This is to respond to several posts at once. This isn't meant in a combative sense, but it's all very well to talk about over thinking, and once a person has a simple method that works for their purposes it's got to be very temping to fly that particular kite. The fact is though that almost everybody here talks of working through potentially quite a long evolution of methods to get to what now is 'obvious', but which in retrospect wasn't obvious at all. Not only that - if it's so obviously the 'right' way to do a job, why is it that so many don't necessarily agree? (there's lots of reasons many of which don't hold water and some which do, but the end result is a cacophony of competing recommendations)
I guess it'd certainly help a lot if there were 'certified' solutions out there. It equally though ought to be possible to table problems and/or possible development directions on a forum.
One complicating factor in all of this is not everybody has the same set of requirements - because their situation or tool is different enough to matter. I keep on banging the drum on this, but grinding a new bevel angle on a thick BU plane iron is a very different ball game to just grinding off the honing bevel on a relatively much thinner BD iron for example.
The other issue is prior investment. So a soft bond wheel on a low speed grinder is the greatest? Wonderful, but what if you have already invested to head down a different road which has some strengths too. Do you change tack buy a new grinder and soft wheels, only for example to find that as a method this contains shortcomings too? That doesn't mean that it's not the right thing to do, but for sure you're going to seek ways to get your current investment working better before dumping it...
That's been my situation, and I'd so far rather stick with flat bevels. Be that as it may it's become clear that the classic bench grinder is a highly cost effective solution. Minimum parts count, simple fixtures, minimum cost, good access to the wheels for changing angles etc. Add variable/low speed and low heat wheels and it takes another step forward. A belt type grinder has some potential advantages - but it's for example instantly a more complex and more expensive piece of kit - a fact reflected in the relatively higher cost of decent quality linishers etc. Plus it seems that there's little available with the variable speed etc that would be ideal.
That sander Derek is sold in the UK under the Clarke (a moderate cost eastern) brand. This guy might be a prospect too, but it's going to be a bit more expensive, and would ideally need variable speed: http://www.vansantdistributing.com/M...nt_p/mt364.htm Quick belt changes between a wide variety of grits is an advantage.
Thanks for the input on the 120 waterstones Noah. I actually have a 120 grit Shapton professional, but have been quite disappointed by it. I'm even suspicious that it may be a bad example - it had three relatively significantly harder granules at one end for quite a long time. They have by now ground away, but it begs the question of whether or not it's a good example of the type. It cuts at nothing remotely near the speed of 80 grit Al oxide paper on a 1,420 rpm disc sander (and is multiples slower than the WorkSharp too on the same grit) - but the sander is running at about 3,500 ft/min or about x4 the surface speed of a WorkSharp which must go a long way to explaining both the high metal removal rate and the heating the former produces.