One does occasionally get ahead of one's self and in this instance the light dawned before I got too far down the slipper slope of having to do a lot of unnecessary work. What I forgot to do was square up the ends of the tool blanks before filing or grinding the final shapes. That was the dumb thing.
To do this, I set up the Wolf sander with a 120 grit belt. I haven't as yet rigged the sander up to a vacuum hose, so fastened a small draw string bag to the sander. It collected most of the debris. Then I took a short piece of flat aluminum and with some double stick tape, stuck this onto a small combination square so the square could be raised above the sanding belt. Don't want to grind away on the square! I hand held this arrangement on the sander with one hand and with the other, held the tool blank against the square and proceeded to grind the ends flat and square. I set the flex shaft speed control fairly low so as to not heat up the blank to rapidly and burn the delicate fingers. All in all, the procedure worked pretty well. I did have to turn the belt around a couple times to even out the wear as only about 1/2 inch of the belt was used.
Now, I have to rig up something to grind a preliminary bevel on the business end of the tool blank, and a slight bevel on the striking end.
Happy Holidays, all!
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