Well, I wound up taking advantage of the Woodcraft "bag sale" today. Whatever you could fit into one of their paper bags (excluding power tools) was 15% off. Coupled with that and a $25 gift certificate from my brother for my birthday last year, and my out of pocket cost for a spanky new Lie Neilson #102 low angle block plane was a cool $55.33
Got it home and just happened to have some glue-ups from this morning that needed cleaning up. Used the Stanley 103 to shave off the glue boogers, then adjusted and attempted to level the seams with the LN. Sweet! Wispy-thin shavings (so wispy in spots that they actually duplicated the corrugations left from a planer pass on a thin section of the stock). Zero tearout, and zero chatter -- that thick blade makes a huge difference. Just for grins, I took a shot at doing end-grain with it
-- can't say I got glass-smooth results, but the results I did get were impressive with no tear-out and only minimal chatter (I think my technique needs some work here) The only ding I found is that the screw depth adjust is slick, but has quite a bit of backlash that must be taken out when changing from "down" to "up" adjustments. The heft and just plain beautiful workmanship on this plane make me a happy camper. :-)
Couple this with the coffin smoother that Mr. Knight has recently shipped (and for which I am awaiting with breathless anticipation) and I may actually be on my way to being able to come close to the sandpaper-less finishing for which I have been striving.