Brian Holcombe
I know the feeling, and some of the backs I'm sure can be a real mess from the vintage market. I picked up a chisel out of boredom (my wife loves vintage markets) and fixed it up....mostly, the back is the majority of the work now that I have a Baldor grinder and a CBN wheel which fixed the radiused and cambered bevel that seller applied to the chisel (along with likely ruining the steel near the end of the blade).

I really enjoy these planes, I don't use them to the same day-in-day-out degree that I was at the beginning of last year, but I'm not far behind. Bandsawing to thickness has cut down on a lot of the really heavy thicknesses.

I'm working on another chair at the moment, this one with a very thinned out seat, and the bulk of the thinning was done (very quickly, I might add) by jack and try plane.