Care and sharpening of serrated knives

Serrated knives are great because they bring the best of a saw and a knife into one. They're not so great when it comes to keeping them sharp.

This is because the edge tips are very small and therefore very vulnerable to damage. To complicate matters they are very difficult to sharpen.

The problem is the tips wear down very fast and the grooves hardly wear at all. You can see this in the before and after image above.

Although the lower knife obviously has better points, they are nothing like they were when new. The only way to achieve that is to send the knife back to the manufacturer for honing.

The best thing is to handle serrated knives with extra caution. Cut things they are designed to cut. If you're using it like a saw you're probably pounding those tips!

Note: The rest of the pictures are FYI only. There are many "variations of serrations".