Mentally unstable cops are a feature, not a bug.

You can make your featherboards any shape and stiffness you want. A wide short one for the fence, pretty stiff and barely pushing on the material from above (just enough to keep it from rising up, really) along with a dado depth support directly behind the stack sounds like it’d do it.

Musical instruments have been made far longer than there have been power tools. Methods of cutting veneer with hand saws are documented from hundreds of years. Roubo on Marquetry covers it well enough for your purposes I think. DM me and I’ll send you a .pdf.

Where in the world are you located? I have material in yellow cedar- a tone wood very similar to spruce- in pieces 6" wide x thick veneer to 3/8" thick, very tight vertical grain that I can supply you with at an attractive price.

It looks like you’re in Europe so shipping may be prohibitive. I’m in the USA.

Try setting it up with the mouth at about 1/16" and the chipbreaker really close to the edge

Return the plane.

Not sure where you are and what is available to you but personally (for iron body planes) I prefer the better quality ones from the first half of the 20th century.

There are 3 ways to improve the cut on a smoother. 1 close the mouth 2 increase the cutting angle 3 adjust the chipbreaker close.

None of them are magic bullets, and for the most part you have to use one of them. Sometimes you can use mostly one and a little bit of another, but if you max out all 3 you’ll have a badly choking mouth.

Shellac

Depends what you mean by human. If you restrict the term to homo sapiens you put yourself in a small minority. I’d say the fact that these people used tools in a sophisticated way pretty much defines them as human.

What then? Aliens? Sentient ants?

Welding will distort the steel. It’ll no longer be straight. Steel is pretty cheap. Find a metal supplier near you (not a big box store) and buy the angle you need.

Paywall

Gonna need a reference for this…

Can you use nails instead of drilling for rods? Drive the nails in and clip off the heads.

Either make the holes before cutting out the blocks or make the jig to hold the block.

My shelf pin jig makes holes about 4" apart about 2" from the edge of the board, so it wouldn’t work for your application. You could certainly make a router jig for your needs though.

Mine is a small plunge router. There are a number of them on the market that should work. Make sure that you can get the bit you need before getting too invested in this idea.

Sharper drill bit. Play with higher speeds and lower feeds. As said, backer.

This is a little bit like drilling shelf pins holes, of which I’ve done a lot. The thing that ends up working best for me is a plunge router in a jig with a solid carbide down spiral bit. Those are not through holes, though.

I also am looking.

Diamond stones are pretty much fine with anything you want to use. In a pinch, use them dry but wipe off the metal dust frequently (dry rag). In the shop where I don’t have a sink I use a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol (50% seems about right). In the kitchen I use soapy water. I’ve seen oil used but I’d rather not have the mess.

Diamond stones don’t absorb so any liquid that can be cleaned off and isn’t corrosive or otherwise dangerous will work.

So for a few years I thought sharpening classes at woodcraft. Had a lot of new woodworkers come through. Here’s my take:

Keep it simple at first. Get a coarse stone and a fine stone. Diamond plates are great for starting out. They are reasonably priced, stay flat, cut fast and give good tactile feedback. Practice with those until you get it right. Then make yourself a strop with a scrap of wood and some metal polishing compound. Practice with that until you get arm hair shaving results.

Once you’re getting consistently good results with that setup you can think about expanding your equipment line up.

The anarchists toolbox

The funding for Ukraine is not the thing holding those things back. Republican regressive politicians are the thing holding those things back. We have plenty of money to do both.