EastMT
WKR
Sharpening isn’t really hard, there are many different ways. I personally like thin blade at extremely shallow angle, 15-17 deg for hot meat cutting. This makes for a fine edge and easily rolled if you hit teeth or a rock, softer metal is much easier to bring an edge back. My high end hard steel knives hold an edge a long time but are much harder to bring an edge back after damage. A really thick blade doesn’t cut near as easily as far as amount of pressure required to cut through a price of meat.
I use a belt sander on new blades to get the desired angle, after that very slow soft sharpening on a steel.
That’s the biggest mistake most people make sharpening a knife, too fast, too much pressure. I can run a knife on a steel extremely fast, but every time you hear a clank you are making a tiny ding in your edge, defeating the purpose. For fine tuning a knife, soft slow swipes on the steel at an angle just a few degrees steeper than you initial blade grind so you are fine tuning the edge not just rubbing the bevel of the blade is the most important part, think old western stropping a face razor on leather, you are just polishing the edge microscopically.
Another trick is taking care of your steel. Wet/dry sand paper, wet it down and sand it with single straight swipes wrapping it around the steel at the bottom, pulling straight to the end repeated until you have a shiny straight grain showing, then oiling with veg oil, this will tune a knife much easier and faster as well. F. Dick orange handle and Victorinox steels are my go to steels before the hunt, smaller fine flat steel for backpacking weight.
That’s my biggest problem with serrated, I don’t like sending things in for maint, I’m more DIY, I’ve actually ground the serrated part off knives they annoyed me so much when they get dull.
If the wind doesn’t blow, take to the oars.
