You Can Do It...

Adam,

You can do this!

I won't recommend it, but I started with nothing. No websites, no books, nothing but the dim memory of a 1/2 year mandatory shop class when I was in 7th grade. Planes were a "beginner penalty" phase we all went through learning machine safety and it was pretty skimpy at that.

No tuning, simplistic sharpening to be used on butter soft sugar pine and forgotten just as fast.

It took longer I'm sure, but I figured it out on my own with no help at all, at least the first few depths of perception. I needed to smooth wood and planes were the only way so I went at it, failing and learning, until it worked.

Fortunately for me, in those days if a plane was seriously incomplete or had a sole very far out of flat I just got another one for a couple bucks since nobody wanted them.

Then printed articles started coming from a few sources and I was able to glean the experience of others. Still no personal contact available so it was hands on all the way.  You've got more than you could ever need available on the web now, most all of it free.

The thing is, when you're new at it, everything is cool.  Every new little trick or improvement you learn is dramatic in improved performance.  You get to see for yourself as you go along what's important and what isn't.  The ad companies want you to believe you have to buy everything for money.  "Don't waste your time, buy this product" is an old saw that goes back probably to cavemen, hawking clubs.  This never was true.

What you learn for yourself, you get to keep. It's worth the suffering in the end, believe you me.