Ed,

You wrote:

> ... I though this experiment failed in the 60’s

> http://www.grizzly.com/products/-4-Smoothing-Bench-Plane/T22708


It looks a lot like this plane sold by Harbor Freight (except that the HF
version looks nicer):

https://www.harborfreight.com/no-33-bench-plane-97544.html

Cheers,
Chuck Taylor
north of Seattle USA