Dealing with Serrated knives

I think you need 3 knives in the kitchen, I mean if you are slowly building up your collection of "fine" knives and taking the time to make smart purchases, and a little more expensive perhaps, I think only 3 knives needed. Two for sure and the 3rd is the optional one but very useful.

The serrated bread knife is very sharp when new but it is a challenge to sharpen. I've tried several methods and have a really good one now. 

There are some options of course for dealing with dull serrated knives:

1. Dispose of it and buy a new one, you can get a decent Henckels bread knife for $35.00 and you will get at least a year out of it, maybe two without touching it.

2. Have it sharpened 

3. Keep using the dull serrated knife and experience misery and frustration every time you do use it.

What about a serrated knife that over time, the serrations are almost non-existent, you can see them but they serve absolutely no purpose. This will occur with repeated sharpening where the sharpener is not working on the individual serrations, perhaps just sharpening it like a straight edge knife. Or it has gone through one of those electric sharpeners.

Basically, you have really dull, wannabe serrated knife that is causing even more misery. 

Toss it or remove the serrations completely, re-profile the edge and make it straight edge knife, a slicer.

Now you can either use it as is and get another serrated knife, I don't think you would need one if you do the job right. It will be so sharp that bread won't stand a chance. 

Here is a former serrated knife that had outlived it purpose, the benefit of the serrations had long since vanished. What is left, after 50 minutes of work is a very nice slicer.

The picture below is a serrated knife, sorry I didn't take a before shot, it was a typical serrated knife with very worn serrations. I ground away the serrations and was left with a very dull edge, in fact there really was no edge. I place a compound bevel on it of 10 and 15 degrees. I started the process at 10 degrees to create a polished bevel where the serrations used to be. Then, I actually sharpened the knife at 15 degrees, so the 10 degree bevel is called a Relief Angle.

(Note how I try to impress you by using terms like compound bevel and Relief Angle) 

But that is what I did. 

Just something to think about, the transformation is not that difficult and results in a very useful knife, one that you can easily slice bread with and now it is fine for other duties in the kitchen.

Thank You

Peter