Never Enough Money wrote:
Thus the outer edge experiences 16965/11310 * 100 = 50% more!

Am I wrong? If so, how?

You are exactly right. I initially wrote very favorable reviews about
the system on this forum, but after several years, have become
disenchanted.

I found that over time, the right side of all of my blades were ground
down much more than the left. (The instructions suggest using the
right side of the disk, which is why the right was always worn down
more.) I suggest putting a square up to each blade. I found that
every blade -- plane, chisel, etc. was shorter on the right than the
left. They all had a consistent arc.

After spending a bunch of time trying to adjust things to get it right,
I finally just gave up. The courser the paper on the disk, the worse
the blade gets out of square. The 80x blue disks is the worst
offender. I am convinced this is a design problem and not a setup
problem because I checked that the disk (with paper applied) was flat
and found that if I move the blade to the other side of the disk, the
left side will be ground more than the right.

It seemed to me that the problem gets worse as the paper dulls. That
may be because the outermost grit is not used as much as the inner. It
seems counterintuitive, but as I use the machine, I move the blade back
and forth, so the outermost edge of the disk gets hit very
infrequently. If you see sparks on the 80x on the outside, but not the
inside, then you know for sure the outer is sharper than the inner.
The sharper grit on the outside exacerbates the problem because that
part of the disk is sharper *and* traveling faster. I think the system
works much better with sharp paper and that's why at first the system
seems great, but it gets worse and worse. It doesn't take long for the
paper to be dull enough to achieve this effect.

On a chisel that is 1" or less, it usually isn't a big deal, but with a
2" plane blade, the difference is pretty significant and you end up
using up a lot of the 9 micron paper trying to get the edge all the way
across. You may be able to work around this problem by switching the
blade back and forth between the left and the right sides. Of course
the blade will be crowned, but many people see that as an advantage.

As I mentioned before, I finally just gave up. Lately I have been
doing the bulk of the "grinding" with 60 grit Norton 3x paper on glass
and then finish up with 3M abrasives, each at a higher microbevel. I
made very simple sharpening jigs based on the designs on Brent Beach's
website and everything seems to be going well. When I started on the
60 grit, I was amazed at how much metal I had to remove to get the
bevel square again.

We'll see what I say in a few years...

Mark