Honing guide

I mentioned a honing guide a couple of days ago. Arrived last night and I've just been playing with it. As someone else said, really nice bit of engineering. Good enough to sit it on the shelf and look at it. It can certainly do what it says on the tin, as the saying goes, i.e. help grind a good bevel on a chisel. Indeed my two plane blades are newly ground back with another couple of degrees for the edge. But I'm not entirely happy with it. Let me explain

On a woodworking forum someone asked 'what are the tools that you use over and over again? Pick up with pleasure and find that they just work? For me that defined a class of tool that is a joy to own, does it's job and quite likely gets relegated to the bottom of the toolbag without a second thought (so long as you can remember where it is). It may be a $2000 dollar table saw or a two pound square. It seems not to matter. The key point is that it works, repeatedly. No problems. That's where this honing guide falls down (in my hands that is. YMMV). Take a look at this. The bottom two images show how I've used it today. So I have this chisel. 200mm long perhaps? In order to get a 25° angle, I need 12.5mm 'sticking out', no - to be accurate, from the steel bar nearest the blade edge to the blade edge should be 12.5mm. So, back to your physics lessons. I have this lever. 12.5mm one side, 187.5mm the other side. If I hold the chisel handle, I have great leverage... to pull the wheels off the grinding surface and let the chisel run free on the stone? So I need to hold it.. near the tip of the chisel. OK... No. You try it with a chisel that is 12mm wide or less. My fingers won't fit! There simply isn't room. I bought the number two design, which takes up to 2-5/8" blades. That means I have large 'wings' either side of those wheels (say they are 1/2" diameter you won't be far out). So I try and hold those. The chisel handle flops down. So I'm left with fingers holding the bars outside the wheels, and one sometimes two thumbs trying to gently support the handle without stopping the wheels turning - my only indication that the selected angle is being maintained (it's a honing guide remember?). That is hard work. Huge globs of patience are required. I was using some 180 grit wet and dry to get a new flat bevel on a half inch chisel. I could have (should have?) selected nearer to 80 grit but didn't. I took two goes to get a flat bevel. Finishing, with the steeper angle, is no problem and if the guide had been recommended for that I could have lived with it. For the rough stuff though? No. Simply not ergonomic. Even on the engineering front I'm wondering how long it can last living amongst grinding dust and paste, before the 'tyres' wear out or the grit gets inside the wheels and makes it all sloppy. I left the workshop with two plane blades sharp. New bevels. My tiny (4mm) chisel which started all this is now sharp and correctly angled. I just can't see me picking it up for those inbetween 6 and 50 mm.