Gentlemen thanks for the welcome.
I'm a hobbyist, not much more. I have a general interest in traditional woodworking, and have been at it off and on for the last six years. I've built a couple workbenches, a dresser, and a couple other projects with hand tools.
I try to work traditional wood working projects into my home renos (e.g., planning to stick some wood mouldings for a bathroom I just did, building some trays and shelves for corner storage).
Til now I've been working on a shoe string budget, but I've found when I find time to get in my shop (if a corner of my garage can be called that) I'm often missing an odd tool or one the works smooth. I'd like to have a fewer nicer tools and a few more specialized ones to help work more efficiently. Planning to build a set of shop cabinets (try dovetailing the carcass; building frame and panel doors; might do it in a squirrelly grained hardwood).
The reason I'm hunting for the ECE plane so mentioned is that I bought a similar one used sometime ago and liked it very much, more so even than my iron horses. As I'm planning more work that will require a finer smoothing plane I decided to go on the hunt for a used one. This particular plane has the virtue of a somewhat steeper bed angle.