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Yeah, mine was not pre-attached and fell off almost immediately, it wouldn't even hold its own weight.  I just solved it with two strips of the 3M VHB double-sided foam tape I keep around for working on my RC planes.  It's the same stuff that most car name badges, etc are attached with, so it holds like the jaws of death.  No more problems there!

Well, and then determining the factors that make that particular blade work the best in the *exact* use you are sharpening it for.  Pure sharpness means nothing if the edge won't withstand the abuse you throw at it, etc. 

I just drop the trough on my T8 until the stone is clear of the water, then top it up before the next use.  When I start to see it getting scuzzy, it gets tossed on the lawn where the stone mud and steel filings won't hurt anything, rinsed out in the garden hose, and refilled.

Oh, I've played with the variables, and still do!  I just like the BESS as a basic way to compare one edge to another in my own sharpening.  Nothing like a standard to test to! 

I tend to go highly polished edges, with as acute of a bevel as the knife can hold.  I've had fine luck with tomatoes and a polished edge, as long as I've got the edge polished and acute ENOUGH.

I really would like a SEM or something similar so I could properly evaluate the edge!  Technically, given the way I understand the SB stone to work, there *is* no way it can reach a scratch pattern as fine as an 8K stone by nature of the abrasive.  Now, that being said, I'm as far as possible from an expert with the stone and its structure! 

Certainly, for all working purposes, the edge straight off the honing wheel is sufficient for basically any use you'd put it to at all.  It gets into the "how do you define sharp" arguement, I think.  Are we talking perfection of edge linearity?  Minimum scratch pattern?  Minimum apex?  Easiest cutting of a given material?  I've heard that argument run around about a million times.  I generally base my personal comparisons on the result of BESS testing, just for a baseline.  I should really get some numbers for my Tormek edges, come to think of it! 

Probably a good point, Ken.  The new wheel arrived today, and I popped it right on.  Problem solved!  The wheel tracks dead-center now, no wobble I can detect at all with the naked eye.   

Thank you very much for the assistance, Stig!

Hasn't showed up yet, if FedEx is to be believed, it'll be mid-next-week some time. 

I think the biggest problem there is that the major shippers have reached a parity of incompetence.  They *all* smash your packages, lie about delivery dates, leave notes when there ARE people home, etc.  There's really no competition, because hey, that guy can get away with it, so why can't we? 

Agreed.  It seems that shipping companies have been becoming more and more carelessly rough with packages, to the tune that conventional cardboard boxes and styrofoam, unless VERY carefully designed, simply aren't enough to protect something with any weight.  I've had a number of things delivered in totally unusable condition that I've had to deal with shipping back.  The packaging was entirely suitable for handling, it's the same packaging you'd find in Lowes, etc, that survived being trucked to their store just fine.  But give it to USPS/UPS?  Wrecked. 

Lucky duck!

I've actually used the hollow grind / microbevel that way myself, mostly because I can.  Give that edge just a couple more super-light passes on a high-grit waterstone (8k Snow White for me) and it puts an extra little bit of pop into the edge with basically no more effort at all. 

Do I need to?  Nah, that edge off the honing wheel is already sharp enough for any use short of eye surgery.  Do I do it anyway?  Heck yeah!

HAH.  If I refused delivery of all damaged boxes, I'd never get *anything* I ordered online. 

Definitely will!  They're sending me a new drive wheel, since that seems to be the culprit here.  It would take very, VERY little variation in the boring of that central hole in the casting to cause the wobble, just a fraction of a degree would be enough with that amount of lever arm for it to act over.  It will be interesting to see how the new wheel does.  I'd put money on it being a total solution.

I most heartily agree, and if I was fully convinced from the outset that I actually had an out-of-standard condition, I would most likely have contacted them directly.  However, without knowing if that was actually something that's just normal operation (the part is stamped, after all, and stamped parts often have some degree of irregularity) I would have felt rather foolish contacting the formal support system.  That's one of the things I love about forums, you can run your questions off of guys with a lot more experience! 

The assistance I've received here, and speaking with Stig in the private messages, is moving toward resolving this in a most satisfactory way. 

I removed the drive wheel, washer, pin, and spring washer from the drive shaft this evening, and used my dial indicator to check the runout on the shaft while rotating it with a hand on the stone.  The shaft displayed a total gauge movement of less than .002", which I would say is within the error margin of my hand-spinning method and the cheap Chinese dial indicator.  The shaft, to my inspection, is entirely suitable for use.  Which leaves the drive wheel as the culprit, most likely.  I could easily take it to work and use the touch-probe CMM to find out the exact amount of non-perpendicularity in the central bore, but that's probably a bit deeper into the weeds than I really need to chase this rabbit.   

Took a couple absolutely terrible videos, freehand cellphone, sorry, but they do show the wobble fairly well.  The one with the honing wheel has it oriented into the set of holes that wobble the least. 

https://youtu.be/ZEgZLmdecgY

https://youtu.be/Tmg9fHMhWuA

We are indeed talking a T8, purchased as a "Like New Open Box" from Amazon.  The stone showed no sign that it had ever been mounted on the shaft, and the shaft still had the protective sleeve on it when I received the unit, so along with my quick check, I'm reasonably sure the shaft isn't bent.  I'll dial-indicator it this afternoon anyway, just to be sure.

I guess what I was doing with this thread is just establishing if I have something that's "normal and expected" from the unit, or if I'm looking at something I *should* contact support about.

Thanks, Ken!

You are correct, Ken.  My personal unit has the wobble, the store unit ran perfectly straight. 

No, I have not been thus far, but I *have* been able to identify the source.  The drive wheel appears to have been bored incorrectly.  The shaft is running perfectly true, at least to the naked eye.  My inspection method was simple but should be effective to within a few thousandths.  I put a laser-printed grid of very fine horizontal lines  on a .5mm spacing on the desk below it, and rested my chin on the corner of my laser case to watch it rotate against the background of the lines.  There was no visible displacement at all, so I would judge that the runout is less than .003 on the shaft.  I can get a more precise reading with my dial indicator if it becomes an issue.  The drive wheel, however, is displaying the exact same wobble as the honing wheel as it runs on the shaft.  Which leads me to believe that perhaps the shaft bore isn't cut perfectly perpendicular to the face of the drive wheel that the honing wheel rides on?

There is no variation in the wobble between each of the three possible orientations of the honing wheel, so I suspect the honing wheel is itself straight and true.  I'm actually working on a really simple solution right now, that I'll give a shot later this weekend:  I'm going to laser-cut some cardstock spacers to fit around the lugs on the honing wheel, and use them to counter the displacement on the drive wheel.  Should just artificially square it with the drive shaft.