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Now you've got me thinking that another approach might be to leave the adjustment knobs a touch loose to allow for some play, and just grind for square based on feel / muscle memory.

Does that make sense? How to you guys do it?

I used to think jigs should be graunched down tight, however I now tend to just go with lightly held with a bit of fineness in the muscle memory. For me it works better BUT I mostly sharpen woodturning tools and as I have said before in this forum that is a different sort of sharp! my expertise in any other tool is limited as I don't use them so much.

As Ken said, the hollow is a hangover from smaller grind wheel diameter, a 10" is almost though obviously not quite flat.

Even my wood turning tools get touched up with a diamond card between sharpening, can just add that edge for the final pass cut before sharpening properly again.

If you do go for the clean up and carry on option you could use some wax on it rather than a sticky lubricant e.g. https://www.liberon.co.uk/product/lubricating-wax/ I use this on many machine tables etc. it is waterproof and adds that slip factor you want without dust sticking to it and making it messy. for things like my cast iron bandsaw table it is the only way to go!

As I said it was hard to see the angle in the original photo.

The second 40 refers to the swing on the wing, you could measure 40° and put a bit of tape on the bar to show you the extent of the swing in each direction. I would still recommend that the 3 facets should be approached separately then blended together.

Hard to say, but from the pictures that front edge looks closer to 60° plus you have a lot of metal to remove before it comes sharp!

Since my post above where I said I don't use the 40/40 I have worn out a bowl gouge below the tormek jig required flute. so have played with the 40 40 as a manual grind.

Simply set the table to 40° then set a pencil line from each edge of the wheel at 40° as your start and finish lines. Put the gouge upside down on the table and flatten it off on the wheel if starting from scratch that will give the profile. Then sharpen it in 3 sections the twist action is very different on the front to the wings, so it's very hard to sharpen as one action. finally blend the 3 faces together with quick light grinds.

I have to say I have not found a good setting on a jig for this grind, but have found it very easy to achieve from the table.

Here is how I would use the Angle Cube (AC) to set the angle of an object to be sharpened using the flat side of a Tormek diamond wheel.

Just for reference, here is the AC on my FVB, which has been set to zero.


Place the AC against the side of the wheel.  Notice that it is placed with the side of the AC against the wheel, not the bottom, although that would not matter.  Also, note that the side of the wheel is not perpendicular with the top surface of my FVB. 


Set the angle for the side of the wheel to zero.


Place the freshly zeroed AC against the blade/object to be sharpened and note the angle displayed.  It is hard to read, but the angle displayed is 14.75 (I think).  Adjust the USB/MultiBase as needed to achieve the desired angle.  Sharpen away. 


Maybe I missed something or misunderstood something and I'm answering something that wasn't asked.  I'm open to having that cleared up. 

Rick

I didn't really explain it well, basically in flattening the backs on the side of the wheel you would need a precise engineers 90° to the guide, while setting a saw for wood cutting 89.7° carpentry tools work on different tolerances

I use a similar device for setting my saw blades, it appears accurate when tested by the eye and set square method that I used previously, and I have been happy with the accuracy of resulting cuts. I can't say with any certainty if that precision is good enough for flattening plane / chisel backs but it probably is as good as any other method. 

Have to say as my eyes age these digital readout devices are becoming more and more useful

No Rich, I am from the densely populated United Kingdom, which is how I know to spell colour with a u in it :-) but along with my hobby of making sawdust and shavings, I also ride motorcycles and travel often to Scandinavia as it is empty! Principally Sweden as my wife and I have made many friends there.

My experience of Sweden is it is mostly empty, population of the whole country is about the same as Greater London. So any company making a product in Sweden really needs to find buyers in larger quantities, Germany is an obvious export target.

As far as language goes Swedish television broadcasts a lot in English (actually mostly American) with subtitles so most of my Swedish friends speak excellent English, though they can't spell colour or centre  The main cities in the south are actually quite multicultural, but further north the population is quite sparse and mostly been there for generations acclimatizing to the cold.

The beauty of initials and numbers is they become a language of their own, hopefully with the growth and accessibility of the glossary we will all soon speak fluent Tormek.

I read this thread wondering when to pipe up, and what to say.

The original post is simple BUT to put tool tips onto a web page is one thing, to add it in real time to a forum quite another.

My suggestions are what I think is the easiest way forward,

First, make the Tormek Part Numbers thread a sticky one so it is always at the top as a reference. 

Second, Anyone who doesn't recognize an acronym should be encouraged to ask on the thread, this will serve 2 purposes first to encourage thread users to be more careful in acronym use and second it will inform new users to look at the reference post at the top of the page.

Jan, also deleted it from my quote of your post :-) It may be an issue for some using diamond paste, though as I said it's a light touch needed on the flute so even then it shouldn't be an issue.

Rich, I am impressed to read about 75+ Rockwell C hardness. It is something hardly imaginable for me.


Jan

I don't use the honing wheel to grind my flutes, I just touch them enough to tidy up any burr I may have created.

Welcome to the forum, 

Please find yourself some junker knives from a thrift store to practice on.  It does take time to develop the sense of and muscle memory.  No good reason to wear down your decent kitchen knives to get that learning.  I nearly destroyed my Leatherman Wave when I first started.  I have considered sending it in to have a new blade put, it was so bad.  One commenter said "how did you even do that?".  I don't actually know, so I could not answer. 

Rick

If you knew, you wouldn't have done it! I bought some very nasty soft metal cheap tools and ground the hell out of them when I started sharpening it's a good cost effective tip. The  lessons learned pay off every time you go to the stone.

As it is bonded say to a bowl gouge, the bevel itself has no coating after the coating is ground through so the only piece of interest is the top coating which will form the cutting edge this as you say is a very thin layer and will probably sharpen very well on a standard wheel. The advantage comes in longevity of the edge created due to the coat being the actual cutting edge. (though as in other thread in wood turning the longevity of a woodturners edge is never long, miles of shavings can be cut in minuets of time) 

I don't have any nitride but do have some titanium coated spindle gouges, and anecdotal evidence is that I get about 50% longer on an edge than I do with HSS, they sharpen just fine on a standard wheel.

[what gets you back to using the tool in a way that you will sharpen often?]

The real question is this : what gets you back to using the tool in a way that you will sharpen often?  Turning tools must be resharpened often, and your sharpening practice must facilitate that.  Otherwise, you will end up using a tool too long between sharpenings.

Let us know what you find out.

Kind regards,
Rich

Exactly right, little and often. a lathe running at 1000rpm will strip any perfect edge in a matter of minutes a slightly less perfect edge refreshed often. With a once a week "treat" perfect sharpening is a far more effective use of your time at the Tormek.

This is a wood turning only statement, hand tools, knives etc. are completely different.