A wedding gift, Five species, and a deadline that does not move

My friend Renald is getting married in April. I have known him for years. He loves to cook, which made the choice easier. I wanted to make him something that would actually be used. Not hung on a wall, not put in a drawer after three weeks. Used.

A cutting board.

I had a vague image in my head when I committed to it. A rectangular board, mostly maple, with a walnut stripe and a cherry stripe running across the top third. And then, in the lower section, something I had never attempted: two purpleheart curves, each one bordered by thin strips of cherry, bending and crossing each other to form a shape like an eye. At the bottom corner, space for an engraving. Amandine on one side, Renald on the other, the date underneath.

The stag party was one week before. The wedding was the 25th. That is the calendar I was working against.

I spent longer on the design phase than I expected.

Pinterest, Etsy, AI-generated renders. I had a rough palette in mind and I wanted to see how species would sit next to each other before committing to anything expensive.

For a quick gut check on the palette, I used a free browser tool called Hammock Dave's Cutting Board Calculator. It is basic, plain color blocks rather than wood texture, and inches only so I had to convert. But it told me what I needed to know: does this combination look flat or does it have some life to it.

Next time I would try Cutting Board Designer instead. It works in metric, which Hammock Dave does not, and it renders actual wood patterns rather than flat color.

I want to be honest about what all of that research gives you: a rough direction. The gap between any render and the finished object is enormous. The AI image looks clean and lit like a product photo. The real wood has grain variation, color that shifts depending on the finish. Nothing I looked at online looked like what I ended up making.

I had maple and walnut left from a project I did two years ago. Darker species, different mood. The maple in particular had been sitting there waiting for something worth it.

For the curves, purpleheart. That color is not a finish. It is just the wood. Cherry would sit between them, a warm middle tone that lets the other two read clearly against the maple.

Four species in the board. That was a deliberate choice. I wanted something that looked considered rather than busy, and I also needed to stay with food-safe species throughout. No compromises on that. A cutting board is not a display piece.

I also decided early against end grain. My boards run 100cm along the face grain and only 16cm across the width. End grain strips come from that width, which gives you pieces 16cm long at most. That is not a cutting board, that is a coaster. And even if the dimensions had worked, end grain strips snap when you try to bend them. The technique requires face grain either way.

I went to the wood store with a clear list and came back with more than I planned. Zebrano and ebony caught my eye. They are not going into this project, but they were there and I bought them. For something I do not have a plan for yet.

What I did not think about was the bill. I stood in the car park outside the wood store holding a receipt for 10 700 Kc. (Roughly 443€)

The maple and walnut were already paid for. Still.

I always have to push myself to go. Every time.

I know the people there a little better now than I did at the start. Not friends exactly, somewhere between acquaintances and regulars. But walking into a shared workshop as an introvert never fully normalizes. There is always a moment at the door where I have to remind myself I am allowed to be there.

I booked a session and spent about four hours at the jointer and the planer.

The jointer flattens one face and one edge. The planer takes the other face down until both sides are parallel. You do this before anything else because every cut after this assumes you are working with square, flat reference surfaces. Get this wrong and nothing lines up later.

With four species at different thicknesses, that is a lot of passes. The purpleheart was the most satisfying. Every pass brought the color up, like the wood was waking up.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I was asked to empty the dust collector.

In a shared workshop, the dust collector fills up. Someone has to scoop the chips into a bin. I had been at the jointer and the planer all session, easily the person generating the most dust in the room, so the logic was sound. But bent over a bin breathing concentrated sawdust, I felt a bit like a child being sent to clean the classroom. I did not complain. I finished, washed my hands, and went back to the planer.

That is the shared workshop. It is also a place where someone who knows more than you will occasionally stop what they are doing to help you think through a problem you did not know you had. Both things are true.

Four hours at the subscription rate came to roughly 1,000 Kc.

The first glue-up

Before committing any glue, I laid the stripes out on the bench dry.

This is one of those steps that feels unnecessary until you skip it. The walnut had some sapwood on one edge, a pale streak running through the darker grain. A detail you either use or hide. I rotated it until it sat where I wanted it, then looked at the whole thing for a few minutes. The order of the species, how much of each was visible, whether the proportions felt right.

The color preview tool told me the palette worked. The dry layout told me the actual pieces worked. Those are two different things.

Then glue, careful alignment, and enough clamps to make the setup look slightly absurd. Pipe clamps along the bottom edge, bar clamps running across the top. More than I probably needed. The right number of clamps for a glue-up is always one more than you think.

I left it to cure and went home.

The shape problem

Running total: around 12 700 Kc on a cutting board I have not started making yet. For a friend's wedding. With a date that does not move.

Once the wood was prepped and clamped, I thought about the lower section. The curves. Two purpleheart strips bent and laminated into that eye shape, with cherry on each side.

But I still did not have a way to cut those curves cleanly. A jigsaw made sense. I did not own one. And I was about to discover that buying a jigsaw is not as simple as buying a jigsaw.

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