The point of truing plane soles...

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D_W

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And the reason that when someone asserts they never do it, I assume they don't do that much with hand tools...

I have a pair of guitar parts sets, but missing a second body blank, and out of curiosity, I want to make a second body out of inexpensive flatsawn cherry (mahogany is typical for the style of guitar I'm making).

I always true the soles of smoother and jointers. And I true them to a pretty tight spec, because once you do, then flatness is achieved as a matter of planing and doesn't need to be checked with anything.

To join two boards far too wide to be match planed, I check nothing but squareness at both ends. In the rare case that you join two boards like this that are 62 inches long instead of 22, then checking in more places and spot removing with a smoother might be needed - but probably not.

This pair of boards, from both sides, are just planed and checked with the square and no additional work. If the plane sole isn't flat, this doesn't work. There are no stop shavings or super thin shavings or anything, just set the cap iron, plane through, fix any squareness issues with continuous cuts and you're done. It takes about one minute per edge. I seriously doubt cabinetmakers were lazy about the flatness of the soles on their wooden planes (by the time metal planes came around, this kind of work was mostly dead).

20220219_145926.jpg
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if you look closely at the last picture, it appears the boards aren't in the same plane, but look closer to the joint and you can see the top board is a bit cupped looking (which it is, not just looking like it is). That kind of stuff doesn't really matter as you'll not be planing until after the boards are glued.
 
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Part of the reason little work actually gets done with hand tools (I'm convinced) is that gurus who can't do it are advising hobbyists. It'll never be the majority of folks who wants to do everything by hand (I want to do little any other way if given a choice), but there are probably many who would do a lot more woodworking if they could. It's drastically more engaging, and you'll do nicer work and think more about it.
 
here's the resulting glue line. See the glue thickness? It's not very easy to follow the line, is it? I'm not totally sure where it is from top to bottom in this picture, but I was able to find the ends of it because the ends of the blanks vary a little and I struck a pencil line on it after this.

Unfortunately, the other side isn't quite as well matched (but it'll be fine) and I put my guitar template on this and the roughed part of the cut out with the template upside down.

AT least the guitar will have a nice match on the back!

20220220_110124.jpg
 
The point of this isnt' that you can't get a tight glue joint like this elsewhere (This is full 2" thickness lumber dry - my lumber guy doesn't cheat me at all - it's actually slightly > 2" in the rough and was 2" thick after truing one face).

The point is that if you don't limit yourself to bad advice, this is the only type of glue joint you'll get, right off of squaring an edge, and without having to grab a straight edge (unfortunately, a good one is probably needed to get a plane sole flat enough to do this).

We are well aware that there are a couple of less frequent users on here who like to claim that they know you don't need to do any of this because they have more experience. I don't think they do.

The beauty of this is that you don't have to be great at any of these things and nobody really has to teach you - you just need to expect them, and you'll need at least one plane with a flat sole. The reason you end up finding this kind of result is because it's easier. Laziness will guide you.

Just as you will end up with coarse rip cuts that look like this -not as a matter of neatness, but as a matter of it just being physically easier to let the saw cut straight instead of having to manipulate it all over the place.
 
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