I cannot plane wood flat / square across and along its length. I've tried and tried and tried. I've watched multiple videos multiple times and can't understand why I can't do it.
My usual process starts by going across the grain then diagonal then along the grain. Then Checking for twist / fixing that. I can usually accomplish flat across, the problem then comes when I try to flatten along the grain. After I get it reasonably flat along the grain then it's no longer flat across or I've put twist back into it. Maybe I'm being to picky about flatness both ways, I hold my straight edge or square up to my shop lights to check and there's always some gap. When the straight edge isn't held up to the light its usually all good.
Is there such a thing as flat / good enough?
I literally just planed off a 1/2" of a supposed to be 1.5" top trying to get it right and am going crazy every time I try to dimension wood.