RM MS wrote:
" . . .start by reading as much as I can about how planes are supposed
to work . . ."

Sounds like you never had to do it for the money. Like I have said
over and over here, many of you folks worry too much, spend way too much
time buying crap, and too little time actually messing stuff up---and I
mean that in the positive way: GET TO WORK, as often and as long as you
can. So many questions I see here are answered by themselves by just
DOING IT.


There's a lot of truth in what RM MS said. At the risk of sounding
maudlin, I can say that there comes a point where a hand plane becomes
an extension of your hands and arms. This certainly won't happen the
first time or even the tenth time you use one. But with each use the
tool becomes a wee bit more familiar, and the feel of what it's doing
makes more sense.

The first time I picked up a plane, I had the same kind of experience
that the OP describes, and I didn't know what the hell was wrong.

Planes have a whole bunch of things that need attention: blade
sharpness, blade angle, tightness of the frog screw, pressure on the
board, etc etc. I paid attention to all of them at once and
produced....garbage.

I took a course on very basic woodworking and was shown, in sequence,
how to care for my plane. Spend what seemed like hours sharpening.
Agonized over blade angle with the sole up to a fluorescent light.

I'd recommend something like that. The course had an objective of making
a little curio out of pine, and I initially was disappointed by what
would be the outcome. But that little course had so much information in
it, taught by a guy who loved hand tools, that it really gave me the
impetus to carry on.

Asking for information on a forum like this is a good idea, but it also
has its limitations. There are just so many advantages to doing the
work, analyzing what may have gone wrong, agonizing over what will fix
it, and then hauling it over to someone who's been there for verification.

Tanus

--
This is not really a sig.

http://users.compzone.ca/george/shop/