DonkeyHody wrote:

OK Folks, they say confession is good for the soul.
So I decided to come clean.

I don't own a plane.
There, I said it.
But I don't feel much better.

All this time I've been masquerading as a fairly accomplished
woodworker (to my lay friends anyway) and I don't even own a plane. Oh
I have lots of nice machines. Thickness planer, yes, power plane too,
but not one honest neander plane.

Being self-taught instead of instructed, I have just blundered along,
somehow managing to turn out some stuff that I wasn't ashamed of by
making do with what I had.

I have decided that the woodworking gods must be appeased and they
won't let my skills progress any farther until I have made the
sacrifice and purchased a plane, and learned to tune and use it.

Question is, what should I buy, seeing as how I'm still a virgin
(plane-wise). I'd rather not buy something from the BORG that I'll
outgrow in a year. I don't yet have the skills to really appreciate a
fine piece of equipment, but I'm willing to fork over the dough and
grow into it. I just don't want to blunder into some specialty item
that's not versitile enough.

OK, enough grovelling, what say you?

DonkeyHody
"Every man is my superior in that I can learn from him."

I remember when I asked this question of the Wreckers a 2 years ago. I
ended up buying a LV low angle smoother. The cool thing about a bevel
up plane is that you can transform them from low angle to York pitch (50
degree) by swapping out the blade. Fit, finish, durability, usability
of the LV planes (Veritas brand) is superb. You'll never regret buying
any Veritas plane. From that beginning, I got a medium shoulder plane,
a scraper plane (use it a LOT), then a large shoulder plane and low
angle block plane. Just got a 22" jointer. That's a remarkable tool to
joint an edge or flatten a surface. I don't know how I got along so
long without it. Santa will probably bring me a std. block plane and a
bevel up jack plane (with the extra high angle blade ).

I used to wonder why guys had planes numbering in the dozens. Now I
know why! Seriously, a block plane or a bevel up plane around 9-12
inches would be a good start. When you get tear out, pop in a high
angle blade (you can only do that in a bevel up plane to make the
effective angle change).

Dave