VPI Uni-Pivit Tone Arms

mreeter, I am glad that you do it carefully and do not ruin the temper. To get the right finish on it you would have to use a polishing wheel and jewler's rouge. What you are doing is clever but even if you don't take the temper out of the metal there is no way you can do it perfectly concentric.
This thread is about unipivots sitting cockeyed, a common problem with unipivots. My point is the best way to deal with this problem, and spike wear is don't buy a unipivot arm. They are way too much of a compromise even the Grahams. VPI now makes a very nice looking gimbal version of the 3D tonearm. Get that one = no more headaches.
If you really like spikes get a Kuzma 4 point. An interesting point. The 4 point arms actually sit on one point ( the horizontal bearing) and I have never heard of anyone wearing one out. I guess Frank's metallurgy is better. 

mreeter, I have a 40 year old Syrinx PU 3. It is as good as the day I bought it and I have never had to do anything to it but play records. Sharpening spikes? If the spike is hardened for durability, sanding it the way you mentioned will heat up the mental and potentially take the temper right out of it. Which means it will just wear out faster, much faster. Just buy a new spike.
There is everything wrong with unipivots. Show me one well known reviewer that uses one. There is just no getting away from the fact that they have too many degrees of freedom. It is just a cheap easy way to make an arm. You don't have to worry about tolerances at all. You don't have to worry about everything lining up perfectly. You don't have to worry about bearing preload, just plop the thing down on a bearing that is going to wear out quickly and away you go. Nobody even uses the Graham any more.Maybe he just doesn't charge enough for it. If he charged more than the SAT arm Michael Fremer might even buy one. 

Get the 3D gimbal bearing arm. No more spikes. I have an old Syrinx PU-3. I got it new in 1981. It is not on a table at the moment but I used it for over thirty years and it remains as good as new. I keep thinking about getting an arm board for it......

One of the Origin Live arms would work very well at a very reasonable price. They are lighter than the Jelco arms and will do better with more compliant cartridges like Lyras. 

Not bad millercarbon. Origin Live makes a good tonearm for the money.
The low friction excuse for a unipivot arm is fiction as the entire weight of the arm and cartridge is focused on that one bearing. With two contact points the weight is halved on each bearing and so forth. Modern bearings have extremely low friction. Another factor is that the cartridge has very favorable leverage over the bearings being at quite a distance from them. Stability is more important. 

He did not say but only the arm wand is different. The bearing assembly is the same. 
Sure tooblue you can make them work. Clamps help as you suggest. Staying with more compliant cartridges also helps. Less leverage on the arm. Asymmetrical counterbalance weights also help. But, theoretically at least a captured bearing would be best. How does this effect sound. Know way to know from here. More than likely it would be hard to hear difference. I'm sure Michael Fremer could hear the difference. His hearing is better than mine:)

VPI now makes a Gimbal bearing tonearm. About time.
The unipivot topology came about because it is a cheap easy way to make a tonearm. Don't have to by expensive bearings and worry about tolerances but there is trouble in paradise. To many degrees of freedom. A tonearm should only be able to move up or down and side to side. It should be absolutely rigid in all other planes. Records are not flat. Any change in altitude is going to subject the arm to torque because the arm is offset which is going to change azimuth. Graham tried to fix this using a magnetic field to hold the arm steady and it works if you want to spend ridiculous money on an arm. I would rather get a 4 point. Much less expensive, better sounding and more suitable for a wider range of cartridges. 
VPI has finally come out with a turntable I could consider, the new Direct Drive with the gimbal pivoted tonearm. If they could figure how to suspend it like a SOTA it might even be perfect.