Tom provides the basics of the stock preparation business with hand 
tools. I am sure most of us work pretty well to this scheme.

I would add a couple of points and ask a question.

  1 I work against a stop, rather than between stops, so the board is 
free to move during planing. This requires that the ends be close to 
square to the length first. It also means that the sides have to be 
roughly square to the faces.

  2 I would cut the boards down to the rough length first - long 
boards are harder to plane than shorter boards.

  3 I prefer to do each step (as outlined by Tom) to all the boards 
before moving on to the next step.

  4 The question. Do people use the mullet method? It seems to me that 
having a good line on the edge and planing down to that line is much 
better. I work the scrub to a few scrub thickness of the line, then 
the jack to a few jack shavings of the line, then the smoother. The 
last smoother stroke removes the top of the mark (an ideal I shoot 
for, but never achieve for the full length of the board, but at this 
point the shavings are pretty thin so the errors small.) Near the end 
I can flip up the board and see how I am doing along the full length 
and react (remove the high spots) accordingly. If the first thing you 
do is remove the gauge marks it seems to me it must be much harder to 
check your progress.

Aside from the big ideas in dimensions stock (face, edge, ...) I think 
some of these smaller ideas are also important and would be interested 
  in other's approaches to these details.

Brent

T&J Holloway wrote:
> ...
>     1) Make one Face of the board flat and smooth.  This becomes the 1st 
> ...
>     Others can chime in regarding use of a 'mullet' to check thickness 
> and other ancient practices, but this should give you a place to start.