Veritas Custom Planes - 40deg frog

[xraymtb]

Any experience of the custom planes for Veritas - particularly the #4 and the 40deg frog?

Considering a new smoother to replace/compliment my Stanley, which works ok but isn’t brilliant nor a pleasure to use. I was thinking of the Low Angle Smoother initially as it would also be handy for the shooting board then noticed the #4 with the lower frog. A lot of my work is in softwood (or more common softer hardwoods) and I wonder if the 40deg might work well for end grain and face grain in this case? Would swapping the frog (if future needs requires a higher angle) be more of a pain than maintaining multiple blades for the low angle?

I’ve read Derek Cohen’s really good articles on the two planes but couldn’t see a comparison between them.

 

[G S Haydon]

Much of my response is going to be speculative, Derek could likely help you out more than me. However, my short response is you're trialling a solution that is at the end of very end of sensitive and likely many would not notice the benefit, if indeed they can be described as real benefits.

I have read on another forum where an experienced woodworker lowered the frog in a smoothing plane to 40 degree and was able to get very good surface finish. He combined using the cap iron to prevent tear out which would be very likely at low angle of 40 degree.

As you point out, in theory it will be better on end grain. Would you notice the "better"?

the other thing to watch for is as it is bevel down you'd want to make sure you are good at honing as you might lose the clearance angle more quickly.

For me, trying a plane like this would be for fun and with an open mind that it might work really well. If this purchase won't break the bank, perhaps you could try it and report back?

 

[thetyreman]

I don't have experience with one but have wanted one for a long time now, I like the idea of having one for special occasions where they are needed, like you say end grain, softwoods and also curly grain and figured woods which benefit from higher angles and tighter mouths, if you do decide to get one please report back on your experience.

 

[D_W]

You'll get a greater improvement in surface brightness by using v11 in a Stanley than the 5 degree angle change

Use the cap for tearout rather than faffing with high angles and tight mouths. If planes worked better that way, Norris would have made high angle planes with a 4 thousandth mouth. Instead, they were close to common pitch with a deliberately filed sole to allow the cap iron to be set close to the edge.

 

[xraymtb]

Much of my response is going to be speculative, Derek could likely help you out more than me. However, my short response is you're trialling a solution that is at the end of very end of sensitive and likely many would not notice the benefit, if indeed they can be described as real benefits.

I have read on another forum where an experienced woodworker lowered the frog in a smoothing plane to 40 degree and was able to get very good surface finish. He combined using the cap iron to prevent tear out which would be very likely at low angle of 40 degree.

As you point out, in theory it will be better on end grain. Would you notice the "better"?

the other thing to watch for is as it is bevel down you'd want to make sure you are good at honing as you might lose the clearance angle more quickly.

For me, trying a plane like this would be for fun and with an open mind that it might work really well. If this purchase won't break the bank, perhaps you could try it and report back?

I’ll be honest and say I probably won’t notice if it is ‘better’ than the equivalent plane with a 45deg bed. I would hope to notice the difference between a Veritas and the Stanley, irrespective of the bed angle!

I originally fancied the low angle smoother (a bevel up plane) for the end grain performance and the ability to swap out a blade to get a 45-50deg cutting angle as needed. It was when I noticed the 40deg frog on the #4 I started to think differently - higher angle frogs are available at a similar cost to a blade and only leave one blade to be maintained.

 

[xraymtb]

You'll get a greater improvement in surface brightness by using v11 in a Stanley than the 5 degree angle change

Use the cap for tearout rather than faffing with high angles and tight mouths. If planes worked better that way, Norris would have made high angle planes with a 4 thousandth mouth. Instead, they were close to common pitch with a deliberately filed sole to allow the cap iron to be set close to the edge.

That might be true however the Stanley (at least my particular example) is a lot further away from being a premium plane than a simple blade change! I know that good examples do exist and a lot can be done to improve a cheaper one but I don’t have the time nor inclination these days.

I could just order the Veritas #4 with a standard 45deg frog but where’s the fun in that!

 

[Woody2Shoes]

You'll get a greater improvement in surface brightness by using v11 in a Stanley than the 5 degree angle change

Use the cap for tearout rather than faffing with high angles and tight mouths. If planes worked better that way, Norris would have made high angle planes with a 4 thousandth mouth. Instead, they were close to common pitch with a deliberately filed sole to allow the cap iron to be set close to the edge.

That might be true however the Stanley (at least my particular example) is a lot further away from being a premium plane than a simple blade change! I know that good examples do exist and a lot can be done to improve a cheaper one but I don’t have the time nor inclination these days.

I could just order the Veritas #4 with a standard 45deg frog but where’s the fun in that!

Veritas make some excellent stuff (and I own an ambarrasingly large amount of it) but I find the Norris-style lateral adjustment - used in nearly all Veritas planes - fundamentally less easy to adjust accurately and quickly. For my money, the stanley bedrock design cannot be bettered - the only question for me is how much money to pay to get an acceptable quality of materials/fit/finish, and for me for planes of Quangsheng from Workshop Heaven hit the sweetspot.

 

[Racers]

I built a wooden plane with a Veritas blade and mechanisim and find it very hard to adjust.

A Record/Stanley with a very close set chip breaker will plane most woods.

Pete

 

[D_W]

You'll get a greater improvement in surface brightness by using v11 in a Stanley than the 5 degree angle change

Use the cap for tearout rather than faffing with high angles and tight mouths. If planes worked better that way, Norris would have made high angle planes with a 4 thousandth mouth. Instead, they were close to common pitch with a deliberately filed sole to allow the cap iron to be set close to the edge.

That might be true however the Stanley (at least my particular example) is a lot further away from being a premium plane than a simple blade change! I know that good examples do exist and a lot can be done to improve a cheaper one but I don’t have the time nor inclination these days.

I could just order the Veritas #4 with a standard 45deg frog but where’s the fun in that!

I am a planemaker on the side, that's probably known. It generally takes me about 20-25 minutes to set up an older 4 - but there a case for that not being doable sometimes if a plane shows up damaged.

I got to test the early custom planes. There's nothing wrong with them - I tested a jack and didn't keep it only because I'm used to stanley's mouth location (the jack plane that LV makes has the mouth back a little bit and it changes how the plane feels). The thing about a veritas plane or a LN plane is they are 98% of the way to their max out of the box. The things that make a stanley really function well are not what most people think, though (fiddling with backlash, grinding and squaring soles, polishing frogs, etc. None of those things really matter. Everything locking up tight, perhaps reasonable flattening of the bottom, and preparing the iron and cap iron to work together are what makes the plane work.

It's true that a 40 degree surface will be brighter. I mention the V11 only because if you're searching for brightness, it's loaded with tiny chromium bits that are slick through the wood and when doing an A-B comparison with O-1 steel and V11 using the same sharpening methods (I used 1 micron diamonds in my test, but noticed the same with oilstones), the V11 leaves a much brighter surface and will at every footage.

Less planing resistance due to the chromium, too.

I mention this as an alternative to the angle because the drumming on I do about the cap iron - one of my goals years ago was to be able to use a japanese plane to finish quickly without needing to have perfect wood. Using the cap iron. The surface will almost look like liquid with as low of an angle as a japanese plane prevents (raking view), but a common pitch plane with a V11 iron will be very close.

40 degrees presents some clearance issues (it's about as low as you'd want to practically go), but all that said, if you want to treat yourself - by all means. I have done the same myself many times. High angles and tight mouths are a path to mediocrity, but a 40 degree plane with a V11 iron and the cap set would plane pretty much anything and when set for smoothing and freshly sharpened on fine media, it will leave a super bright finish.

 

[xraymtb]

Thanks. I really appreciate the detailed responses.

If you were in my shoes, cash burning a hole in your pocket and looking for a smoother that could handle end grain and face grain in softer woods, would you therefore go for the bevel up plane, a 45deg bevel down or 40deg bevel down? Or as others mention a bedrock style instead (LN or Quangsheng perhaps)?

Do you have any recommended links to reading around the cap iron? A lot of what you come across online quickly descends into argument and cross purposes!

 

[D_W]

well, the cap comes up and people will argue "all methods are the same", but it's not the case. The cap dominated economically because of its efficiency and everything else pretty much disappeared. That doesn't give me license to be a blowhard, what it gives me license to do is say there's information in what occurred historically (when money was tight) that lets you know which direction you should head.

http://woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarti ... _935.shtml

note that when I wrote that article, two other folks offered to take pictures. You shouldn't settle for the amount of tearout that's in the board, but the editor was learning the method when he was editing the article (sort of an acid test) and he was very pleased with that surface because it was far less tearout than he's gotten in ribboned mahogany. This is the improvement he saw basically in one attempt. It takes a couple of weeks to get the feel for setting things, but then you are off to the races.

This factors in this plane decision because if you are going to ask someone who planes a lot "what is a great plane that I'll really like to use", my assumption is you would probably like it to be something you like to use in a decade, too. This is a pitfall i fell into when I first started making planes - I wanted to make planes, but I failed to understand that if they weren't great with an advancing skill level, I'd cast them aside. So I have some planes that I've literally just thrown away, and others that I just don't know what to do with.

Either the stanley, the LN (quangsheng are heavier yet than LN, and there's no real function for the weight, but if cost is a consideration, I'm sure they're fine), or LV will all fit in this, but focus on standard pitch or lower for now (or something like norris at the steepest) and get after the cap setting and you'll more or less have one plane at your bench that you keep in shape and use on everything. It's not intellectually exciting like having an array - I will admit. I've had hundreds - i long had the desire to find something that was just better or foolproof, but it ends up being the historical record that is that - it's just not accessible to a brand new beginner without some instruction.

I have had everything short of a holtey (but I have made infill planes instead - half a dozen of them) , and all of them work fine on end grain. A stanley plane works fine on end grain.

I wouldn't personally buy a bevel up plane - I know people like them a lot, but they fail to find favor on heavier use (e.g., if you were a person with a shop full of martin tools and you never had anything more to do other than fit joints, shoot board ends (though the martin stuff can pretty much eliminate that with its real time digital readouts to the thousandth) and plane a couple of strokes to the finish, the BU planes are nice to learn, but they are more effort to use than a stanley plane in anything more, and less capable.

As far as end grain, any decent bevel down plane will do it well. What's usually lacking in any of them is wax on the sole, if anything. I've always found the premium planes to have more friction on end grain and sticky woods and be far more needy than wax.

The crux of it is after having hundreds of planes, I'm back to the stanley smoother, and I'm somewhat agnostic on other planes (metal or wood) - same type - common pitch with cap, but metal or wood - the two will only separate themselves in heavy work, but finding a good well-fitted double iron plane isn't that easy until you've made planes. Once they're well fitted and used relatively regularly, they stay fitted.

Here is the last infill that i made (I'd like to make another dozen, though). After making some heavy planes with thick single irons and high pitches, this kit plane will torch any of them with the cap set, but I still use a stanley 4 most of the time. What I chased making this smoother was pretty much finding an infill plane that's a lot like a stanley 4 in proportion and weight. I didn't consciously think of that, but that's what I ended up making.

Not by chance, probably, many of the old norris and spiers planes are closer in weight and proportion to a stanley 4 than they are to modern hobbyist infills (and they were always carefully made by the good makers to keep the mouth tidy (looks nice), but filed away inside so the cap can be set all the way to the edge. As is the one in this picture.
https://i.imgur.com/5yacaZb.jpg

 

[D_W]

This is a more appropriate standard:
quartered bubinga (stock for a guitar neck, but I planed it for someone talking about "what plane to buy" to plane exotic wood that was proving too much for a 60 degree HNT gordon plane. I planed the snipe off of this piece of wood with a record jointer and smoothed it with a stanley 4 - without resharpening).

What little anomalies that might be there in tiny amounts are something I like from hand tools, they are gone in the first step of a french polish (the process fills them far faster than actual pores in the wood).

I used quartered/ribboned bubinga because it's the worst thing I could find.
https://i.imgur.com/Yr9Y0co.jpg

Even if you don't finish off of the plane, this kind of thing will greatly reduce your efforts in scraping and sanding, cost and physically. It's easy.

 

[thetyreman]

another thing to consider is building your own krenov style plane, I made one that can only be adjusted with a hammer and am very happy with it, all it costs is the blade and cap iron which is the biggest expense then the wood, you can make several of them for the cost of one veritas custom plane, I use my 55 degree one for figured woods and it works beautifully unlike a vintage stanley plane even with the cap iron set as close as possible, the difference is night and day, that's what higher angle planes are made for. I am thinking of making a 35 degree one as well for end grain and softwoods.

 

[D_W]

your plane wouldn't work as well as a stanley plane properly set. It's not popular to say that, but it's true.

krenov waxed a lot about planes, and his romantic writing about making them and giving them away (there has been at least one instance where someone on another forum mentioned buying a plane from krenovs, and it was fairly crude looking) is fine, but it ignores the fact that centuries of woodworkers had no interest in the design.

If you do much woodworking for long, you will find that you don't like that plane design either.

I chased this design to the near theoretical limit in making this plane:
https://i.imgur.com/ZBtX1Et.jpg

It's pitched at 55 degress. The mouth is accurate to a greater degree than a wooden plane can be because erosion will quickly make any wooden plane way outside the tolerance of this one (the mouth is double the typical finish shaving thickness - 3-4 thousandths for the mouth).

It's unlikely that there is a krenov style plane anywhere that would compete with this one in figured wood, and this one comes up just short (in finish quality) vs. a stanley plane.

The penalty you pay in using something like a krenov plane for more than just a little is a huge loss of time, no gain in quality (possibly a loss) and getting to the same point much later.

If you never do much woodworking, you may not notice. It would be wiser to skip that step and learn from history. It only took me about 7 years of pretty serious tinkering to realize that I was off the mark making assertions about single iron planes (I made the same incorrect assertion when I made this plane. "you cannot fail with it. it's superior, it protects figured wood from problems that you can work into with other planes". The only thing missing is that it's heavy and the reliance on a thin shaving makes it slow. I made another plane in combination with it that was a panel plane - the mouth was a hundredth. Unfortunately, that's not enough to control tearout, so I filed it properly later inside the mouth (up into the plane) so that the cap could reach near the sole and it became a beautiful user plane. I had to open the mouth some because it was suddenly capable of planing a greater thickness (without tearout) than the mouth opening.

If you disagree with my assessment of the capability of one vs. another, it's a reflection of where you are on the learning curve. I was there. I didn't like hearing that at the time. When derek started to use the cap iron, he'd mentioned indecisiveness about whether or not it was better than a 55 degree plane, and I said something along the lines if "keep using it and you will come to my conclusion". I don't know if he remembers that, but I would if someone said it to me, because it's blunt and rude. I was challenging him to stick with it.

His assessment is the same as mine now - that a plane with a cap iron at common pitch (I believe he may have one less steep yet) is more capable than a single iron 55 degree plane. You need to get closer to 60 or slightly above to match plane for plane in tearout reduction and a 60 degree single iron plane is absolutely punishing to use and hard to set.

I get no money or anything of the sort from peddling this information. I get to push people past pitfalls that I spent years in only to find out that I was wrong. When I finally set to learn to use the cap iron, I put everything else aside for a week. By the end of that week, my stanley plane was more capable than my infill (which cost as much to make as 6 stanley planes, plus 75 or 80 hours of time). By the end of week two, I could set the plane properly by eye without needing to reset it again before resharpening - every time.

That is two weeks of relatively regular woodworking entirely by hand, not a single test of checking the projection of the iron at a couple of distances and then proclaiming a conclusion that doesn't make sense in any historical context unless you assume the buyers and users of planes for 200 years were just incompetent fools. That would be unlikely.

 

[thetyreman]

I've got 4 stanley/record planes 'properly set' a no7, a no5 1/2, a no 4 1/2 and a no4, all of them in pristine condition, perfectly set and yet none of them can tackle figured woods, the no7 gets closest but it still produces tearout, the 55 degree krenov plane creates a perfect surface every single time no tearout at all and I really mean none even with the cap iron 2-3mm from the cutting edge!

your persistence and arrogance is astounding D_W, quite often offensive as well in the way you frame it as though it's always user error, you also automatically presume people are less experienced than you which is most definitely not the case, time to stop treating people as though they are stupid or below you.

 

[Ttrees]

There's no question that the double iron works Ben
I look forward to seeing how you get on with your sharpening technique
when you eventually decide to really give the Bailey a go.
All the best
Tom

 

[D_W]

I've got 4 stanley/record planes 'properly set' a no7, a no5 1/2, a no 4 1/2 and a no4, all of them in pristine condition, perfectly set and yet none of them can tackle figured woods, the no7 gets closest but it still produces tearout, the 55 degree krenov plane creates a perfect surface every single time no tearout at all and I really mean none even with the cap iron 2-3mm from the cutting edge!

your persistence and arrogance is astounding D_W, quite often offensive as well in the way you frame it as though it's always user error, you also automatically presume people are less experienced than you which is most definitely not the case, time to stop treating people as though they are stupid or below you.

I'm insistent because you're giving bad advice. It doesn't benefit me to argue, but it benefits people who may take the wrong road and take a long detour before they get on the right road.

There's a bunch of ways to get things done. Some are better than others. If you make an effort to improve and observe and adjust, you will come to the same conclusion as me. I've spent an inordinate amount of time on this and had more than a hundred planes as this is my hobby (the planes and planing with them). I would not make the same assertions if you were asking about furniture as it's not really an area of interest for me.

There are two directions you can go from here:
* you can see if you can disprove me (honestly) as you have something to gain by doing that
* you can choose not to do the first because you don't want to find out that I'm right

This isn't a subjective thing. I was on the wrong side of it for quite a while here. 15 years ago, the sentiment on the internet was that professionals migrated away from a vintage version of what you're advocating because of a decline in standards. It wasn't correct. I believed that argument, plus the planes were easier to use competently. Unfortunately, they have a lower ceiling - greatly lower in somethings but lower in all except for steepness of the learning curve. In comes things like the bevel up plane, which appeal to folks who have trouble with anything other than a block plane, and I'm sure they're well received in australia where some of the wood is unsuitable for much other than machine dimensioning. The myth that they're better for end grain in the context of work came up, and it was uncontested because nobody really asked the question why the type wasn't more common in earlier planes. Stanley sold a plane that they suggested would be good for planing cutting boards (end grain), but it never really got much traction. Various incorrect statements were made about that, too ("if they had ductile cast, it would've taken off" ...they had ductile cast for at least part of the time, and it was used in items that often showed up in schools so that they wouldn't break when dropped).

But the question of why a single specific design seemed to dominate everything is never answered. Veritas is not big on it, as far as I know, because their technical advisor (Vic) is a dunce. Larry Williams was vocal about the decline in quality and skill myth, but what he was missing was actually using his planes any significant amount. Krenov favored a plane type that's only suitable for light work, probably because he was more productive writing and teaching than building, and most of the work was done by something that plugs into the wall.

I'm sure that I could get the same results with your planes as I can with mine. If you were in the states, I'd set them up for you and send one back properly set to work in figured woods. I hope you take your irritation with this and prove me right to your benefit. It's not going to benefit me.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I've got 4 stanley/record planes 'properly set' a no7, a no5 1/2, a no 4 1/2 and a no4, all of them in pristine condition, perfectly set and yet none of them can tackle figured woods, the no7 gets closest but it still produces tearout, the 55 degree krenov plane creates a perfect surface every single time no tearout at all and I really mean none even with the cap iron 2-3mm from the cutting edge!

your persistence and arrogance is astounding D_W, quite often offensive as well in the way you frame it as though it's always user error, you also automatically presume people are less experienced than you which is most definitely not the case, time to stop treating people as though they are stupid or below you.

I'm insistent because you're giving bad advice. It doesn't benefit me to argue, but it benefits people who may take the wrong road and take a long detour before they get on the right road.

There's a bunch of ways to get things done. Some are better than others. If you make an effort to improve and observe and adjust, you will come to the same conclusion as me. I've spent an inordinate amount of time on this and had more than a hundred planes as this is my hobby (the planes and planing with them). I would not make the same assertions if you were asking about furniture as it's not really an area of interest for me.

There are two directions you can go from here:
* you can see if you can disprove me (honestly) as you have something to gain by doing that
* you can choose not to do the first because you don't want to find out that I'm right

This isn't a subjective thing. I was on the wrong side of it for quite a while here. 15 years ago, the sentiment on the internet was that professionals migrated away from a vintage version of what you're advocating because of a decline in standards. It wasn't correct. I believed that argument, plus the planes were easier to use competently. Unfortunately, they have a lower ceiling - greatly lower in somethings but lower in all except for steepness of the learning curve. In comes things like the bevel up plane, which appeal to folks who have trouble with anything other than a block plane, and I'm sure they're well received in australia where some of the wood is unsuitable for much other than machine dimensioning. The myth that they're better for end grain in the context of work came up, and it was uncontested because nobody really asked the question why the type wasn't more common in earlier planes. Stanley sold a plane that they suggested would be good for planing cutting boards (end grain), but it never really got much traction. Various incorrect statements were made about that, too ("if they had ductile cast, it would've taken off" ...they had ductile cast for at least part of the time, and it was used in items that often showed up in schools so that they wouldn't break when dropped).

But the question of why a single specific design seemed to dominate everything is never answered. Veritas is not big on it, as far as I know, because their technical advisor (Vic) is a dunce. Larry Williams was vocal about the decline in quality and skill myth, but what he was missing was actually using his planes any significant amount. Krenov favored a plane type that's only suitable for light work, probably because he was more productive writing and teaching than building, and most of the work was done by something that plugs into the wall.

I'm sure that I could get the same results with your planes as I can with mine. If you were in the states, I'd set them up for you and send one back properly set to work in figured woods. I hope you take your irritation with this and prove me right to your benefit. It's not going to benefit me.

Trudat...

 

[thetyreman]

I've got 4 stanley/record planes 'properly set' a no7, a no5 1/2, a no 4 1/2 and a no4, all of them in pristine condition, perfectly set and yet none of them can tackle figured woods, the no7 gets closest but it still produces tearout, the 55 degree krenov plane creates a perfect surface every single time no tearout at all and I really mean none even with the cap iron 2-3mm from the cutting edge!

your persistence and arrogance is astounding D_W, quite often offensive as well in the way you frame it as though it's always user error, you also automatically presume people are less experienced than you which is most definitely not the case, time to stop treating people as though they are stupid or below you.

I'm insistent because you're giving bad advice. It doesn't benefit me to argue, but it benefits people who may take the wrong road and take a long detour before they get on the right road.

There's a bunch of ways to get things done. Some are better than others. If you make an effort to improve and observe and adjust, you will come to the same conclusion as me. I've spent an inordinate amount of time on this and had more than a hundred planes as this is my hobby (the planes and planing with them). I would not make the same assertions if you were asking about furniture as it's not really an area of interest for me.

There are two directions you can go from here:
* you can see if you can disprove me (honestly) as you have something to gain by doing that
* you can choose not to do the first because you don't want to find out that I'm right

This isn't a subjective thing. I was on the wrong side of it for quite a while here. 15 years ago, the sentiment on the internet was that professionals migrated away from a vintage version of what you're advocating because of a decline in standards. It wasn't correct. I believed that argument, plus the planes were easier to use competently. Unfortunately, they have a lower ceiling - greatly lower in somethings but lower in all except for steepness of the learning curve. In comes things like the bevel up plane, which appeal to folks who have trouble with anything other than a block plane, and I'm sure they're well received in australia where some of the wood is unsuitable for much other than machine dimensioning. The myth that they're better for end grain in the context of work came up, and it was uncontested because nobody really asked the question why the type wasn't more common in earlier planes. Stanley sold a plane that they suggested would be good for planing cutting boards (end grain), but it never really got much traction. Various incorrect statements were made about that, too ("if they had ductile cast, it would've taken off" ...they had ductile cast for at least part of the time, and it was used in items that often showed up in schools so that they wouldn't break when dropped).

But the question of why a single specific design seemed to dominate everything is never answered. Veritas is not big on it, as far as I know, because their technical advisor (Vic) is a dunce. Larry Williams was vocal about the decline in quality and skill myth, but what he was missing was actually using his planes any significant amount. Krenov favored a plane type that's only suitable for light work, probably because he was more productive writing and teaching than building, and most of the work was done by something that plugs into the wall.

I'm sure that I could get the same results with your planes as I can with mine. If you were in the states, I'd set them up for you and send one back properly set to work in figured woods. I hope you take your irritation with this and prove me right to your benefit. It's not going to benefit me.

whatever, it's obvious my message is not getting though to you, I'd rather actually make stuff than argue, and I'll keep posting what I've made in the projects section, and when I need to plane figured woods use my 55 degree smoothing plane, the baileys simply won't cut it.

 

[D_W]

I think the message isn't getting to you - it's fine that you're making things. You're making it harder to make things. This isn't a personality issue between you or me - it's something for you to fix.

Sometimes, I make things, too. I guess I post those things here instead of the projects thread because I can't imagine there's much making things by hand there vs. here.

I am not a master maker of furniture, but you are in the hand tool forum and giving erroneous advice to someone who is thinking about buying tools. If you do that, you can't be surprised if someone suggests that the advice is erroneous.

Krenov also gave bad advice on planes unless someone is using them for small work and not much of it. I can't comment much about his furniture making because I can't find much of it that I'd want to read further about, but planemaking is something I know far more about than he did. It's forgivable, though there are some false solutions in his making (make a plane out of scraps? maybe? I don't know - the cost of an iron and cap iron of the type that most of his planes use is higher than the cost of a stanley plane over here, or an older wooden plane of a design that was used by professionals).

I would expect the same response from Richard Jones if I started making assertions about furniture. I just don't know much about it because I'm not interested. When I made your assertion, a much more experienced woodworker told me I was wrong. I was motivated to either prove him wrong or me wrong. Unfortunately, I was wrong - he wasn't. He only had all of history on his side.

Most people don't follow his advice, either. He can show up at WIA over here, win more contests than you're allowed to take prizes for and people still do what you're doing. Drop the personal dynamics issue and learn to use the planes properly or don't give advice about them without caveating that you have seen other people do things with the planes that you're not able to and you don't know why yet.