David Weaver
Warren, how many shops near you that build furniture generally do the majority of their work with hand tools?

I went to a Weaver furniture shop out your way (I'm not Mennonite, but my spouse - because of where she's from - has been asked more than once if she married a Mennonite) and the owner was probably 10 years older than me. He doesn't use any hand tools.

An amish cabinet maker up from the best man in my wedding and his brother - both making for a living, no hand tools. these guys are all doing making only and not repairing.

The shop owner with my same last name had a son who was beginning to experiment with hand tools, but he was using them to get a "rustic" look by planing against the grain to tear out wood.

I've not made a full case out of rosewood or macassar ebony (gabon planes easily), but jumping over to the australian forum where people are planing woods that are hickory and pecan and on up vs. what we're used to, there is definitely some case for these heavy planes there. The hitch is nobody is dimensioning those woods by hand on a regular basis. Neither would we.

If I wasn't dimensioning by hand, I wouldn't be woodworking, at least not beyond making guitars. I don't think anyone using jarrah or harder would be doing too much hand dimensioning, though, either. I don't mean planing a board here or there either (that often comes up on forums "i've planed ___ with ___ without issue, and mine cost $7), I mean dimensioning several hundred board feet per year with hand tools. Or more.

If those woods are less than perfect (knots, or even just poor mill sawing), they can knock the wedge loose on a typical 19th century double iron wooden plane.

When the dimensioning is done well by a machine, it's easy to see why people would like something like the heavy infill planes - they're not going to be using a plane long enough for the weight to be an issue.

The older infill panel planes were heavy. Why? I don't know. They can be made lightly - some of the earlier cast infill planes weigh about the same or less vs. a similar sized stanley (I've got a 2 1/2" wide cast panel plane that was very early with a wedge and brazilian rosewood that's 6 pounds to the norris A13s 8 1/2). Those were planes sold to professional users. The smoother infill planes were lighter than current infills - I could speculate on that, too. I'm guessing the panel planes were generally made for heavier work, and on the rare really hard wood, they are much easier to tolerate than a double iron wooden try plane.