David Weaver
Thanks for filling in the dots, david. You probably feel a cold breeze from my comments sometimes (as on the cap iron discussions on the UK board or plane design - plane design and function is something I've spent a lot of purposeful time on as a hobby), but that's not really the whole story.

I quite appreciate that because of your videos, I was once one of those beginners and the saga of sharpening that I saw discussed on many forum posts is something I never had to struggle through.

First edge was an excellent edge. I didn't know if it was or was not at the time, but I came to realize over time that it was.

I don't scrape much now and sharpen a scraper freehand, but I also learned from your 5 topic video what to expect and eventually moved to the same standard freehand before going down the planemaking rabbit hole (and some would consider dimensioning wood by hand a rabbit - to do it well and with reasonable speed requires the same experimentation as the planemaking).

I agree on plane flatness. I won't say much more aside from the fact that I've made dozens of planes and cleaned up probably more than a hundred and figured out how to do it very quickly to within what LN uses for a spec - I'm not sure I could teach it to beginners, and sometimes forget that others teach beginners. The worst working planes I've had are those that looked clean and had a sneaky twist or low toe and heel (concave sole). It's not possible to do fine work with the latter.

Even though our arguments go to the point that i think you referred to me as "the most arrogant person you've ever come across" I still have great fondness for having gotten off to a good start.