TomD
"When they pretend to be experts and write that they make the finest tools, that is bad."

If we are thinking of the same person, I think he was an expert, or at least a highly competent machinist, who saw the plane as a mechanism that he was uniquely qualified to produce the parts of. I don't think that makes one a bad person, probably just talking at cross purposes. On the general issue of whether a plane should be a 1000 dollar blade with a 20 dollar holder, or a 20 dollar blade with a 2000 dollar holder, I fall in the former camp, though woodwork is perfectly happy with a 10 dollar blade in a 10 dollar holder.

Clark and Williams used a milling machine for certain plane making tasks. The tool is just slightly over 200 years old. which takes it pretty far back through the antique plane forms, not to say is was available to workers back then, but it is pretty amazing how long these things have been around.