How to sharpen a serrated knife

The Japanese Knife Company has a couple of good tutorials on their website. http://www.japaneseknifecompany.com/sharpening-guides .

Update from Joe:

They have videos on many different ways of sharpening knives (diamond steel, wheel, water wheel, stone, water stone, single sided blades). If you check their YouTube channel Japanese Knife Company, they also have videos for maintenance of your knives (stropping using newspaper), storage (magnets or blade up in knife blocks; advantages of different blade protectors)

It's almost impossible to describe the process only with text, especially as some of his advice has to do with the sound of the sharpening or stropping, or showing undesired movements of your arm, so videos are the best way to explain the process online. But even with that, you might not be aware of mistakes that you're making, so you may want to look to see if there are knife or kitchenware stores in your area that offer classes.

The user "virtuovice" has some great videos on knife sharpening. It was my introduction to whetstone sharpening and since following his videos, I have been able to sharpen my range of kitchen knives to a pretty incredible sharpness. His videos are mainly aimed at hunting knives, but the techniques can be applied to kitchen knives

Have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc_TEWmMcD0

The main thing to try and remember is to move with your arms and not to rotate your wrists at the ends of each stroke across the stone so that the angle is kept constant. I'd practice on some cheap knives and just go slowly first. Look at how much metal is being removed from the blade - rinse the knife often and check your progress. Imagine you are trying to take a very fine slice of stone off the top surface.

In terms of technique, you can also take a look at this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm53mCOQTR8

It's easier to see because of the high grind on the blade.