Corsair wrote:
...nothing I've found since 1995 comes even close to the quality of the steel, nor the build of the tool.
The rot starts well before that. I have a 1970s vintage bog-standard Record smoothing plane with a frog so out of true that to get the blade square I have to crank the lever almost full over. I lost count of the hours I put in lapping & trueing my two Indian 'Anant' brand plane-ettes (block & bullnose rabbett) just to get them functional.
By contrast the c1903 Stanley Compass Plane I scored off Ebay for £30 just needed a quick hone, a squirt of WD40 on the threads and it was good to go in about 20 minutes. It'll hold an edge you can shave with & cut end grain on a 10" curve with no tear-out. Original blade too
Corsair wrote:
Now I need to buy a vernier and there seems to be an awful lot of difference on eBay between different models... they can be £8 or £22; I can imagine what an £8 one's like, eh...
There's some rubbish out there for sure. However... keep your eyes open for a Draper VO6 - not the usual Draper quality, these are rather good, if you're happy with an old-school manual vernier.
If you insist on a digital one, I was pleasantly surprised by a
'Toolzone' one I picked up from Aldi for about £8. Certainly good enough for joinery & seems very well made. Your nearest Aldi seems to be in St. Malo.
P.