Just to buck the trend slightly I have one of the Faithfull diamond hones. 400 grit one side and 1000 the other.
The 400 side is great for lapping a waterstone and the Faithfull hone comes with an adjustable holder thats good for holding my waterstone.
Planes? This subject is a bit like Which twostroke oil is best so I'll just say which I use a lot.
I have a Stanley 5 1/2 jackplane with a choice of blades, a Samurai Brand laminated, a Veritas PMV-11, several old Sweetheart laminated blades. This plane is a real workhorse and depending on the camber of the blade I put in it can ease a firedoor or can be used in the centre of a big panel to smooth it neatly.
Veritas Low Angle Block Plane. Again a real workhorse, better with two blades, one at about 27 degrees, good for endgrain and nice raising grain, the other at a much higher angle for grain thats dropping into the wood.
Then I have a nice little No 3 Record with a Mujingfang blade that has the cutting edge inch or so made from High Speed Steel. I kind of use this like a beast of a blockplane or a lightweight, handy smoother.
I have a Woden (you read it right Woden was a British manufacturer which at one point was owned by Record) No4 which is OK I guess, err, I hardly use that size, not quite wide enough to do a firedoor edge and too wide for the nice Mujingfang blade.
For nice wood (as opposed to work jobs where I might encounter plywood which is pretty abrasive) I have recently bought a couple of wooden European horned planes. More specifically a Lignum Vitae soled smoothing plane made by a Dutch company called ABC and another is a toothing plane, again with a Lignum sole.
I've been told for years that wooden planes were hard to use and setup but I'm finding them surprisingly good. Watched a few Youtube vids about them and really it's not rocket science.
Also I bought a wooden jointer plane from my local secondhand place. Its 22" long, looks like it's been left in a shed for a long time, has a crack in the front but then it also has a very thick Norris iron and a capiron.
It cost me five quid but its bleedin marvelous. I had to flatten its sole a bit but I have handplanes for that.
Try flattening a Stanley No 7 or 8 and see how long it takes you.
Oh and I forgot, I bought the cheapest thing I could on Ebay a while ago, to use as a scrrubplane can't remember what make it is but it claims to be a No 2 although its basically the same size as a Record No 3 I have.
No chipbreaker and I reprofiled the blade to a tight camber then opened the mouth up with a file. I launched the original tension screw into the skip and fitted a wingbolt cos it doesn't need a screwdriver.
All dead easy to do and using it across the grain at 45 degrees then 45 degrees the other way is an absolute dream, fast and effective. Think it cost me eight quid.
Scrubs aren't a precision tool, I just don't need Veritas or Lie Nielsen levels of machining on it.
With those I feel able to attack large wide surfaces, the kind of thing everyone else wants to do with a router sled.
Thing is I have routers and could knock up a sled in a fairly short amount of time but I just cant stand using them, it takes the enjoyment out of hobby work for me but I actually like using handplanes.
