Has anybody else bought this thing? I just bought it yesterday and spent the evening working on chisels I find the sharpening centre to be an extremely poor design. Getting a consistent angle on the chisels is almost impossible with the way the tool rest adjusts and unless I am extremely careful setting up each steel or chisel the flat stone is not going to end up with ridges that will be hard to flatten out.
At this point I would advise against spending the money on this but I am going to try to get the Delta rep to demonstrate how to use it effectively. My initial evaluation suggests it needs a sturdier tool rest with a firm vertical guide so that you could use a micro adjustment to set your height and a mounting jig so that steels or chisels could get fastened into the traveller consistently. This would allow you to obtain a consistent angle and always use the entire stone so that it wears evenly. The guide that comes on the traveller is only good for steels so chisels have to be set using a machinist square in an awkward position. If you don't do this you'll get your chisels out of square real fast. All they had to do was mount the guide on the other surface to fix this.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't a woodworker who designed this thing. I spent $275 (CDN) and now my chisel angle range between 23 and 32 degrees and I have to put my secondary bevels on using scary sharp. Is that money well spent?
Let me know if you've used this thing and how it went.
Norm nedelmann atshawdot ca