I don't like serrated edges, change my mind!

Status
Not open for further replies.
@Fiv3r , @dh1633pm , and others who are wondering about simpler, more compact, sharpeners than the Sharpmaker, there are many options. Here are three that would work well with almost any knife. The $11 Gatco Tri-Seps is basically a mini Spyderco ceramic rod with tiny angle guides molded into the rubber caps - I find it easier to use free hand. Since free hand is easier in the field for most folks, the $14 Victorinox Dual Sharpener offers more grip in its ink pen form, with an oval ceramic rod that works well for both plain and serrated edges. Of course, there's the Cadillac of pocket sharpeners, Spyderco's palm sized $59 Slip Stone. That 2"x4" size might be the sweet spot of small enough to put in a back pocket, but big enough to be a field bench stone.
 
Drail said:
In the Days of Olde we called serrated blades "saws"
Click to expand...
Well, technically, a "saw" has individual teeth given a set to both sides of a given edge plane., often with relief cuts to free sawdust.

Serrated edge is just a curved plain edge. In the modern fashion set up like a plane iron, with a flat back and a short enough arc radius to make taking off the burr simpler. Which give an edge of some sharpness that will keep that amount of sharp to a considerable time.
 
theotherwaldo said:
I find serrated edges to be important for those that snorkel, scuba, kayak, or do anything that may involve getting tangled in cordage or fishing line while under water.
You find that your leverage is gone and your time is fleeting... .
Click to expand...

Most divers these days use EMT sheers. Knives or kinda frowned upon. But I still use a Tekna dagger, but the Spydercos are popular as well.
 
My theory is that the peaks protect the valleys from dulling, and alter the angle of attack on a tiny scale, so hard things like bread crust and fibrous things like fascia in meat are chewed away.
It was a standing joke at a culinary school where I attended a seminar, that bakers used serrated knives because they couldn't sharpen a knife properly. As the video notes, it also helps that serrated edges use a single bevel.
 
The $11 Gatco Tri-Seps is basically a mini Spyderco ceramic rod with tiny angle guides molded into the rubber caps - I find it easier to use free hand.
Click to expand...
I've worn out a Tri-Seps--or at least dished some of its sides enough that I can't get good sharpening results from it any longer. They work very well, the only issue being that if the knife is very dull, you're going to be spending some time as the Tri-Seps isn't very aggressive. Same issue with the Sharpmaker though--even with the coarse rods. If you will be dealing with really dull knives on a regular basis, there is a diamond surface version of the Tri-Seps and, for that matter, Spyderco makes some diamond surface rods for the Sharpmaker.

If you had to, you could make do with standard Tri-Seps for just about everything.

This product by Buck can be handy for touching up individual serrations. It's not quite as handy as it looks in terms of being portable, but I've had one for awhile and the diamond surface seems to be holding up.

The Spyderco Golden Stone is a pretty handy sharpener that will work for serrated knives with the caveat that it's a fine stone and will make you work hard if your knife is really dull. It's not a pocket sharpener by any means at 8" in length, but it's flat and comes in a suede holder so it carries well without taking up much space if you want to keep one handy. I have one side of the suede holder charged with some compound and use it as a strop. It is kind of expensive, but has some interesting features.

1. It can be held upright and the "duckfoot" feature will keep it at a specific angle (20 degrees) for keeping an constant sharpening angle when using the edges of the stone to sharpen.
2 It will work for serrated or plain edge knifes.
3. It's big enough to work well as a standard fine grit bench stone.
4. There's a long groove on the stone useful for sharpening things like fish hooks and arrows. Or so they claim--I've never used that feature.

I wasn't happy with the large surfaces so I spent some time with a diamond bench stone flattening one side to my satisfaction. In fact, the resulting powder from that activity was what I initially used to charge the suede case for stropping.
 
JohnKSa said:
I've worn out a Tri-Seps
Click to expand...
That's understandable if you're using it as your primary sharpener. Thankfully that or similar sharpeners from Lansky are $12 or less, so it's not a financial burden if you wear out or lose one.

JohnKSa said:
The Spyderco Golden Stone is a pretty handy sharpener that will work for serrated knives with the caveat that it's a fine stone and will make you work hard if your knife is really dull. It's not a pocket sharpener by any means at 8" in length
Click to expand...
I stopped at the $60 slip stone for that reason. I was hoping someone would bring up the Golden Stone. At the size and $70 price tag it becomes an interesting debate against the Sharpmaker at $73.50 MAP. The Sharpmaker isn't much bigger, and includes two different grits of ceramic rods which can also be set flat side by side into the bottom of case for use as a bench stone. With three sides and corners per rod, I wonder what the difference is in combined flat surface ares and corner surface length on the SM vs GS. SM rods can also be replaced at $12 per for the included medium or fine ceramic rods (and higher prices for the diamond, CBN, or extra fine ceramic rods). The GS is a really big piece of high grade ceramic.
 
The advantages of the Golden Stone are that it's a bit more compact, a tiny bit cheaper, it can be used as a bench stone, and you get the suede case that can be used as a strop. Otherwise the Sharpmaker beats it on every count. Ease of use, variety of grits, easily replaceable components as well as additional stones available, and safety.

And, you don't really need a bench stone if you have a Sharpmaker--it will handle pretty much everything.

Is the smaller size a big deal? Well, it might be. I have an 8"x5" Gootium canvas zipper bag that holds my portable basic knife maintenance/sharpening kit. There's not nearly enough room in it for a Sharpmaker, but the Golden Stone will fit.

In case anyone's interested, the bag contains a Tri-Seps, Diamond Tri-Seps, Spyderco Double Stuff, Spyderco Double Stuff 2 (which has some capability for use on serrated knives), the Golden Stone, an ABTK TAC 12"x10" Gun Cleaning Mat, toothbrush, bottle of White Lightning Knife & Tool lube, a Naniwa Rust Eraser and an art gum eraser.

The art gum eraser is used to clean the ceramic stones, but actually the Naniwa will work just fine for that too, so I could ditch one of them. There's room so I've just left them both in there.

If I were trying to cover all the bases and keep it as compact as possible, I could get by with just the two Tri-Seps, the Naniwa, toothbrush and the White Lightning. You could clean up and sharpen just about any kind of knife, no matter how dull, serrated or not, with just those items.
 
Serrated edges have their uses. And aren't necessarily best for all occasions.

My wife gets on me for a variety of issues, one related to this in the early years of our marriage being the use of a serrated bread knife for anything other than slicing bread.

You can slice tomatoes paper thin very easily with a bread knife.
 
Last edited:
Shanghai McCoy said:
Huh, interesting. Funny to think that long ago when I was a Navy Diver all we were issued was a Kabar.
We'd sharpen it with a file then coat the blade with grease. o_O
(Still got it BTW...) ;)
Click to expand...

DIR/GUE trained divers generally promote EMT shears and/or a simple steak knife cut down to about three inches length with a blunted tip and carried on the harness with a small nylon sheath. As I said, large dive knives are frowned upon, especially in destination diving and are banned in some coral areas. Entanglement in fishing line and hooks are one perceived use for a knife and an EMT sheer is usually the better tool, much less painful to cut leader and line than to try to saw through a steel leader with the hook stuck in your arm or leg, think about it. I began diving in 1966 when BFK were all the rage. I do a lot of diving, not so much this year though with the Wuhan Flu.

IMG-2518.jpg

I will say this, free diver spearos, do use a kill knife to assist subduing a speared fish and getting it out of the water with the least fuss so as to reduce the opportunity for the fellows in the silver suits to show up for dinner. I still use a dive knife, the Tekna dagger, I have four of them, two stainless steel and two in titanium, this one is titanium, I use it on my waist harness when SCUBA diving and they make a great kill knife if kept sharp when spearfishing:

IMG-1601.jpg
 
Last edited:
Shanghai McCoy said:
I vaguely remember when those little Tekna knives came out.
Nice photos BTW. :thumbup:
Click to expand...

Thanks, I do a good bit of UW photography. Odd I live in Kansas, lol, but I did grow up on the Gulf diving and fishing. My newest camera rig, about $6,000:

IMG-0438.jpg

There have been some reissues of the Tekna knife from different companies but they can be hard to find, new or used in good shape.

https://www.tek-tite.com/proddetail.php?prod=TEKNA_OCEAN_EDGE_DIVE_KNIFE

https://www.knifecenter.com/brand/956/tekna-knives.

My four are original Tekna manufactured.
 
Nice rig there. I remember when the Nikonus was the new hot camera to use.
Yeah, I guess I should have bought one of the Tekna knives back in the day...
I went down and dug out the old gear bag and found my old stainless Dacor dive knife that I used after I got out in the 70's.
The "serrations" on the back are more suited for scaling a fish tho.
 
For my use, there’s very little I can do with a serrated that I can’t do with a regular blade. Serrations just seems to give me less blade space to use and throw off my groove since I do most of my cutting with the area of the blade that’s usually serrated. The knife I do have with a serrated edge I don’t find hard to sharpen. All it takes is a fine file.
 
Last edited:
3Crows said:
DIR/GUE trained divers generally promote EMT shears and/or a simple steak knife cut down to about three inches length with a blunted tip and carried on the harness with a small nylon sheath. As I said, large dive knives are frowned upon, especially in destination diving and are banned in some coral areas. Entanglement in fishing line and hooks are one perceived use for a knife and an EMT sheer is usually the better tool, much less painful to cut leader and line than to try to saw through a steel leader with the hook stuck in your arm or leg, think about it. I began diving in 1966 when BFK were all the rage. I do a lot of diving, not so much this year though with the Wuhan Flu.

View attachment 942973

I will say this, free diver spearos, do use a kill knife to assist subduing a speared fish and getting it out of the water with the least fuss so as to reduce the opportunity for the fellows in the silver suits to show up for dinner. I still use a dive knife, the Tekna dagger, I have four of them, two stainless steel and two in titanium, this one is titanium, I use it on my waist harness when SCUBA diving and they make a great kill knife if kept sharp when spearfishing:

View attachment 942974
Click to expand...
I have one of the stainless Teknas, how do you think the Titanium model holds up? I have been thinking of getting one.
 
HiDive said:
I have one of the stainless Teknas, how do you think the Titanium model holds up? I have been thinking of getting one.
Click to expand...

I like it because it absolutely does not rust but typical of titanium blades in my experience, it is difficult to sharpen. Nonetheless it has become my favorite dive knife.
 
JohnKsa,

I keep the little buck steel next to my old man killing lounger so when I am not actually doing anything I can touch up the serations on whatever I happen to have or get rid of any rolled edge spots on regular edges. Seems to work.

My biggist issue with the old Spyderco kitchen serrated edge knives is folks keep slipping them in the dishwasher which is not good for the handles at all. Been using them for what/ 30 years now? I use the sharpmaker on them. what with the handle delamination from the dishwasher and the serations being mostly round SWMBO recently bought me a couple of the newer blue handled knives to go with the old black.

-kBob
 
So today I totally didn't mean to use my ARK for mundane tasks, but it handled the job anyway.

I was unexpectedly called to a job where a customer had a bad flow sensor in their pool UV system. I was in the area for a sales call and told the service manager that I would take a look. I didn't have the part on my truck, but they were expecting 20 people tomorrow and needed a work around.

Foolishly, I had left my Leatherman at my office before heading to the job. I didn't have a tool on me and was basically down to just the knife around my neck. While not a real test if the ARK as a fighting/survival knife, I was able to find a bit of scrap wire and use the last valley of the blade to cut away the insulation in order to bypass the system and get the UV going again.

Honestly, I usually have 2 or 3 pocket knives on my person. However, I just had the ARK on me due to the fact that i needed to pull permits at the courthouse and going through metal detectors and left everything at my house except the ARK because I could just toss it over my head when I got back in the truck.

Quite honestly, I only had it on me because I forgot that I was wearing it. Very much a there when you need it knife.
 
JShirley said:
I traditionally have preferred plain edged blades. However, Sal Glesser of Spyderco points out that adding serrations adds cutting surface to a same-length blade. Also, at least one specific steel (H1) actually changes physical properties after being work- hardened by serrating.
Click to expand...

Dont take my words to be critical of those who choose to carry knives with H1 steel, if you and others like it I am good with that, surprised, but good all the same.

I have found knives with H1 steel to be complete and total garbage. You could say that maybe I'm not a skilled enough sharpener, but I've been something of a knife nut for a long time and I have alot of experience with the spyderco tri stones, gosh close to ten years sharpening knives with an aim to do it well.

The H1 blades I had were straight edge, I did however wonder before basically giving them away if I would have had better luck with something like a wicked edge but a flat stone and the tri stones wouldnt cut it so I drew the line there. It was like trying to sharpen a blade made of pure chrome.... I am thoroughly impressed enough with carbon based steels that have been used for many centuries with great success, I dont need a steel that is impervious to rust or wear. I actually want my steel to wear, that's how I sharpen the dammed thing. The H1 couldnt hold or take an edge no matter what I did.

As to the OP's serration quandary, I have always much preferred a nice straight blade aesthetically, especially partial to S35VN. But, I do believe a 1/3 serrated blade has alot of practical utility, I cant speak for all users but for most I believe the tip and belly are the most utilized portions of the blade for most EDC cutting tasks so having that lil serrated portion for sawing can come in very handy when and if needed. It's a very good tool to have on your knife and for a survival knife, I'd almost say it's a must, I might not follow my own advice, but practically, it makes more sense. It will depend on how you use your knife I suppose.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My Leatherman tools have both types of blades. I use the straight ones most of the time. There are things that serrated edges just cut better though.

Great pictures everybody. Thanks for sharing.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

B
  • Locked
serrations vs plain edge on defensive knives
Replies
16
Views
2K
Guyon
G
1
  • Locked
What makes up a good knife
Replies
24
Views
2K
Browning
Browning
R
  • Locked
Gerber MK-I and MK-II’s
Replies
18
Views
8K
rcmodel
R
ugaarguy
  • Locked
Blade Show Report
2
Replies
29
Views
2K
hso
hso
anothernewb
  • Locked
Worksharp knife sharpener. better than I thought
Replies
4
Views
893
hso
hso
Back
Top