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Serrated knives are always troublesome to deal with.  I've tried many ways to sharpen them, with varying degrees of success.  Ultimately I reached a point where I could get them sharp ... but kind of destroy the tips and the appearance, or get them sharpER (i.e., better than before, but not great either), and maintain the tips and the appearance.  But I couldn't get them really sharp AND maintain nice tips and appearance.

That's why I was interested when someone post a link to SlipaKniven's serration wheels for Tormek.  Of course serrations come in many sizes, so no one wheel is going to work them all, but the SlipaKniven wheels seemed like they would work for a typical Wusthoff/Henckels bread knife and similar, so I decided to try them out. 

The wheels are 250x14mm and they have a 12mm bore to fit the Tormek.  They come in 160 grit and 400 grit and are sold as a pair for 99 Euros, which struck me as being quite reasonable.  The set also comes with a spacer for mounting.

I'm happy to report that they work!  At least for the aforementioned knives. Unfortunately I was so excited to try them out that I neglected to take a "before" shot of this Henckels bread knife, but trust me when I tell you that it was in BAD shape from serving as the guinea pig in my many pervious misadventures.  The tips were completely rounded, and the serrations themselves were totally uneven. 

Below is a pic of what it looks like after the SlipaKniven wheels.  Not perfect, but that's because I didn't grind quite enough on the coarse wheel to get all the tips back to 100%.  I also created a gigantic burr because so much material was removed, but I was able to remove it eventually and tested the edge at 130 BESS.  I think that's more than sufficient for a bread knife or slicer.

I attempted to show the profile of the wheels in one of the pics.  It's slightly conical, as opposed to being a straight half round, so I suspect that it will work with somewhat smaller serrations, but that's something I'll have to investigate.

The wheels are out of stock again, so if you're interested you'll have to sign up to be notified when they come back in stock.  That's what I did, and I believe the wait was 3-4 weeks.

https://slipakniven.com/product/grinding-wheel-set-for-serrations/

Did you sharpen free hand or using a FVB?

I have the same problem...is not a question of belly ahahah
It's because i want to stay as close as possible when precision is required, some passages are still tricky for me. I don't have enough experience to mantain a proper posture for the entire process.

Hi Antonio,

No, the idea is to get a "perfect V" profile without secondary bevel, so when there is one (that was the case for example of knives with scandy grind) I got ride of it, removing material that had been untouched.

For blades where the profile was more a "U" then a "V" I reshaped it entirely, basically as if it was a new blade that I had to grind from blank.

With he diamond wheel it is quite fast and since the wheel does not wear out as much as a natural or synthetic stone it is only a matter of doing the same on both sides (and this is why I count the number of passes).

So, again, when facing the machine, I place the blade pointing away from me on the circumference of the wheel (although there are diamonds on the sides of the grinding wheel I did not use them) and I go back and forth (i.e., not with the blade moving left-right parallel to the shaft, as Tormeks are normally used)

That's interesting!
How is the result aesthetically? Did you consider the idea of finish everything with a fine bench stone?

@Merlin

I continued my thinning experimentation and played with an Ikea 365+ knife, the blade is 20cm long, and the entire knife is made of X50CrMoV15 which is a "German-style" steel with HRC~56. That worked well, but the steel is too soft, and having made the cutting edge very thin means that it gets bent/wobbly very fast

So I decided to move to a santoku knife kit with a 16cm blade nearly finished (and already hardened) and wood scales for the handle. I selected this particular model because it used Sandvik 14C28N and was supposed to be HRC~59.

Then I purchased a diamond grinding wheel: what a difference that makes!

Now I can do in 20-30mn what used to take several hours on a standard SG-250 wheel, without having to true it or to worry about where the blade touches, and the result is fantastic.

The "brushed" finish is very uniform and I am tempted to leave it instead of "finishing" the blade with finer sandpapers, but the most amazing is what difference this slightly harder steel made: I never had a kitchen knife so thin before, and this thing is insanely sharp, and it kept its edge so far, a real pleasure to use.

So I can confirm it is possible to make very thin knives with a Tormek, preferably a diamond wheel (which make a beter and faster job at it), and I recommend steel with a hardness approaching 60 HRC

I'm curious how you did it. Did you grind a sort of Primary/Secondary bevel?

Hi Folks,

I'm Tony, knife enthusiast from Italy/Switzerland, and this is my firt time on the forum.

Speaking about sharpening cleavers, before I bought the US-430, i used to sharpen them with KJ-45 on the secondary stop. It's not ideal, but it works pretty good with a bit of practice.
The biggest problem is the thightening nub that interferes with the USB. You can easly solve the issue using a short set screw.
Round off the corners of the stone helps a lot. As Nico says, with heavy/bulky cleavers it's easy to lose control and unintenionally tilt the blade, especially if you use the secondary stop.

Having said this, there remains the problem of the angle. Sharpening between 15°-20° dps, as for the chinese cleavers, is not a problem, especially with smaller wheels. But if you have to keep 25° or more, as for the bone choppers, the USB might not be enough.

In the end I bought the extended support...eheheh