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To my knowledge Sketchup is not supported on the iPad Pro platform. There are tons of people asking for it (including me) but so far ... nada. The system certainly has the power – not sure what the impediment is.

Does anyone have any idea?

I'm hoping Jeff will respond directly to this.

After my wife berated me for ruining her knifes I went to the forum and discovered that what I'd done appears to be a relatively common problem. Despite my best efforts I had successfully added a concave shape into the blade of the knives (2 in particular). While I'm pretty good at maintaining a consistent angle along the length of the blade I'm useless at keeping the original "straight' shape of the blade. I've had the Tormek a little over a year so am still on the learning curve. 

While I find the T7 is great at maintaining my turning tools I justified the expense of the system by offsetting the cost of sending the knives out to be professionally sharpened. So as you can guess, this recent development has me in the dog house and I'm searching for some guidance. I imagine I'll be sending the knives out to correct the problem I caused but I want to know how to maintain them once we get them back.

Knives that have thicker blades I seem to have no trouble with. Knives with thinner blades have suffered under my hands though: one chef's knife (6" blade) and one paring knife (4" blade).

The stone has been trued up and prepped to grind at the fine coarseness. Since the problem does not occur with every knife it means the cause is either the style of knife (type of steel, length and flex of blade, etc) or the user. As for the latter: am I using too much pressure, should I simply "hold" the knife holder square to the stone and let the tool do the work? how much pressure is right? Does it make a difference where along the blade the holder is attached? should it be in the middle, towards the tip or towards the handle? Suspiciously, the concave portion appears in the portion of the blade where the holder is attached (basically the middle). Coincidence - or does the holder somehow change how the blade is presented to the stone?

Jeff, as you are the 'star' of the instructional videos and this, in my opinion, appears to be a common issue, would it make sense to update or add a video that touches on these finer points:  where to position the holder, how much pressure to use, how to insure you consistently maintain the original shape of the blade?

For anyone else who (hopefully) has overcome this dilemma please free to comment - I welcome the help.

Sign me - lonely in the dog house

Thanks Jeff and Ken. I'm the first to admit that as a newbie I'm on a steep learning curve. I'll keep at it. I am happy we have this forum to draw upon - there's definitely a great deal of collective knowledge out there and I appreciate the fact people take the time to not only read the questions but also share their experience.

While I still believe the SE76 should hold the tool square, now that I know it doesn't I can figure out ways to work around it.

The journey continues ....

I just found and read the earlier posts by RobinW and KenS on getting a square edge on chisels and plane blades. Seems I'm not alone. Their comments were very detailed and provided some clear insights as to why this problem exists and offers suggestions to rectify it.

Rightly or wrongly it appears I expected far too much from the SE76.

Thanks for the tips. FYI ... when I did discover the "skew" shape on the blade the first thing I did was re true the stone. I was able to resolve most of the problem by insuring I pushed the back end of the blade towards the honing wheel to insure the long point was being ground more. Not something I was really thrilled to have to do - I expected the jig being designed to "square the tool to be sharpened to the stone" would do what it was designed to do.

Do you have any comment regarding the fact that the SE76 does not hold the blade square? Why would there be movement? I can buy your comment regarding there being many things that can happen while you are sharpening (i.e. uneven pressure, etc) - but I can't accept that the jig allows this much movement.

Your comments ...   

Yesterday I tuned up 2 hand plane blades from a couple of old planes I picked up. All appeared to have gone well until I checked with a square to see if I was successful in slightly rounding the outside corners. To my dismay I discovered the entire cutting edge, while nice & sharp, was tapered. i.e. it had the shape of a skew chisel (obviously not that extreme but it was on a taper).

I rechecked that I had the two tightening screws tight - they were. What I discovered was that the plane blade could actually be pushed out of square with the SE76 - it was only by a couple of degrees but enough to mess up the squareness. I took the blade out of the jig, checked there was nothing on the side of the blade or inside the jig that might have prevented the blade from seating against the edge of the jig. There was nothing. I retightened everything, put the jig on the support, allowed the blade to sit on the wheel, & tried pushing sideways (parallel to the support arm) on the back end of the blade. I was again able to move the blade by a few degrees.

To make certain it wasn't something peculiar to the plane blade I went through the whole process with the other one ... same thing.

Has anyone ever experienced this? I've cranked the tightening screws but it doesn't seem to help.

For Jeff ... could the SE 76 be the culprit? Have there ever been any instances where the SE76 was machined poorly?

Appreciate any insights you might have.

Thanks to those of you who replied. The instructor of the course who tuned my gouge was Richard Raffan. I don't mean to turn this into a commercial but if you ever get the chance to take a course from him - grab it!!!

The explanation for the rationale of shaping the gouge this way is exactly as Jeff describes. My task is now to learn how to replicate sharpening this shape with the Tormek. Like everything else so far it's trial & error ... just another part of the journey. 

I'm a new Tormek user & relatively new to turning. I chose the Tormek as I had no previous experience with sharpening & felt that the Tormek system with all the jigs would eliminate the 'skill' & learning curve required to sharpen tools by hand & eye on a bench grinder. So far, I think that decision - while expensive - has been a good one.

I took a turning course given by a world renowned turner/instructor who tuned my detail gouge for me on a bench grinder. He basically ground the two wings differently: one wing longer than the other. It did make a difference which I could feel right away.

My question is ... can you sharpen an asymmetrical shape with the Tormek using the SVD-185?

It appears to me that you can't. The SVD-185 mechanics wants to present the bevel to the stone in a consistent manner: when you think about it that's exactly what you would want a jig to do.

Does anyone have any insight on this? Should I simply be satisfied with using a super sharp 'symmetrical' detail gouge?

Cheers