Let this be a lesson to all who think they are too smart to make any mistakes in the shop.
Since I don't have a grinder I frequently use my belt sander as one by mounting it upside down in a vise. Even since I got a set of used Robert Sorby bench chisels I have been wanting to convert one of my old blue Marples to a skew chisel. Well I was doing it last night. Since it required a considerable amount of grinding it generated a considerable amount of sparks, but I was very careful to keep cooling the chisel every 5 secs or so. For the first 5-10 mins (Not sure how much time it took to do the whole process) I kept an eye on the vaccum bag to make sure it doesn't start smoking, no such thing. So I complete the creation of the skew bevel and am getting ready to line by my jig for scary sharping the edge, and boom in a flash the vaccum bag is on fire. I guess the saw dust had been smoldering all the time and suddenly decided to catch fire. Good thing I had the cup of water I was using for cooling the chisel nearby. I think I'm going to get that fire extinguisher for the garage after all. Here are the remains of the bag
bag-smc.JPG
But it wasn't a total loss I did get this out of the deal
chisel-smc.JPG