try that? If so, how well does that work? What compound?
My serrated knife sharpening is limited to my eight inch Henckel bread knife. I first used a quarter inch wooden dowel wrapped with wet or dry sandpaper. That worked. Then I swirched to the dowel with diamond paste. I liked that better. I used a DMT tapered round diamond file the last time. The serrations were sharp, but look inconsistent. That may be the taper or it may be the operator.
Maxtheknife emailed me a link to a Tom Veff you tube. Good, solid technique. I was impressed with the Veff Sharp he designed. It is a set of two stepped diamond metal dowels, small and large. Each has untapered sections of three diameters. The larger one has a flat section on one side. Mine is presently being shipped, so I can't comment on it yet. It looks promising.
This picture shows my sharpening tool Chef with a attatchment named Rail.
Rail makes the pivot point three dimensional. The pivot point can with Rail be moved along a Rail sideways. Chef can move the pivot point up and down and forwards and back as standard.
The picture shows a serrated kitchen knife where the serrations are in 90 degrees from the edge. To sharpen them properly the sharpener also must be in 90 degrees from the edge.
Tye picture shows a ceramic rod used in Chefs sharpener holder. I have also fileholders and holders dor needle files that can be used.
With Rail can also an edge be sharpened with exact the same edge angle on the complete edge, from the handle out ro the tip.
i used this for a spell. . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dUb4z7J...FF&index=2 . . some serrations can be sharpened on edge of kalamazoo belt. . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPy84c_i...6B52E909FF . . BUT FOR ME WHAT really works the best is medium (brown) Spyderco triangle rod, BUT DO NOT USE ON EACH SERRATION………..SCRAPE ACROSS ……START AT THE TIP AND SCRAPE ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE HANDLE SEVERAL TO MANY TIMES……UNTIL YOU GET A BURR ON BACK SIDE…..works good. . . tapered diamond rods are ok from DMT……Tom Veff has a new diamond sharpener out also. . . and the NON-WOVEN 3M BELTS WORK GREAT AS WELL IN BLUE……fine…….Gray is ultra fine, but i find the blue is better for serrated knives . . .
I wonder if there is some way to fuse the ends of something like this together to make a belt. Abrasive chord is available in various diameters and grits:https://tinyurl.com/n556shrSo far I have not bound round abrasive belts.
A combination of Thomas’ guided system and a tapered rod might be interesting. I’m lazy, so I just don’t like having to manually sharpen each serration even though that’s obviously to get the best results. I like how quickly using the edge of a belt works, but like dragging a blade over the edge of triangle rod like Spyderco the tops of the scallops are abraded away.
The thing about serrated knives is that the scallops are generally tapered and/or staggered with various sizes. Really a pain to sharpen.
04-06-2017, 10:44 AM (This post was last modified: 04-06-2017, 10:50 AM by pjwoolw.)
Sharpening serrations is one of the most misunderstood techniques in sharpening.
The techniques shown in the videos above do nothing but round off the point of the serration. Sometimes thats the best one can do in an allotted time frame. Is the knife sharper? Probably. Has the knife lost an inordinate amount of life due to technique? Yes.
The key for me is to do as little as possible to get the knife back in in some sort of usable shape without cutting new serrations. Of course this is in a public environment where time is short.
The best hand tool I've used is the Veff unit that Max shows above. Rat tail like diamond files do more damage than good. You have to try to mimic how the serration was created to begin with and the Veff tool is suited to that.
So there is the Veff tool for quick work on points and works well on the variety of serrations one sees.
Scothbrite belt for working the inside of the serration on bread knives and the backside of the blade on a 1x42 belt grinder in a horizontal orientation.
To finish I use a buffer with 8 inch wheels and 30 and 16 micron diamond compounds in bar form from Ken Schwartz. A black compound on one wheel and white compound on the other works well too but I prefer the diamond. Many use the K1 (?) green compound but I've never tried it.
If new serrations need to be cut (standard bread knife serration only) I use an 8 inch diamond wheel on a Jet 8 inch grinder mounted so the wheels rotate away from me. I clean up the newly cut serrations on a 10 inch buff (because that is what I had available at the time) on the left side of the Jet unit and black compound of unknown origin. Then go to the other buffer to finish with the diamond compounds.
Pete you are correct my friend! I have had many opportunities to understand these cumbersome things and I'm still confused.
What I have done so far when resserrations are required is also diamond wheels. I also like pink wheels for the ability to shape them too. The points themselves require a proper bevel equal to the inside of the serrations. For instance if new serrations are cut, be sure the points aren't the same thickness as the knife but tapered to a nice point. After cutting new serrations with a wheel, (I rotate wheel into the edge) the next step I take is running the flat side across a scotchbrite belt (away from edge) and at an angle a pass into the inside of each serration putting the bur on the flat side again and set them all aside until I have a fine grit belt mounted on my machine and cut the final bur off edge leading.
It seems like a lot of steps, but it's the only thing I've found that works fairly well.
Serrated knives for me is mostly from the kitchen category. Most of them have a non serrated cutting area or two that either has to be sharpened or ground down to meet the same cutting surface as the new serrations.
As any knife that has been sharpened a number of times they also have to be thinned.
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