If you’re familiar with how to sharpen an ordinary chef’s knife, you know that it involves applying a series of long strokes on a sharpening stone, then reversing it and doing the same to the other side of the blade.
This is fine for a straight edged knife, but serrated knives are totally different and they need to be sharpened differently.
If you look closely at the edge of a serrated knife, you’ll see that it consists of a series of individual curved serrations. You’ll also notice that one side of the blade is beveled (meaning it has indentations in it) whereas the other side is flat.
So when sharpening a serrated knife, you need to sharpen each one of these beveled serrations separately, one at a time. And you won’t be sharpening the flat side of the blade at all.
Fortunately, there’s a special tool designed to let you do just that. It’s called a sharpening rod.
How to Sharpen a Serrated Knife