well, I had fun the last couple of days fettling a couple of planes (one very VERY bad (I believe from harbor freight), one modern plastic handled #4 stanley and one still modern but slightly older #4 1/2 stanley) After getting them up and running (with the exception of the HF which I've given up on... holy CRUD that is one bad plane... I'm not sure when/how/why I have it... I may put sandpaper on the bottom as a joke)
Anyway, I then bandsawed a bit off of 2 sides of a 3x3 square of narra and then had fun making the four sides
1. Square to each other
2. 2.5 inches across
3. Perpendicular to each other
4. Straight....
... all with the 3 planes (I put a round on the HF and used it like a scrub plane, and had the 2 smoothers set to different tolerances--- one quite heavy to use as an impromptu jounter and one as a smoother)
This was not as easy as I anticipated and I overshot on one bit (I created a twist and had to go thinner to take out the twist... I was still learning how to use my winding sticks)
By my final sides and sweeps with my finest tuned smoother (the #4) I was getting whispy shavings and could predictably move around the grain and adjust my speeds to remove/alleviate tearout etc.
Anyway, I had fun and just wanted to share.... all of this is mental exercise for a couple of upcoming projects (arts and crafts display case from the recent fine ww'ing mag which I am adjusting to use as a media center, and a wooden plane I am building as soon as my blade arrives)
Thanks for listening to me blather on... I didn't make anything but a square(ish) piece of wood, but I sure learned a lot
Lawrence