Prior to heat treating my edges are fairly thick....sometime as much as 3/32-1/8". After heat treating I put on a fresh 50 grit belt, and grind the entire side of the blade to nearly finished dimensions. It's all about what I call "pressure" and "torque". Pressure being the about of force you use to push the blade STRAIGHT into the belt, and "torque" being SLIGHT pressure in an up or down twisting manner. It's not really a motion, but rather just pressure.....inward at the top if you want to thin the edge down (assuming your grinding with the edge up), or inward pressure on the bottom if you want to "walk" the grind towards the spine of the blade.
The trick is to maintain full contact of the blade and belt, and use the "torque" to make the grind move up of down the blade. You want the blade to maintain full contact on the belt, but through the use of "torque" you force the belt to cut more at either the lead in, or the trail out sides. (top or bottom as your holding/grinding the blade)
Let me qualify those remarks by saying that nearly everything I do is a flat grind, convex edge type of grind.
I go to nearly finished dimensions with a 50 grit, then go straight to a 400 grit with only enough meat left that I can remove the 50 grit scratches, and end up with edges that are sharp, or very close to it, by the time I'm done with the 400 grit.
I personally think that trying to get away with as small of an edge bevel as possible is crucial to cutting performance.