Serrated Edge Sharpening?

They're like Ariana, your supposed to walk the rods 'side to side' on the serrations. I've been using the rods for quite some time and they work great. Then I just stroke the flat side on a stone. Works great for not alot of effort.

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I have several of those diamond conical sharpening rods that I got from DMT some time back. I've had mixed results with them on certain sharpening jobs. But I tend to agree with the one Brother that pointed out that "conical" sharpening rods don't make proper, consistent contact to facilitate an even, consistent job of sharpening each individual scallop. He also made mention that when sharpening the cutter/teeth of a chain saw chain that the files are made to the exact diameter of the cutter in order to evenly file the entire cutter/tooth.

And the scallop on a serrated edge that's designed as such would only benefit if the abrasive tool is indeed a perfect fit. I'm not opposed to some type of an electric grinding apparatus but it's been my overall experience sharpening serrations that manual sharpening tools just seem to work the best. There are some sharpening jobs that doing it manually just happens to be the best way of doing it IMO. And sharpening serrations is just one of those jobs where you just have to do it the hard, time consuming way to obtain optimal results.

But I'm open to consider any ideas. I do like a lot of the responses I've seen so far. Especially the tool that "Edge Pal" showed us on Post #10
 
EdgePal said:
JD Spydo,

I dont like to grind serrated edges from the blade flat "backside" I like the backside to be 100% flat. That is one of yhe reasons whyI invented the "Rail function" on the picture above.
Click to expand...

Hey I can appreciate that Thomas but I have one issue pertaining to that>> haven't you at least had to "deburr" the back side of a serrated edge after sharpening? Because when I use my Spyderco 701 Profiles and do a thorough job on a serrated edge that has been really beat up I always get a lot of burring on the back side. I usually only have to take one or two swipes with one of my ceramic stones to deburr it>> but I do find it necessary to remove burrs on any sharpened edge.

But hey if I'm barking up the wrong tree then tell me what I'm doing wrong. Because I've never been able to avoid burring by sharpening a serrated edge.
 
JD Spydo,

There will allways be burr, welcome to the burr side :)

I sharpen edged tools by hand for 40 years, thins 20 years back I use tools. I still take away burr by hand becouse my tools cannot grind on zero degres, yet. They soon can. Not only zero degrees, they soon also can grind 90 degrees up, and down, from Zero degrees.

After use if my tool Chef to sharpen serrations I lay the flat side down on fine sharpener and deburr the edge that way. Before that I "bend" the burr to that aide with a rod, I often use brass rods to this.

Thomas
 
I have some of those $8 sharpeners, but I use them on cheap and low end blades

CAM03706_zpsvgwtls7i.jpg


They're too rough even for the H1 in the serrated Salts I have, and H1 is very nice with an aggressive, coarse edge, but those cheapo rods are excessive (and they eat the steel in seconds, even with minimal force)
 
ThePeacent said:
I have some of those $8 sharpeners, but I use them on cheap and low end blades

CAM03706_zpsvgwtls7i.jpg


They're too rough even for the H1 in the serrated Salts I have, and H1 is very nice with an aggressive, coarse edge, but those cheapo rods are excessive (and they eat the steel in seconds, even with minimal force)
Click to expand...
I learned that the hard way on a BM mini presidio in 440c. I try to take my time these days, I'm not trying to exact the sharpest blade on earth, but well enough to do what I need from it. I also use a dog bone triangle stone the same way.

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Don't underestimate the power and simplicity of Jason B's method! Remember that Jason has more sharpening time in than 99.8% of those writing in this forum, having done something like 700 blades per week for a almost a year, including a good number of serrated blades.

His method of sharpening from the flat back side seems wrong and counter intuitive. Until you try it. My results have been pretty fantastic yielding very sharp edges without all of the crazy precision that you require if you are trying to work on the scallops directly.

My version doesn't use power tools because I don't have the appropriate ones. So I do it something like this:

Grind the flat back side at just a *hair* above flat to the stone. I do this on an 8x3 DMT EF, which removes metal faster than you might expect. The exact angle isn't really important. I just try to keep from scratching the edge up too much. I feel for a burr on the front (scalloped) side from time to time. As the burr begins to form, it generally forms unevenly. That is, it will form first in one spot before any of the others. So, to keep burr formation under control, I do 2 or 3 strokes on the scalloped side with the medium stone of a Sharpmaker. I generally set it in the 15 degree slot in the Sharpmaker and do a couple of vertical strokes as you normally would. Then I return to the DMT stone and grind some more.

After a while you'll form a small burr along the entire edge, but it should be pretty small, as you have been periodically grinding it back with the Sharpmaker. Finally, I do some balancing strokes by trying to eliminate the burr completely from the scalloped side, but also doing a stroke or two on the flat back side so I don't form a burr there unintentionally.

Sometimes I switch to the white fine sharpmaker stone at the end to give a finer finish on both sides, but I usually don't bother. I can normally get a phonebook paper *slicing* edge with just the medium stones and sometimes individual serrations will push cut phonebook paper; but not always with the medium sharpmaker stone.

I would sure love to try this with a cotton wheel loaded with green or white compound as the deburring/polishing step. I'll be the serrations get really crazy sharp that way. My manual method is pretty good and has surprised the heck out of a number people who've seen my edges in action, or touched them.

Brian.
 
I've taken a lot of "Jason B's" advice on the subject of sharpening. And believe me he's been a great help to me with some of the helpful hints he's been kind enough to share. And I have no doubt that he has learned a lot of sharpening methods over the years. The reason I put this thread up was to take a look at hopefully several other methods for sharpening serrated edges.

When it comes to serrated edges I do believe that there is definitely more than one way to "Skin A Cat" so to speak. I've actually used 3 different sharpening methods for serrations that I learned over at the Spyderco.com forum where I also frequent. When it comes to sharpening and maintaining serrated edges I've come to the conclusion that there are probably at least a dozen methods you can use.

Hey I've learned a lot from several guys here at BF over the years and I'm not about to say that there is only one way to accomplish a certain sharpening job. Hey I'm all open ears. I know a lot of these guys here were doing this stuff long before I ever joined bladeforums.com. The one method that I'm sold on for my own personal use is by using the old/discontinued Spyderco 701 Profiles. But what the heck if there are other great sharpening tools out there that might even do it better then again I"m all open ears
 
Thanks Brian!

And good to hear it's working out for you. I know Woodcraft use to sell a small V shaped leather wheel you could put on a drill... that was my first venture into power stropping serrated edges, it was fairly cheap and worked well.


I agree that there is always more than one way to skin a cat, I don't consider mine to be the best way but it is the most efficient in my experience.
 
There was one time about 10 years ago I took an ice pick and wrapped it with some extremely fine silicon carbide paper. It worked great on the scallops but it was really difficult to do the spike parts. I did attempt it with a triangular file wrapped with the same abrasive paper but it didn't do nearly as good as one of the many ceramic files that Spyderco makes.

I'm really anxious to see how the new, upcoming Spyderco GAUNTLET sharpening kit will handle serrated edges. This has been an interesting and informative thread so far and by all means for any of you who have recently come aboard please share with us any method you've had good success with sharpening serrated edges. At this point it seems like Spyderco has the most sharpening tools for serrated edges

Also please tell us which company's serrated edges you've sharpened and what tools you used to get them sharp.
 
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