Reply To: What 2 hand planes to start with.

about the necessity of a flat workbench,
look at the video of Paul Sellers’ post:
“newest piece for 2022” dated 21 January 2022.
Obviously, Paul doesn’t rely on a flat workbench (most of the time).
Although he found it necessary to make picture frames:
read “flattening one of my benches” dated 14 august 2014.

As for advices, the best ones are in Paul’s blogs.
There are “essential tools”, “nice to have” and “not at all useful” ones.
Have a look at his site https://commonwoodworking.com/ (login with the same name and password as here).