My main issue was that I didn't like working from the back of the grinder, because the light, which is hard-mounted to the grinder pedestal, was in the way. That, and I don't like reaching around and fumbling for a switch to turn off a still-moving tool. It violates a basic premise of power tool safety: Keep your eyes on the moving parts at all times. I can't do that effectively if I have to reach over and in front of the wheels.
I pulled the grinder apart, and opened up the bottom to pull and tug at the wiring. I was shooting text messages back and forth with an electrical engineer friend of mine. But even with trying to re-wire the thing, it still ran the same direction. Eventually I concluded that not only was it a royal pain in the neck to try to figure out, but even if I did get it right, it would spin the nuts off of the drive shaft while running, which is not exactly optimal.
I did figure out that I could detach the pedestal and turn it around, though. So now I'm working at the back of the motor, and the front of the pedestal... so the wheels are turning in the proper direction for buffing, I can see and reach the switch, and the lamp isn't in the way.
The other thing I had planned was to use the veritas tool rest in conjunction with the felt wheel. One of the issues that keeps coming up is that buffing wheels are notorious for rounding over tool edges. The felt wheel is harder, which is, I'm told, less likely to round over the tool edges, and the tool rest will hopefully help me to present the tool to the wheel at a better angle for buffing. I tried this on a chisel this afternoon... so far, so good.
Next step is to get a finer grit sanding belt for the belt grinder, so that I can (hopefully) bring tools directly from the grinder to the buffing wheel and get right back to work.
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