I had a bread knife that took a trip through the dishwasher and was frustratingly dull. I bought a cheap sharpening rod to attempt to salvage it (this one specifically: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001910FOA). It was a bit tedious to get into all the serrations but it was like having a new knife. I was so pleased with the results I took to using it on my chef's knives whenever they were dull and the honing rod didn't help, finding the results better and faster than the electric sharpener I have. It seemed pretty straightforward and I didn't put a lot of thought into the technique, but the knives were definitely getting sharper. I'd guess I did this every few months (frankly I tend to get lazy about honing which probably makes the edge dull faster).
I decided I wanted to get something nice to get them even sharper so I invested in a whetstone, but as I have read about using it I've become alarmed by the number of people talking about how you need to use a beater knife on your first pass because you're liable to do some serious damage to your knife. Others even say you shouldn't even try to sharpen a serrated knife yourself! Frankly I find it hard to understand how it's even possible, since it's a piece of metal and you should (I would think) be able to remove more to fix it no matter how bad your sharpening job is. But I don't even own any knives I'd want to use for practice and not care if I rendered them unusable. All this talk has made me paranoid: could I be destroying my knives somehow? How, exactly?