My experience with having two planes worked by a machinst shows that
the end result is quite remarkable. Both planes, a MF and a Stanley will cut a full blade-width shaving about 1/1000 thick across the full blade, from end to end of a board. They are better than a machine! The only caution is that, to get a flat bottom you need flat and true sides before the bottom is worked. In that process some of the markings on the side of my MF were lost. However, the end result is two quite remarkable planes that serve me very well indeed.