How to Sharpen a Barry King Swivel Knife

[Johanna]

Bob graciously gave me permission to repost this on our forum:

I am watching this post to see who will respond to this question. Oh well I guess it is my turn... To sharpen a Barry King swivel knife blade or any other swivel knife blade you will need some basic supplies.

If you have some honing stones this would be helpful. If not, you will need some good quality fine grit sand papers.

If you blade was sharp and requires just a bit of tuning, always start with the finest grit or polish first to adjust your blade. If this fails to correct the problem then it may be necessary to use a coarser grit to reshape your blade edge.

Lets start by assuming that you blade is currently sharp and needs some touching up to make it work smoothly again. This is accomplihed by stropping your blade on a rouge board. You can make a rouge or stropping board out of different types of materials form leather to poster board. Leather is commonly used but is capabable of indenting when you apply pressure from your blade. This can round off the edge of your blade and prevent you from making flat strokes on your cutting edge. A better choice is to use common poster board for your stropping base. This thin cardboard will not indent as you pull your blade accross the strop leaving you with a flatter cutting edge. Make your strop at least 12 inches long or longer. This reduces the amount of strokes used to make your pass. When you make a stroke "STOP" your hand at the end of each stroke or pull. This will reduce the possibility of rolling your hand as your remove it from the strop to make your next stroke. This also reduces the chances of rolling your blade egde. When stropping your blade pull your blade backwards over the strop. I use a serpentine type of movement as I pull my blade backwards accross the strop. This will make any tiny scratches run in parallel to the direction you are cutting with your blade instead of perpendicular to the cutting direction. I use this same "serpentine" direction of stroke when I am using honing stones or sandpaper as well. Because the small scratches that may be present will follow in the direction of the cutting edge rather than trying to pull accross such imprefections. This will make your blade cut with less drag.

The type of rouge used on your strop is very important. A common rouge is red. This type of rouge is too soft to sharpen a hardened piece of steel and is used to polish soft metals like gold or silver (non ferris type metals). Red has little effect on most blades or harder types of steels. White rouge is much better. I use a white rouge made by a company called Grobet. The rouge is called Fabuluster and is found at jewelery supply companies like Rio Grande or Thunderbird Silver supply. Green chromium is also an excellent typr of rouge for hardened steel blades. My white rouge is very dry and does not stck to a board very well. Green chromium is much greasier and sticks to anythig including your hands, your project etc. Use care to wash your hands before touching your project ! The best final polish that I have found is a product called Flitz polish which can be found a some sporting goods store or gun supply houses like Brwonells or Bass Pro shops.

If your balde is in need of reshaping use a extra fine or fine honing stone first to gently regrind the edge to a flat angle. Most blades are cut with a 30 degree angle from verticle on the edge. That is, each edge is 30 degrees, both edges together would be 60 included.

This angle can be secured by using a swivel knife sharpening guide which is found at many common leather goods suppliers. With practice and a bit of skill you can "hand hold" a blade at these angles without too much trouble.

If using finer stones does not correct you blade go to a coarser grit stone to continue the corretion until your blade is perfect. You must now reduce the grit of your honing stones to remove the scratches that your coarser stones have left on your blade. Use a strop to remove all remaining scratches.

Sandpaper can be used instead of expensive honing stones to reshape your blade. 400 grit would in my opinion be rather coarse and can be used to shape a blade pretty quickly. Much finer grits down to 2000 grit can be found at auto body supply shops. When using sandpaper to sharpen tools always place your sandpaper on a clean piece of glass to assure that your suface is perectly flat and smooth. These techniques will indeed put a fine polished edge on your blade but must also be followed by correct stropping on a rouge board to give your edge that final gleam.

I hope that this long explanation is of some help to you... If not I will try again... Good luck.

[Tkleather1]

I am glad that the two forums are getting along and post both places.