The Taming of the Skew...

[Redoak]

Hi all, As a new turner I'd like your advice on the skew angles you all find best ("easiest"). I bought a Pinnacle Cryrogeginic skew chisel that had a 30 deg. straight skew angle with a 30 degree edge angle. However I noticed that the TTS-100 Turning Tool Setter only works with (straight) skew angles of 20 degs. So in order to use the TTS100 I decided to change the skew angle to 20 degs. with a 45 degree edge angle which has been tough to reshape to say the least.
After a solid 4 hours I'm about halfway done and now have 2 edge angles of 20* @ 45 degree edge angle and the original 30*/30*.
The skew kinda now has a roughly radiused edge and I'm wondering if it best just to make the change now to a radiused edge as Jeff has alluded to and the users manual points out as being easier to sharpen. I don't mind doing the re-shaping if I'll like it in the long run. And as being a new turner I haven't grown used to any particular grind on the skew or even if I'll like using it. ( I also bought a Crown skewgiwedge just in case ) which looks to present some interesting grinding problems itself.
Books and articles generally state that either you'll love or hate the skew chisel with little in between but most agree that it is wothwhile learning to use it. After half a day of reshaping mine I"m leaning toward the "hate" side.
Any help or advice you all can offer would be  much appreciated.

[Jeff Farris]

First off, I hope you found the advice to work in the vertical position with the wheel turning into the edge when doing re-shaping.  If not, that will speed up the process dramatically for you.  Second, use the coarse side of the stone grader every 5 or 6 minutes of work.  Use the corner of the grader and scrub aggressively to keep the stone cutting optimally.

One thing about the radius shape, if you're changing the angle of a tool, it is faster to do that cutting a radius at the same time.  If you later decide you don't like the radius, you'll only have to change that (and not the angle, too).

[Redoak]

Well Jeff...Done, finally! The skew now has a new profile (straight,btw) and is perfectly sharpened and honed. And if it knows what's good for it...It'll stay that way. 
One thing though, after the initial shaping on the vertical mount, which was pretty good as it was, I decided to move it over to the horizontal mount to polish it off a bit before honing. I used the TT setter to set the universal mount on that side and thought that would be "close enough". Apparently not.
A secondary bevel developed which didn't appear to be too far off the existing bevel and also seemed to favor one side. So instead of adjusting the universal mount I thought I'd just polish out to this new bevel. After all, that would be about what would happen when the skew needed resharpening.
However, seeing that the bevel was favoring one side after switching mounts I suspected the stone was no longer square and the error was compounded. Sure enough, when I trued the stone it was off about 3 thousands. (All that scrubbing with the stone grader) It seems for large area flat surfaces, having the stone square is essential, especially when switching mounts. But I've been wondering if i could have just loosened the tool in the jig and re-aligned it to the stone with the same results? 

[Jeff Farris]

Redoak,

As you have discovered, the parallelism of the Universal Support to the grindstone surface is critical when using the SVS-50. Any error between the two is compounded when you turn the tool over for the second side.

Another thing which may have contributed to your secondary bevel when moving from vertical to horizontal is that if you changed the bevel significantly, the protrusion will have changed in the grinding process.

All of these "speed bumps" smooth out as you get your tool dialed in to the TTS-100 profile and get more experience with the system. 

While your idea of aligning the tool to the stone might work, personally, I wouldn't do it.  The error will then just perpetuate itself.  I just make it a habit to use the truing tool before sharpening skews.