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For me, it is actually useful to get some of my tools as sharp as possible.  Lathe chisels not so much, but on plane blades, I have found with my bench stones a noticeable difference between stopping at 4000 vs. 8000 vs. 16000 on the final hone. 

I have a Japanese stone and find it to be more of a "statement" than a useful tool. You do not need to sharpen beyond the 1000 grit of the stone and then hone it. You are just bragging in other words.

I think it has its place... honing on a solid wheel will typically produce a "crisper" (which equals sharper) edge vs. honing on leather, and a more refined edge will perform better in certain situations (usually push cutting).  I would think a lot of woodworking tools would benefit, as well as knives used in this fashion.

But, for the typical knife use... it can be more than is needed, again depending on how it's used... (although I do believe an edge doesn't have to be "very toothy" to perform, like some do).

I don't think it's just for bragging... to me, polish is just a "side product" of a sharp knife... (but sometimes, nothing wrong with that either!)   

Thanks for the info.  This will come in handy when I eventually need (and work up the courage) to sharpen the thing.

I searched the Forum for "corner chisel" but couldn't find anything, so thought I'd start a new thread.

Anyone try sharpening corner chisels on the Tormek and have any advice about proper methods?  Unlike a V-Chisel, the bevel is on the inside corner rather than the outside, which would seem to make it a more difficult proposition.  I just recently got a corner chisel to add to my hand tool kit, and haven't needed to resharpen it yet, but that day will come sooner than later.

Thanks for the screw clamp idea.  When I first tried with the universal support, I actually tried rigging up a plywood jig that approximated the radius of the axe and clamping it to the head, but the topography of the head was such that it wasn't stable.  But the screw clamp might be an elegant solution with the built in radius of the clamp jaw.

BTW, I didn't realize the Festool screwclamps were simply rebranded Protool ones, but I guess that makes sense given the merger of the companies.

That makes sense, thanks @cbwx34

Just got a T-8.

The main impetus was to get consistent results on my turning tools.  I had been using a Worksharp 3000, primarily working off of the slotted wheel, but could not get a consistently sharp edge on all of those tools.  But the straw that broke the camel's back was last month, when I lost an entire afternoon having to reestablish the primary bevel on two large plane irons on my bench stones.

Been using the T-8 now for about a week.  Amazing results so far on my lathe chisels -- they've never been this sharp, and it's pretty remarkable how quickly it is to resharpen them once I re-grinded the basic profile.  Have done half of my chisels, all the kitchen knives (the wife is very impressed), an axe, and started to do some plane irons.  The plane irons are a bit more of a challenge, at least the ones that are wider than the wheel diameter.  My first try with the iron on my jack plane did not go well, as in moving the blade back and forth across the wheel I ended up removing more material on parts of the blade, resulting in an edge that was anything but straight.  But after a bit of patience, and checking the edge regularly with a square, I was able to get it reasonably straight, enough that a final honing of a secondary bevel on my bench stones connected the dots all the way across the edge.  I'm still a bit leary of putting the widest blades on the machine, like the 2 5/8" iron for my no. 8 jointer, or the 3" blade for my large spokeshave, but I'll deal with that if and when those blades need some radical redressing on the wheel, as opposed to just a quick re-honing on the bench stones.

I have a couple of basic questions, which I'm sure have been posed at some point on this forum, so forgive the repetition:

1) Play in the universal tool support

I've noticed a small amount of play in the universal support rod, particularly in the vertical position.  If you just allow gravity to do its work, the rod ends up ever so slightly out of parallel to the wheel.  I've corrected for this by applying pressure upwards on the rod when tightening the knobs on the machine to lock it in.  On small tools, I don't think the difference is all that noticeable, but on large plane irons, it seems like this could definitely effect blade squareness, not to mention what results you might get from re-dressing the wheel.
Is this play normal?

2) Time required with grading stone

I feel like I read in the manual somewhere that to bring the stone up to 1000 grit, you're supposed to press the stone grader to the wheel for around 20-25 seconds (I can't seem now to find where I read it -- maybe I saw it in an official Tormek video?).  But in seeing various demonstrations of it in use, I have seen people apply the grading stone for as few as 5 seconds.  How long do people generally recommend working with the grading stone, and is there a time differential going from coarse to fine vs. fine to coarse?

3) Finer honing compounds on leather wheel

At some point I might look into getting the finer Japanese stone wheel.  From what I've seen, the 4000 grit Japanese stone supposedly gets the edge fine enough that any further honing on the leather wheel is redundant.  But what if one were to charge the leather wheel with a finer substance, like super low-micron DMT diamond paste?  Anyone try doing this even without using the Japanese stone?

Thanks in advance for any advice.     

Just got a T-8, and after doing my lathe chisels, I started attacking other things I had lying around, like this axe I picked up at a garage sale a couple of years ago, and which had just been gathering dust in my shop since the edge was so severely damaged.  The head was too big for the axe jig, so I just worked it on the tool-rest -- somewhat clumsily, initially, as you can see by the multiple bevels.  But eventually I got a nice sharp edge.  Haven't tested it out on wood yet, but it slices the heck out of paper!