Hello,

I am still confusing these two kanji, it's driving me insane... do you have any tips on how to keep them apart?

Greetings,
Andreas

I imagine sparks flying off of a saber as something gets "planed" because to me the word is associated more with mechanical actions, like you would see in a garage or something.

Whereas for level I imagine soil being patted level by a ladel.

to me, a "plane" is a tool used for flattening a piece of wood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(tool). I imagine sparks shooting off to the left as a guy grinds his saber down into a plane blade.

I think they work rather well on their own due to the primitives involved. It's easy to imagine sparks resulting from planing something (with a plane), and you do plane metal: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/images/o...319193.jpg
No one 'levels' metal, though.
But one does level dirt, and one can do so with a scoop. One can not plane dirt, however.
You could also think of planing *with* a sword, since it really is generally more of a wood thing.

So, I've never put more thought into it than that. The two words only make sense with the correct primitives. I can understand your dillema if you're not a native speaker though.

I used the keyword CUT BY CHIPPING. Besides planing, it can also mean whittling, and various kinds of (metal) machining operations.

For plane I made up a story about 911 sparking sabers, as in starting a militaristic mentality.

In japanese, 削 has the sense of taking something off. 削除 means delete, for instance.
均 has a meaning of equality, 均等 means equality, for instance.

Thanks for the comments, I think I got it now. Time will tell...

Use Japanese words to tell them apart.

All common words including 均
http://jisho.org/words?jap=*%E5%9D%87*&e...&common=on

All common words including 削
http://jisho.org/words?jap=*%E5%89%8A*&e...&common=on