Clay, where is the serrated sharpener?

In my five or so years owning and using WEPS there hasn’t been an adapter or attachment for serrated knives.  I have hand sharpened a few serrated edges using Spyderco Tri-angle stones on a clamped knife yielding pretty good results.

I have read some discussion on this forum that there are ideas Clay’s working on.  Nothing concrete.

Welcome back to the Wicked Edge Forum, Jed!

As you know due to the variety of shapes and sizes and configurations, many of them proprietary, serration are a hard edge to find or create one tool that fits them all. I have seen leather wheels but even those would need to be configured to the specific serration shape like a customizable router bit.

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Alan

It’s still a project in process, just a challenging one. I think I know what the solution is, am just waiting to find the right supplier for what I need at a price that can work. All the other things we’ve tried haven’t panned out enough to be commercially viable. Some work okay, but not well enough or affordably enough to bring to market.

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Brewbear, Mr. Toad, sksharp, Jack Wyatt, Alan, Organic, Jed, Marc H

Hey guys.  I’m probably one of the very few, but my only serrated knife is a kitchen bread knife. I gave up on spending time to sharpen my serrated steak knives, and now no longer have them.  I found that a sharp 4″ paring knife makes a most excellent steak knife!

That said, I know there are plenty of military, rescue, survival, and other type serrated or partially serrated knives that many folks have, use and love.  A general use serrated knife sharpener would be very useful for those folks who own them.

If anyone were to develop such a sharpener, I would expect it to be none other than Wicked Edge!

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sksharp

This is a very difficult challenge without fancy digital alignment equipment. Each serration is actually a mini knife of its own and usually concave curved. I have seen some convex though. I have thought about a WEPS approach for years (it helps me fall asleep – LOL). The WEPS simple elegance (using geometric advantages) to put repeatable perfect edges (with the alignment guide and angle cube) is not conducive to this problem. I see two major challenges:

1. The geometry of the individual serration – possibly solved with custom rods self made using 3d print technology and diamond films or grind a new serration to what you have
2. Keeping each individual serration orthogonal to the sharpening medium – this would require accurately repositioning the knife for each individual serration (very difficult, time consuming and not repeatable) – possibly solved by allowing the spherical joint to move along the knife (new fixturing)

The overarching thought I keep coming back to is digitizing the WEPS by integrating the digital cube into the spherical joint and rod, connecting it to your computer and having it beep when you are at perfect alignment. Very non-trivial and not cheap – but it would be fun. Watching some vids of the jigs used to sharpen chain saw blades also yield ideas.

Years back I actually ground off the serrations on my Henckel steak knives using the ChefsChoice and learned to love the cutting action while dining. I now have 8 non-serrated Henckel 4 star steak knives with WEPS edges which I gently pull across my Messermeister ceramic hone until it catches my nail pretty much every day. I know they hit the plate but do not care.

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wickededge, Alan