Exactly how flat does a sharpening stone need to be? Exactly how flat, for that matter, does a plane need to be?

I’m on holiday. Here is a toy plane, a soft building block, and a half brick (not cut by me):

The plane started out rather rusty, as did the iron (why do I always forget to take ‘before’ photos?). The plane sole, lubricated with water, was used to flatten off the soft building block, and it was then used to take the rust off the iron. The half-brick did a much better job of sharpening, but it wasn’t perfect. Then I found a better stone:

Due to measures to combat the epidemic of bigamous marriages or something of the kind, we ended up having a wedding reception in the garden. Thus we needed tables, and benches, and things of the kind. Time to put the workbench to work.

Firstly there was a lorry:

Then there was a lot of wood:

The short pieces are legs for the benches; the longer will become benches and trestles (and will replace these horrible trestles I made earlier). But the OSB was even more of a nuisance, so that got sliced up first.

The first shot at a workbench sat dormant for a fair while. Meanwhile it got cold—very very cold. Then it got wet—very very wet. Then it got hot—very very hot. And how did my nice, carefully chosen unwarped 1" planks look after that? A pretty sorry state. Even the laminated legs had moved slightly (next time for lamination I need more glue). Then I discovered that I could get 6x2s from MKM building supplies. I rang to ask about stock and he checked—‘yes, I’ve got 3,500m in stock at the moment’. Madly I decided to take the trolley out again. Very madly, as MKM deliver for free, and if you plead with them they will select vaguely straight timber for you. Instead of which I lugged this lot home:

Background

This workbench is built almost exactly to a published design and following the videos. One has to buy the videos. This is the first time I have ever done anything like this, and it was a very good idea. Buy them; watch them; copy them. Unless one is very lucky one simply doesn’t get to watch a good craftsman up close very often, but the ability to pause, zoom, replay, and see exactly how to position your hands and body when paring with a chisel, for example, is worth any amount of textbooks.

After a few months of balancing my bicycle between two walls where once, it would seem, was a pantry, it got too annoying. Ideally one would like some kind of stand to hold the bike out the way, vertically. The internet turns up many such designs. After a trip around the rather poor selection of wood available at B&Q (the only place open), I settled on something slightly different—an L-shaped half-lapped frame with wooden chocks to space it, and the bicycle balanced with just a small inward turning moment counteracted by its own weight.