Kalamazoo Belt Grinder: Primary Bevels

One of the reasons I wanted to buy my belt grinder was grinding plane irons. Lets face it, I'm rubbish with a 6" grinder. I tend to get uneven and overheated results. If you use a bench grinder, you know how quickly you can overheat a blade. I try to be good about quenching...but.

The irons for my Stanley #5 need the primary bevels reground...so, here we go:

You can see that the secondary bevel has all but overtaken the primary bevel. I have two irons for this plane, and they are both in this state. Time to put a fresh 25 degree primary on.

I used an angle gauge to set the rest to 25 degrees.

And here goes nothing!

After. It took no time at all to bring back the primary bevel. The blades hardly got warm in the process. I had my quench standing by and didn't even need it. For a thicker blade, I would probably of had to quench a few times. Ready to go to the water stones.

It took less than five minutes to regrind each of these irons. I used a 150 grit belt. No need for a fine belt since we're not grinding a cutting edge. Life just got much, much easier.

I've tortured my irons lately, planing through Brazilian cherry, redheart, and bubinga. They've taken it well.

 I figure, if you're reading here, you probably have your own way to do your cutting edges, so I won't get into that too much. I just hit these on the 1000 and 4000 grit waterstones and called them done. I'm pretty sure that running a jack plane iron up to the 8000 grit is a waste of time. I save that stone for the irons that will do finish work and chisels.