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You may want to look at this thread , or this one, this one, this one, and this one. 

One use will scoot that Bess number over or very close to 100.  It is doable and rewarding once you're there, but not practical for everyday use...IMHO

My experience as well. Nowadays I only use my BESS tester for very high end knives or knives I have never sharpened and am not sure what the feel is when they're sharp. For all others, the sound and feel of slicing through paper is enough. Even more than sharpness, it helps test for consistency along the edge.

Thanks for the very detailed answer, it makes a lot of sense !

I simply lock the knife in the jig, set a fixed projection length (like 138 mm from the clamp to the arch), and adjust the support height until the felt wheel perfectly matches the serration angle. Then I just guide the knife smoothly across the wheel.

I have no experience with diamond-loaded felt, so I will defer to those who have. IMO, as long as you slightly grind the edge you're good. However, I'd be careful with guiding "the knife smoothly over the wheel" as you risk rounding out the tips of the serrations. Also, if your grinding is efficient, you *will* get a burr on the backside, that you will have to remove somehow, and honing the frontside will not be sufficient : you will most likely get a foil-like burr.

[EDIT] Have you seen this post about serrated knives ? [/EDIT]

hi

Surface polishing and deburring can be done using 80-120 grit sanders

Yet another commercial post that only adds confusion. Those are becoming more frequent.

You have to grind the serrations before you hone or else you'll just have polished, blunt serrations. The Tormek technique for grinding serrations is freehand on the rounded shoulders of the grinding wheel. Some suggest to grind the backside with the side of the wheel, others to just hone the backside.

As for me, I prefer to clamp the knife in a vise or any holder, work on the serrations with a round ceramic rod, then use a few light passes of a very fine diamond plate for the backside.

The Tormek method is too much trouble IMO for serrated knives, and it is easy to grind way too much, or to inadvertently change the shape of the serrations.

I'm sorry but I find the posts by @KaithyHong suspicious : newly registered user, some posts having nothing to do with the actual topic, links to an external website that's 26 days old and has nothing to do with a "smooth swivel plate" except that an AI could have confused the two.

Out of 7 posts, 5 start more or less the same and give a general advice. Out of all the new members of this forum, that's both the most educated and most unspecific one.

I advise caution.

One thing I'd add is to make sure the stone is properly trued and the support bar is firmly locked before making any adjustments. Small setup differences can have a bigger impact on the final result than most people expect.

I'm sorry, what ?

Then a solid option would be to contact Tormek support ([email protected]).

I don't believe the second knife (the one with the black handle) has been suddenly "eaten" by your T8. It has seen a lot of sharpening time before it went to a standard convex (or straight) shape to this concave shape.

The first one I can believe, and is a common problem with Tormek machines. It can be avoided with :
- careful technique (compensating by spending longer at the heel, not using too much pressure, ...)
- a few tips. Notably, the biggest improvement for me was rounding out the shoulders of the wheel after truing it. Too sharp corners will dig into the blade whenever the blade does not rest fully flat against the stone. Also, I always make sure to lay down the knife ever so slightly tilted so the heel hits the stone first and not the other way around. Of course you have to aim for flat, but better to err on the heel-first side rather than heel-last.

As for your wobble, is your video taken right after truing ? That would be odd. My bet would be that the stone has been trued, taken off, then put back on, but rotated. There has to be some clearance for the wheel to slide onto the shaft. So if you put it back in a position that's different from the one used for truing, then that will create some wobble (proportional to 1-cos(alpha_truing-alpha_sharpening) ). Standard practice is to always put the stone on the shaft "label up".

Also, please keep in mind that such wobble is unstable. Said otherwise : it will create a more uneven surface over time, especially if you use heavy pressure : the blade will kind of dig in each time it encounters a low spot, making it even lower. This is another reason to use reasonable pressure, and to often true  the wheel a little as opposed to seldom true it a lot. However, if every part of the blade sees the wheel a similar amount of time, the effect of this wobble will be homogeneous along the length of the blade and will not create dishing.

Hope this helps!

It will also show you when you've stropped too much.

Can you elaborate on this ? What are the effects of too much stropping ? Do you mean honing on the honing wheel ? What is your process ?

I have never experience such a thing as too much honing, but maybe it is because I haven't done enough testing...

I'd agree with Rick. I had not thought of using the USB real close to the wheel, it will definitely give welcome support, then some kind of a laser line can be used to keep the angle constantish.

The SVMs will not provide enough clearance : the handles will hit the USB.

I would give it a try freehand. Not much you can do aside from that.

My question is, if the KS123 is not satisfactory for high volume such as "weekend warrior" farmers market sharpeners, what is satisfactory?

The way I see it, a sharpener at a farmer's market will not reset the angle but rather reproduce the existing one using the sharpie method. If one wants to reset the angle to, say, manufacturer's specs then the KS-123 will do just fine but my gut feeling is it's not going to be the majority of cases.

When I'm talking about high volume sharpening, I'm thinking more of a "I want to sharpen these 10 knives @15dps". In that case, KJs, vernier calipers and a calculator/Dutchman's tables/a simple arccos+arcctan formula are a bliss.

Ken, you're right, I'll give it a shot.

TL/DR : 15 dps.

For a more detailed summary : most members recommend something in the 15-20dps range, with a majority grinding closer to 15dps. Setting this angle using the KS-123 is practical for low-volume sharpeners.

[follow the instructions]

As long as I follow the instructions and always start from a smaller angle when using the KS123 to approach the desired angle, I have no problem with precision.

Unfortunately that's not how friction works: once the static friction coefficient is no longer sufficient to keep the needle in place, it will switch to kinetic friction, and the needle will move as much as necessary to get back into the friction cone. Then stay in place, and here we go again. So while the error may always be on the same side, we have little control on where the needle stops.

As for a 160 grit stone raising a burr quickly, I have no doubt.