Since I'm starting with very nicely-sawn material (bandmill), and need to remove very little, I'm thinking I could skip that one? Yes? No?
Yes, in a since you can skip the scrub in your case. A number #4 (or a facsimile there of) with a little more camber to the blade is essentially a scrub plane. You are doing this for aesthetics so I leave it to you and the client what look good to you? I have done 90 degrees to the grain and even "skip planned" which leave an "adzing affect" to the timber. This is where "art and design" meet "function, form and necessity."
ay, to address your point as to what my finish goal for the timbers are? That would be removing the bandmill marks while creating as smooth a surface as possible, leaving little to no plane markings.
Hmmmm, if that is the case, and you are going for the more "refined look," yet still want to maintain the finished appearance of a high quality vintage frame with tool marks and no need to sand them, then you may even consider a larger plane such as one of several Veritas low angle (bevel up) bench planes. The "Smoother" is 10" long, the "Jack" is 15" long, and the "Jointer" is 22" long. All can be used in your application as a "single source plane" with the longer ones giving a very smooth flat surface with slight tooling left behind depending on camber you want. Another nice aspect is the plane blades are all interchangeable between all three planes, and if you really want to go with one plane for now that can have dual purposes there "Jack Rabbit" plane with a modified blade (one of my students uses one as he did not have money for the "Jack and jointer" will also work as a large smoothing plane. The "Jack Rabbit" even has more mass than the "Jack" plane for getting good long solid strokes.
If you are just going with a local sourced restored antique plane either size will work, it is all about a well tuned plane body, good steel, and very excellent sharpening skills. We keep ours tuned to 0.5 microns and sometimes will hone even finer than that. Get use to gauging and thing of all your sanding and sharpening grits in microns, as this is the universal gauge among manufactures, even though each often publish there own gauge. We rough in with ~90 micron stones and move down into the 10 to 1 micron water stones, then "hone out" the micro bevels (often on both sides of the blade)with 0.5 to 0.1 micron compound or ultra fine japanese stones. 0.1 micron is about a 30,000 grit stone.
Good luck and let us know what you end up doing and how the project proceeds.
j
