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I completed that course about six years ago.
It's a fantastic course, Nick (the main tutor) is a lovely bloke. It took me three years to do mine.If you want to save yourself a lot of time, it would be worth buying a decent plane iron (or whole plane) and sharpen it yourself at home. The ones there are heavily used, and you can't rely on sharpening one and it still being sharp by the next lesson.
Enjoy it - I had a great time and wish I could get the time to go back and build something else!
Edit - sorry, I misread and didn't notice you'd already started, so you probably know more about it than I do! :)
christianSpaceman-
We're able to sharpen a plane, mark it with our names and leave it in a cupboard for our sole use. In theory. I don't know what happens to them when I'm not there.
But I have bought a couple of old #4 planes. One is in serious need of a wire wheel, which I don't have here, and the other has been cleaned up with a glass sheet and lots of sandpaper. I can't seem to get the iron to sit nicely though. But maybe I just need to plane a load of soft pine and just mess around with it, get it fettled.
I'm itching to have a workbench somewhere now. No space at home though, really.
Did you just keep paying to repeat the course until you were finished?
Sparky
Guitar building evening course at the Met. Should take me about a year to make my 00 "Martin".