Angle Grinder Speed Hack

I have recently introduced some angle grinding sanding into my woodworking workflow unfortunately this does seem to cause a fair amount of burning to the wood.

I needed to come up with a quick / cheap fix.

The problem seems to be most pronounced when using a flapper disk but anything other than really light sanding can burn the piece.

I found a set of videos from Bradley Boggs of the Carter Wilson workshop that covers power carving and sanding in great detail.

Bradley mentions the flexibility and control that you can get with a variable speed angle grinder. I don't do a great deal of power sanding so decided to look for a slightly different option. I found a video by Mike Shoesmith that confirmed my thought process.

Here is Mike's great video on the dimmer switch hack. https://youtu.be/YZENZLc0YXw

Around my workshop I have a couple of IEC multiway sockets.
Most of my woodworking gear have IEC plugs so I needed something that would sit in line with these. Thankfully I always keep a few electrical bits lying around the workshop one of which was a 240 V dimmer switch. Here's a quick back of the envelope sketch of the set up.

Super pleased with the end result, I can now drop this controller inline with a number of my different tools.