A few weeks ago I posted here asking about buying a first hand plane and if it was worth dropping ~$400 on a Lie-Nielsen one.
After all of your comments about getting an old Stanley I kept an eye on Craigslist, Ebay, and FB Marketplace for a little bit and ended up finding someone selling a collection of pre-WWII Stanley planes about an hour north of me. Including, specifically, a 4-1/2 and a 5-1/2 which was exactly what I wanted.
Knowing that the 1/2 sizes were less common than the round numbers and since the guy was local I jumped on it and ended up buying both for $40/each. The linked to album is the before and after of the 5-1/2 after cleaning it up. It’s all tuned up and works beautifully. All in, I’m at $80 for two planes, $15 for cleaning materials, and $35 for a whetstone sharpening kit; way cheaper than a new Lie-Nielsen and I got two planes! Thanks everyone!
That’s a perfectly reasonable question.
Bench planes are used for taking rough lumber and squaring and smoothing it for use. If you only buy wood from the hardware store you’re used to seeing “S4S” or “surfaced four sides” boards, so it’s already been squared and smoothed by machines. If you buy your wood from a specialty wood dealer, it usually comes rough. In both cases it’s usually not really square and straight, so you’ll need some means to remove warp, twist, cupping, etc.
Hand planes are the old-school tool for the job. Longer planes flatten longer boards, and shorter planes are used to smooth and clean up after the rough work from the earlier planes. I’m in danger of just recapitulating this article by Chris Schwarz, so I might as well link the whole thing:
https://www.popularwoodworking.com/wp-content/uploads/CoarseMediumFine.pdf
This is an excellent explanation of which planes you need, what they’re used for, and how to set them up for that use.