In article .com,
"djs" wrote:

I am looking for some advise on how close to flat a 14 inch jack plane
should be. I picked up a plane yesterday and today I was checking it
out. The first thing I checked was the flatness of the sole relative
to the top of my table saw. There was a slight rock from corner to
corner. I measured this to be about 0.008 of an inch using a feeler
gage. The other thing I noticed is that the middle of the plane had
about a 0.007 inch gap using the feeler gage technique.

snip
My options a
1) Use the plane as is.

Yep I'd agree with you - use it as is for all your planing needs.

Fer criminey's sake, those people who flatten to 1 or even 5 thousanths
have more time than sense. Are they trying to achieve an end result in
the finished wood in the single digit thousanths? Just what's going to
happen when the panel is sanded or scraped? Do they use 14" lapped
sanding blocks to ensure the flatness left by the plane is retained?

Answer this: how many of the extraordinary pieces in museums and private
collections were made with tools having any where near this precision?
Those masters were using wooden planes that moved, to some extent, with
the seasons. They were sawing by hand. They were flattening by hand to a
reasonable degree of flatness - not measuring with surface plates and
feeler gauges.

Learn how to establish reference faces and work off of those. Once that
is understood all error and variance will become moot. You can spend
hours upon hours flattening something that isn't going to transform your
work into masterful art - or you can spend the time learning to use the
tools at your disposal along with proper joinery techniques and come out
far ahead.
--
Owen Lowe
The Fly-by-Night Copper Company
__________

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
Corporate States of America and to the
Republicans for which it stands, one nation,
under debt, easily divisible, with liberty
and justice for oil."
- Wiley Miller, Non Sequitur, 1/24/05