I'm gonna try to make my own serrations

[Evil D]

Any guesses on what diameter rod it would take to grind serrations? I'm looking to buy some round diamond files to see if I can make serrations. I'm going to buy some butter knives or something cheap to practice on before I do anything stupid with my Spydercos. I would love to find some kind of rod that I could mount to my Edge Pro to do this but it may be easier and faster to use Dremel/drill bits. My end goal here is to add serrations to the knives that never got the option but that's waaay down the road. For now I just need to figure out what size rods/bits I need and practice getting the angles and spacing correct.

[ChrisinHove]

Diamond burrs for the Dremel are cheap as chips on EBay, probably ideal for experimentation.

[skeeg11]

5/32" between points.

[TkoK83Spy]

Awesome man, I appreciate your sacrifice to give it a try haha! I'll be following this one.

[Evil D]

5/32" between points.

I'm pretty sure the diameter of a rod would be fairly large to make the big serrations, and the bigger I can make them the thinner the ridges will be between them. I wanna try to make the same big/small, small/big pattern but I've gotta find a bit that's large enough for the big serrations first. I bought a kit of diamond Dremel bits but then realized that the largest bit is probably only sized right for the small serrations.

[skeeg11]

I guess the two smaller points and scallops pattern helps protect the cutting surface of the scallops under rough use like cutting car bumpers, but for all practical purposes (mine anyway) a serrated edge with just the larger serrations seem to cut at least as well as the Spyderco pattern. I use mine mostly for slicing fish gills and rib bones and seaweed kelp balls. For rough usage the Spyderco pattern may be superior. Six-one half dozen or another, I really do like the cutting edge and thin 2.9mm blade stock and distal taper of my LC200N PacSalt 2. Looking forward to testing the even thinner LC200N 2.5mm LC200N serrated UKPK Salt to see if it drifts or walks less.

[PeaceInOurTime]

Subscribing to this thread :)
I'm sure your attempts will turn out far better than mine. Off the top of my head, I don't remember what the diameter of barrel I used.

My attempts at DIY serrations in the past have been successful in their performance, though they look sloppy and horrid. I've only ever used a dremel freehand and I don't have the most steady hands. I love the large scallop serrations on my mod.

I've posted my DIY CE recurve ClipiTool a few times.

[CPM-Greg]

I made my own serrations (accidentally) when I first started to sharpen knives. LOL. Good luck with this project; sounds like a cool endeavour.

CPM-Greg

[u.w.]

I did exactly that (make my own serrations) on a butter knife of all things about a month or so ago. Works pretty good.
I used "jewlers files" diamond ones from Lowe's, the round one and the kind of oval/lemon shaped one, went every other, big/small/big/small...

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with

u.w.

[u.w.]

A picture (photo) is worth at least a few lines of words.

So seeing the photo of the butter knife I did, at full size, really shows that I'm not done yet - lol. So, I'll do a little more work on it in the near future.
That said, I did it to use as a "don't care" steak knife on/against plates. For that, it works very well. It also cuts up fruits (if I'm not using some other knife), at which is does fine at. So, no "heavy duty" or "tough" cutting tasks, but exactly what I had in mind when I decided to do, and then did/made it.



while I have no idea what the steel or heat treat of said steel is (I'll bet it's something very cheap and relatively soft) I was surprised at how long it took to do it by hand. But again, it works very well for what I made it for, so...

u.w.

[u.w.]

I would imagine that a spinning wheel - so like a cut-off wheel, or circular saw blade, that was of course as wide as the serrations you wanted to make & was steeply radiused on it's face - so coming to nearly a point in the middle of the "cutting" face, sloping down from that almost "point" to the edges of the face, would work very well for making serrations. At least that's what's in my mind when I think about doing it. So, not a bit (i.e. dremel, drill, etc), but a wheel...

u.w.

[JacksonKnives]

I would imagine that a spinning wheel - so like a cut-off wheel, or circular saw blade, that was of course as wide as the serrations you wanted to make & was steeply radiused on it's face - so coming to nearly a point in the middle of the "cutting" face, sloping down from that almost "point" to the edges of the face, would work very well for making serrations. At least that's what's in my mind when I think about doing it. So, not a bit (i.e. dremel, drill, etc), but a wheel...

u.w.

Pretty sure the factories are all using a wheel in that way, but with its face profiled to do a set of serrations at a time (or multiple sets).

[zhyla]

The tip I’ve heard is to get a round file of the right diameter and a metal rod of the same diameter and tape them together. Make the first serration and then lay the rod in that serration and file the next one. That way you keep the spacing. You can adapt this to multiple size serrations if you’re following the SE type pattern.

Alternate way is to just mark it out, but that’s tricky on a curved blade.

As far as sizes, just lay some drill bits in the serrations on a knife you like until one seems to fit.

[skeeg11]

If you're looking for cheap knives to experiment on, some thrift stores carry 1095 or carbon steel fixed for $.50-$1.00 or there-abouts.

[Xplorer]

Hi D,
I don't do serrations on anything right now but I was experimenting with a thought I had about using a single serration as a sharpening choil. So, I have a couple of pictures for size reference for you in case it helps you figure out what you want yours to look like.

These were done with a 1/4" diamond grinding bit.




Best regards,
Chad

[Brock O Lee]

For what it’s worth, I remember it was said that Willey Knives can grind Spyderco serrations.

http://willeyknives.com

[sal]

Hi David,

It sounds like a great adventure. And please share with the rest of us your experience.

Hey Chad,

That's really nice.

sal

[Woodpuppy]

You could also use arrows to figure out a suitable rod diameter. My Remote Release has served as a glue scraper for 20 years when it’s time to reflect how my arrows! Carbon 400s and 340s, as well as 2117, 2213, 2314 and 2315 aluminum shafts.

[Cl1ff]

I might do this sometime myself, but I probably would start with softer materials first to get designs I liked and practice. Eventually, I want to see how far designs produced by nature will go in steel and other materials.
Good luck with your project!

[Evil D]

I might do this sometime myself, but I probably would start with softer materials first to get designs I liked and practice. Eventually, I want to see how far designs produced by nature will go in steel and other materials.
Good luck with your project!

I'm really most concerned about being able to grind harder steals but we'll see how it goes.