Reply by Loren

You’ll want to sharpen the back of the blade to compensate
for the low angle and bring the effective cutting angle to about
45 degrees. Steeper scrapes more and is better for figured
and dense woods. You can do some smoothing with a
standard-honed block plane but if you encounter tearing
of the grain the absence of a chipbreaker is part of the
reason. This can be mitigated by changing the angle of the
cut and/or by raising the bevel angle of the blade using
back beveling.

If this seems all quite complex, it is. That’s why smoothers
are used for smoothing more. The 45 degree angle of
cut combined with the chipbreaker solve many of the
problems of smoothing cuts.