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I agree. I would freehand. Go very slowly and take your time.

Heavy cambering is usually used for rough initial planning.

Good summary Ken. A plane with heavy cambering is called a "Scrub Plane". I have a plane that was purpose built as a scrub plane with the length of a jack plane a narrowish sole and heavy camber with rudimentary settings. It quickly flattens boards ready for the jointing plane. Unfortunately the camber is too heavy for the SE-77 so I use the SVD-110 at the set angle and freehand the camber.

I have good shed lighting, but not quite enough when sharpening. I have two additional 18W rectangular LED lights over the sharpening area which helps a lot.

I am betting it is the same as the magnifying glass in the DBS-22 Drill Bit Sharpening Attachment

It is not. It has a separate part number and looks different in the product images.

I know in Australia the woodworking stores have several Tormek knock offs and I think the UK would be much the same. They come in at about AU$400 which is probably around 200 pounds or less. The wheels are interchangeable.

If it is just surface rust then I would use Ballistol as a lubricant on some wet&dry - 80-120 as rolsen says. Ballistol disolves surface rust and also lubricates and protects. As for flattening, it does depend on how out of flat it is. If it is way out then it may require a LOT of patience to flatten. You do really want it as flat as possible for best performance.

One of the better hand tool teachers is Paul Sellars. A man with a lot of experience and a great teacher. His plane restoration video is here.

https://paulsellers.com/2016/01/restoring-bench-plane-video-on-youtube/

If it were me ... at the risk of restating other people's posts! ... I would heel and tip grind on the SJ which is all you need really. It creates the secondary bevel with one advantage. You can hand sharpen just the secondary bevel on a hand sharpening stone between regrinds on the Tormek by placing the heel/tip on the stone. This gets you back to work much faster.

This is what I do with my woodworking tools. I use a 5,000 Shapton and leather strop to get me back to work without breaking out the Tormek. I rest the tip and heel on the stone which makes it easy to refresh the edge. It only takes about 30 seconds to re-establish an edge. The hollow grind makes this an ideal technique for keeping tools sharp. After a while I can break out the Tormek and re-establish the hollow grind on multiple tools I find this much more efficient.

It is nice to have if you are making YouTube videos.

Ha ha - too true.

Another use is if you are going after ultimate sharpness for some reason it gives you an idea of how various techniques work.

Absolutely agree. And well done.

Yup. That all the BESS is. A general guide. Indeed IMHO the BESS is over priced and over rated.

Tormek IT replied that according to our hosting service, we had an attack by a botnet.

My money weas on a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. All too common these days. Insecure smart devices making it easier.

Zinc machining must be a fairly new technology.

Not sure what you mean Ken. New to Tormek, or new in general. Casting zinc alloys has been around for many decades, see alloy wheels on cars, and alloy engines and parts. I think that it was more expensive than steel fabricated parts which may have been a disincentive. Also new alloys have been developed with more strength and resistance to fracture and this may have also been a contributing factor.

Perhaps someone on speaking terms with the Tormek people could ask them what their decision making process was.

As others have said the is excess dust when sharpening dry, and wet is more efficient. In addition the wheel last much longer since the water reduces the impact on the grit. The same also applies to CBN.

The only down side to me is having to clean up after a sharpening session. I don't see that as a real bother, just part of the process.

Lawnmower blades are very forgiving and any sharpening will be infinitely better than how they come from the factory. I have typically used an angle grinder in the past. However a flat single cut file will produce as fine an edge as you will ever need. I would not even bother with the tormek to be honest.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. But do you mean that aluminum oxide won't cut mentioned steels?

Yes and no. It is a matter of hardness. More specifically MOHS hardness. There are different forms of harness but it is MOHS hardness which determines the abrasive for each material. In the MOHS hardness cscale each material is given a number form 0 to 10, 10 being diamond and 0 being talc. For an abrasive to be able to sharpen it has to have a higher MOHS hardness that the material being sharpened.

For steels it depends on the composition and the temper. Different steels of ther same composition will have different harnesses depending on the temper. Knives often consist of several different steels so you may easily be able to sharpen the casing but have difficulty with the core.

Aluminium oxide has a range of MOHS hardness depending on the impurities but in general it can harden carbon steels but not so much high speed steel. So it will vary. When I was sharpening a very hard Japanese knife, my HSS thicknesser blades or my HSS drill bits the SH wheel glazed rapidly. It did cut the steel but was very slow and the wheel had to be constantly graded. It proved to be extremely inefficient. The issue was that the steel had a higher MOHS hardness than those steels. It may have been that the steel fell into the range of the softer to harder particles within the SG wheel this glazed rapidly.

The glazing happens when the steel being sharpened breaks the grit down since it is harder than the grit and you end up with a smooth wheel unable to cut the steel. This is an indication that the wheel is too soft.

Bottom line is that for efficient sharpening you need a harder grit that the material being sharpened.

I may try the existing stone in the meantime just to see what happens

You can use the SG so long as the jigs et all allow you to use it. The only difference is that the hollow is slightly deeper due to the reduced radius.