Hi Dave, et al,
Bay Area Dave wrote:
I DON'T notice any obvious marks unless I rush a piece through on the
first pass. I am just repeating what I've read about guys doing; taking
a pass with a plane before glue-ups. Then I got to thinking that how
flat is the surface gonna stay if I get the results like I got with
tinkering around with a small plane.

I am also in the process of learning all about handplaning. There
are some other factors to consider in the handplane vs. power tool
decision. I have a friend who helped me by initially sharpening my
#6 Clifton and Lie-Neilsen low angle block planes. He then demonstrated
jointing a pair of boards for edge joining and showed me that they were
exactly matched by holding them up to the light with NO light showing
through the edge joints. It blew me away...took him about five minutes
and with no noise or sawdust generated. There's the advantages IMO.

After all is said and done, I think I'm gonna order the smoother, but
not for edges. I want something to tweak a board to EXACT length when
the TS gets me within 5 thous and I want it within .002 or better.

We are talking about wood here.....hoping for the precision of metal
working invites frustration. But, certainly you can get as accurate
with hand tools as you like, and often times, faster than with power
tools. Certainly, you can do so without the noise involved in powertool
usage.
An
example of when I could have used a very fine length adjustment was when
I edged my desk. I didn't want mitered corners, so I cut the side
edging to exactly the width of the desk top, hiding the end grain with
the front edging. I could NOT sand or machine the front edge flush,
because I used a shaper to put detail on all the edging before attaching
them to the desk. So I couldn't overlap and sand or plane to even out
any discrepancies.

dave