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I prefer to sharpen towards the edge. It's faster and the homemade jig I have is easier to use that way. I never could free hand. Strange thing, my grandson has been watching me use my Tormek since he was a little boy. Now an adult, he can sharpen free hand using nothing but a stone and some lubricant.

I'm still here, Rob. I post occasionally. Haven't heard from Jeff or Elden in a long time. I won't be spending any more money on sharpening tools. The SuperGrind (T7) with my homemade jig makes it a breeze to sharpen knives. My "workshop" is my attached garage, just 5 steps out my kitchen door and I'm in front of my sharpening station. We have a modest collection of mid-priced kitchen knives that serve us well. The only thing I'm thinking of adding is a ceramic honing rod.

I do only a bit of woodworking these days. Mostly repairs. For example, recently built a couple of short sections of cedar fencing and a gate to complete a job that was mostly done by contractors we and the neighbors hired. My next project is to refurbish my tool shed doors with a bit of woodworking and some fresh paint. Since retiring a few years ago my interests have turned to things like pickleball.

I can't speak for chisels, but I experimented with a carbide knife. It was not real sharp out of the box, and it did not get much sharper after quite some work.

The way these seem to work is they have very hard bits of carbide bound together by some kind of cement. When you try to sharpen those with a diamond wheel, you grind the cement and tear the carbide bits off. That being said, it seems to me the overall geometry of the chisel striking end is of more consequence, function-wise, than the actual edge ? Or does a sharp edge have any hope of staying sharp past the few first strikes ?

Tungsten carbide steel is very hard, so it makes for a long-lasting and durable edge on a tool. But it is brittle. You cannot sharpen it to a fine edge because it so thin that it chips. You can notice this on new carbide tipped tools. Like the point on a carbide tipped circular saw blade has about a 70 degree bevel. Try to sharpen this to a more acute angle and chips will fall away from the tips.

For this reason, I've never seen or heard of a carbide steel knife. There are carbide tipped scribing tools that are used to scribe vinyl floor tiles, for example. When they get dull people usually just replace them with a new one.

I don't know if I can hammer the shaft to knock it through my black carbide wheel. I suspect the shaft diameter is reduced around the wheel and it would crack the wheel.

Yes, there's a huge danger of breaking the grindstone. I speak from experience. :-)

Considering it has very lite use I was surprised it needed truing

My grindstone did the same thing at first. I found that when I was sharpening knives I was applying more force to one side of the grindstone than the other.

The Tormek TS-740 Sharpening Station advertises "a work surface between 750 mm to 830 mm (29 3/4" and 32 2/3") in height".

Just continue to use your Tormek as usual. That little bit of zinc or aluminum won't hurt anything and will eventually be removed as you sharpen your tools, grade the grindstone, and true the grindstone.

TT-50 and shaped the stone with it. The stone did not keep the 90° angle of the grinding surface with its side, but the tool support was parallel with the stone in the horizontal position

That alone should be worthy of a replacement of the entire machine under warranty. I recommend you contact Tormek and ask about returning your machine for a warranty replacement.

What you've observed means the tool support is not parallel with the axis of rotation of the grindstone. Moreover, worse than not being parallel, they may askew, meaning they don't lie in the same plane. You will never get your chisels and plane irons square.

It could be that the support bar is bent, but that's easy enough to check if you have a carpenter's square and a flat surface. It could instead be that the sockets that hold the legs of the support bar are not aligned correctly.

After 20 years, I'm still using my upgraded T-2000 SuperGrind.

I made a platform that attaches to the base of the scissors jig. The scissors jig allows the platform to get a lot closer to the grindstone than the platform of the SVD-110. I use it to sharpen all my knives and anything else suited to it. I can sharpen knives ranging in size from pen knives to machetes.

If I'm having a sharpening session where I have several knives t sharpen, all at the same angle, I don't have to adjust the jig in between knives.

Does it help much in the end?
If you were to guess how many BESS points would drop?

Impossible to say, because it depends on too many other factors such as the type and condition of the steel and the edge.

Also, you might get it really sharp for showing off, but then when you go to use it, it can lose that keen edge quickly.

When honing free hand you can easily feel and hear when you've got the knife at the angle that matches the bevel. And there's no danger in sneaking up on that angle, as long as you do it from the side that won't make contact with the knife edge. In other words, you never want the knife tilted in such a way that only the knife edge makes contact with the stropping wheel; that will ruin the edge.

After you true the grindstone it will have a very rough surface. Sharpen something like an old chisel or mower blade first. It will help smooth out the rough surface so you can use it for more refined tasks.

If, after repeated attempts, you cannot get good results I would contact Tormek support.

There was someone, a few years ago, had the same problem with a T8, if I recall correctly. There was no definitive understanding of the cause of the problem, but I suspected that the support bar was not parallel with axis of rotation of the grindstone. If this is your problem you will forever have problems squaring chisel ends.

On the other hand, it is much more likely that nothing is wrong with your machine and you are just not using the right techniques, as this is perhaps the most common beginner problem.

Keep practicing. Try to find old beat up chisels that you can practice on. Lots of people have them in toolboxes and rarely use them because they are not sharp.

Is three really any issue with adding anti-freeze to the water?

I wouldn't do that. Embedding the grindstone with anti-freeze might cause more damage than allowing it to freeze.