william kossack wrote in
:

the main problem is the end of the blade has been somehow rounded.
I'm going to have to remove maybe a 1/16th of an inch of the blade to
get a straight edge to then sharpen


Rounded? Or cambered? It's not unusual to camber, or slightly round the
corners of the plane blade, so as not to leave 'plane tracks'.

David Charlesworth describes a simple method for that. Check the hand tool
message archives at woodcentral.com

Patriarch