suggestion to sharpen serated blade

[EdS]

OK the serated blade on my leather map is blunt - I mean really blunt as in useless because I tried cutting up car tyres with it.

Any ideas how to get an edge back on it. With out buying a new round diamond thingy.

 

[ESpy]

Well, the usual suggestion is to use a triangular stone for sharpening. Might be possible to do something with a piece of triangular hardwood wrapped in wet & dry?

I've got a Spyderco Sharpmaker, so I've no real need to try except in the spirit of experimentation...

 

[Ratbag]

I've had good results using a piece of round dowel with wet'n'dry wrapped round it. Choose a dowel profile that suits your serrations and work through the grades of wet'n'dry as you would for a non-serrated blade. If you use a thin leather strop like a Starkie then you can lay that over the dowel to strop with too.

Rat

 

[Buckshot]

I've heard it said somewhere that the only part of a serated blade that blunts is the points. The hollows of the serrations don't touch so don't get blunt. Therefore to sharpen the blade just sharpen the points. The easist way to do that is to sharpen like it's a straight edge.

Mark

 

[tomtom]

depending on how blunt it is you can use a leather shoe lace with honeing paste on it.

 

[laurens ch]

I used strop paste on shoelaces to put the final edge on my fathers serrated knife. I used slipstones intended for chisels for the courser sharpening

 

[Ogri the trog]

Spyderco Sharpmaker,
Gotta be the way forward - beg, borrow or buy one - you won't regret it.

Ogri the trog

 

[spamel]

Someone tried cutting wire with my sheepsfoot serrated blade on my Wave, and really screwed the edge on it. As the serrations are only on one side, I laid the blades' flat side on to a stone and removed metal from the whole of one side of the blade. If the serrations are on both side of your blade, then this won't work. Good luck with it!

 

[Longstrider]

I'm not familiar with the blade you have, but there are basically two types of serrated blade out there. One has pointed little teeth like a shark, and the other has small scallops ground out of the edge. The toothy ones need a suitably shaped hone to fit into them in order to make a proper job of sharpening them and the scalloped edges ideally need a small circular or conical hone. Whichever type you have it's possible that you have blunted not only the tips of the teeth but the edges of them too as tyres tend to have wire in them which your blade will have tried to bite through. The wire will have got into the serrations, hitting the edges.
If it's not too blunt a loaded cord or shoelace might do for the scalloped type edge, but getting wet and dry to bend around even a thin wedge in a tight enough angle to get into the toothy type of blade might be prove impossible.
Spamels suggestion of working from the flat side of the blade could be the best way to approach the problem, followed by stropping the flat side on a flat strop and the toothed/scalloped side with a loaded cord of some kind, carefully working it through each tooth or scallop in turn. If your serratons are really chewed up, as Spamel says, Good luck with it.

 

[cgait]

when i sharpen my serrated blade i usually sharpen only one side. the serations are only on the one side so i take the otherside and sharpen as if it were a straight blade.hope this helps.