Dredging up this thread because I took some photos that might be interesting.
They show the micro-serrations on knife blades.
This is a Victorinox serrated bread slicer, pretty new, never sharpened. You can see the factory sharpening is rough (intentionally, I think), and leaves tiny serrations on the wavy edge.
Here is a more magnified photo. It is hard to focus at this magnification, I didn't do a good job, but even so the micro-serrations are clearly visible.
By contrast, here is an old (50 y/o?) carbon steel slicer, about 14'' long, that has been re-sharpened and honed on a waterstone, the last time maybe a couple months ago. Even at lowest magnification you can see the edge is smoother, with minimal micro-serrations.
This more magnified picture again shows the relative smoothness of the edge. It also shows that I need to clean my knives better, I think that's a tiny (not really visible to the naked eye) bit from the last meat this slicer cut.
I was just given a Chef's Choice 120 sharpener for Christmas. I think I'll re-gift it back to the giver (they won't be offended - they bought me something they'd want for themselves) because, while it seems like a damn good machine based on some brief playing around, it sharpens to a 20-25 degree bevel which is not the angle I use on my knives.
I'm going to first try to take some pictures of a knife that has been sharpened on this machine, to see how the edge looks. The manual says that it produces a triple bevel with coarse micro-serrations, fine micro-serrations, and then a polished final bevel. I want to see if it actually does as advertised. First I need to go to a secondhand store and pick up a $5 knife to use for this test, because I don't want to sharpen one of my knives to 20-25 deg and then have to re-grind it to 15 deg.