Let's talk about serrated knives

I just cut and paste the info below from wikipedia  to get things started


A serrated blade has a cutting edge that has many small points of contact with the material being cut. By having less contact area than a smooth blade, the applied pressure at each point of contact is relatively greater and the points of contact are at a sharper angle to the material being cut. This causes a cutting action that involves many small splits in the surface of the material being cut, which cumulatively serve to cut the material along the line of the blade.

So, what about serrated knives: 

There is no doubt that they excel (when sharp) at cutting bread, especially crusty breads. This is because of the multiple points of contact and those multiple pressure points, which are sharp doing their job.  However, when they get dull, it can be a challenge to sharpen them but not as difficult as you may think.

However, if you don't have someone to sharpen them for you and you don't want to sharpen them yourself you are stuck with a dull knife right? (no different than all the other dull knives that many folks use)

I recommend that if  you like the serrated knives, then don't purchase expensive ones. Get a cheap one for $20.00 and just replace it when it is dull. These knives stay sharper for a longer period than regular knives, so you can a year out of one, just throw it away and get a new one. 

Now.....let's say you have gone out and purchased a beautiful MAC serrated knife for 200 dollars and it's getting dull, or a Shun, they are quite beautiful knives and obviously you are not going to throw those away.

How do you sharpen them (besides letting me do it of course)?

Here is the quick and dirty of one way to do it but if you don't have the tools, well, you're going to have to send it to me or someone else.

Here is a simple and cheap way. Get yourself a wooden dowel the same size as the serrations, i.e the diameter of the dowel is such that it will fit nicely inside a serration on your knife.  NOW get some wet/dry sandpaper in various grits, 320, 600 and 1000 grit. Not expensive at all.
Now hold the blade on the edge of a table or counter top in such a fashion that the edge is hanging over the side but you can grab the handle so it would be on a corner for example.

I will get some pictures posted soon.

Now you just run that dowel with the sandpaper (320 first) wrapped around it and you hold it at an angle that matches the serrations and run the dowel down the serrated side. Basically, you are sanding off the dull parts of the serrations and you do this on every single serration with the different grits. Do the whole blade with the 320 grit then repeat with the other grits.

Now, the goal is to for a burr on the back (flat) side of the knife, if you have done that, you are going to have a sharp knife assuming you remove burr and that is the tricky part if you don't have water stone.  If you did have a water stone you could flip the knife over and just carefully run the stone over the back of the knife at a very low angle to remove the burr. 
If you had a ceramic rod you could do the same but you need to remove that burr. 

I will publish some pictures that illustrates what I am talking about. 

(Now you know why I say to buy an inexpensive serrated knife)