Steve Voigt
Unlike the violin analogy, not planing at a high proficiency is not preventing me from building anything to the standards I aspire to.

I couldn't agree more. If you are happy with the result you get, that's all that matters. I only brought it up because of the interest you expressed earlier in the thread. Anyway yeah, something like a tabletop sounds like a great first project for flattening/thicknessing by hand.