Woodworking books are often written in a way that makes plane making sound like some kind of arcane art that has been perfected over many centuries. As such, I've avoided trying to make my own until now. I spent the past week or so making a jack plane and a block plane. Now, before anyone starts calculating some ridiculously low hourly wage, keep in mind that the reason it takes that long is several 24hr+ rounds of waiting for glue to dry. Other than that, I estimate that total hands-on work time for this construction method is less than an hour per plane. As always, making the first one usually takes twice as long as making the second one---the second twice as long as the third ... but then it's fast cruising from there on.
It turns out there's actually not much to [making your own plane] and these work as well as my $250+ Lie-Nielsens. The only short-coming is that using the traditional wedge retainer doesn't work as well as the modern mechanism. As such one has to take care and readjust the iron every so often. It's also more difficult to get it just right although I presume this will come with practice.
Not being made out of 100% metal, these are significantly lighter and thus require less effort to work. There's some debate as to whether extra weight in a plane is actually good or bad.
I'm going to be using the DIY versions for a while to work out any snags. If they hold up, I'm going to sell my fancy plane "collection" back to eBay.
(For the nerds, these are both 45 degree bevel down configurations. No chip breaker. Body is all sandwiched Baltic birch. The sides are 1/4". The wedge is 5 degrees. The iron retainer pin is halfway down. The handle is white oak and is replaceable and retained by a single dowel pin. There's a bunch of other thru-dowels glued into the side of the sandwich to keep it from disintegrating during load. The jack plane is the exact length of a #5.)
