Talk to the farriers (horseshoers) in your area. They make a rasp for aluminum shoes that's big, 1/2 round, and leaves a suprisingly smooth cut for the amount of wood it removes. I use mine on gunstock wood, which is harder than decoy wood, so it may be too hungry for basswood.
Bench grinders and spokeshaves turn up frequently at garage sales and flea markets. Watch it with grinders, most aren't 1750 rpm, which is better for grinding tool steel, a lower risk of burning the steel.
Only use it to grind the bevel, the flat side has to be done as others have described, and keep a container of water handy to keep the steel cool. I try to keep my index finger on the same part of the tool throughout the grind, it buts up against the tool rest, so I have a referance point to maintain the bevel. I can usually grind to a sharp edge without "burning" the steel, but it's better to be carefull and stop short, and spend more time at the stone to complete the bevel. I usually grind a longer bevel than what I hone at, so I don't have to remove as much metal when honing.
Don't stop working the bevel side until you feel a wire edge roll up on the flat side, this is the steel that's so thin it rolls up instead of standing up to the grinding pressure. Now lay a chisel flat on the finest stone you have, and abrade this side until the wire edge bends the other way. Work the bevel on a finer stone until the wire bends back the other way, reflaten the face side, and switch to finer stone on the bevel and repeat. With gouges, the flat side is worked with a slipstone.
The wire edge gets smaller as you use finer grit stones, and with less pressure,and is harder to feel as it gets smaller. You eventually remove it alltogether by buffing or stropping. You should now have a mirror finish on your bevel, and hopefully that in the face side too. High quality chisels and gouges have harder steel, and this pesky wire edge is much smaller since the hard steel resists bending better. It also usually stands up to abrasion longer so it stays sharp longer, and can be beveled to a sharper angle than cheap steel.
If you've "burned" the steel on the grinder, ie it turned blue from the heat, you've removed the temper of the steel and it's soft. This soft steel will have a horrendus wire edge roll up when honing, and just keeps bending back and forth, without ever getting sharp. It'll eventually break off, and feel sharp, but leaves a ragged cut, and abrades quickly to a dull edge.
So DON'T BURN YOUR STEEL! Having said that, when you do burn it, anyone using a grinder does at some point in their life, you'll have to grind back past the blue part, or retemper the tool. I do this by aiming the tool strait at the axle of the grinding wheel, ditto for reforming a tool with a chipped edge. This leaves a bright, flat spot, that's easy to see when reforming the bevel.
I use soft and then hard arkansas stones and slips on my gouges and chisels. I use japanese waterstones on plane blades, since they're easier to flaten. The jap stones are 800, 1200, and 6000 grit, these grit numbers don't correspond with american grit numbers. I strop with a piece of leather glued to a stick, with rouge rubbed on it.
. Spending 15 minutes rubbing gouges on a cereal box doesn't do it for me, but maybe you could make your own compound out of butter and baking soda, since they would be handy like the cereal box