I don't disagree with anything that has been written, except Warren's notion that the Zenith of wooden planes didn't occur in the 1870s.

I think we are comparing apples to oranges here. Were there a lot of large, expensive cast iron machinery that planed and sawed logs into usable lumber? Yes indeed. I may be wrong, but the point of Stewart's exercise is to make a BENCH jointer. Unless an individual furniture or cabinet maker was fortunate enough to have said large, expensive water or steam powered cast iron machine in his shop, he used a wooden jointer just like the one Stewart is building. Wooden bench planes didn't loose popularity for many years, until Stanley had sufficiently convinced the public that their iron planes were superior. That process started in the late 1860s. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the vast historical record.

Stewart, how is that plane coming. Any update?