> if I offended you with my previous responses please accept my apologies.
Accepted, TY Rafael...
I will mention, when I sharpen my scrub plane blades, often I just freehand it, cause its not critical for anything, its a scrub. The work it performs is rough, not precise.
However, I do a lot of planing on edges and ends, to get them square to my jointed faces and to each other. So I want the blade edges STRAIGHT and prefer them square. Straight is most critical, as I can adjust the plane blade in the plane for non squareness. However, when using the MKII, often the micro bevel pattern that is easily visible as it becomes mirror like, does not even touch one of the edges. It can fall out of square that far... now granted, the micro bevel has very small height to it so it only requires a little non squareness for this to happen, prob. less than 1 deg, without doing the math. I am not trying to maintain 90deg +/- .01 deg here... I am trying to re sharpen the micro bevel edge, from end to end. That is the amount of squareness I am seeking.
I will also mention, some eclipse honing guides I have had reasonably good luck with (not all). The WP is a sophisticated version of this, but with more precision and easy setting of blades in the honing guide. It is also easily repeatable. Granted, a similar set up block can be hand made using the particulars of your honing guide and some math. For me, I prefer to buy tools vs. build them, so I can dedicate the shop time I have towards projects.
Also, I am not knocking the MKII jig. Yes, I have had problems with it in this regard. But its a very well designed sharpening system at a very competitive price point. I also think the blade setting design is excellent, and repeatable.
While LV is putting time and energy into sharpening products now, maybe LV will offer an MKII optional clamp bar with a means to maintain squareness when setting and while in use. Possibly adding a material on the underside as well. Increasing the diam of the knurled nuts for added tightness without tools would also be helpful. This will allow existing MKII users who want more reliable squareness, a low cost optional add-on. Rob, thoughts?