Three days.
The clamps came off and I looked at the tight end first. There was still a line. Thinner than I expected, less than a sheet of paper. The faces had touched. The glue had held. For a cutting board that will live in a kitchen, getting oil and wax and the occasional knife, that is a tolerance I can accept. I made my peace with it and moved on.
The planer and the dark cloud
Before the second curve could happen, the board needed a flat reference surface. That meant the planer.
Clamps off the first curve. Hand planer first, then the drum sander. Let the cleanup begins!
A tool I had not used before. Here the electric hand planer was used as a rough prep step: cleaning off the dried glue before it damages the drum sander blades, and getting the faces close enough to flat that the drum sander only ever takes a thin skim. The maple faces around the curves were not sitting flush. If you send that straight into the drum sander and ask it to correct too much in one pass, you risk tear-out. The hand planer takes the worst of it first. The drum sander does the rest cleanly.
The board came out slightly trapezoidal, one side marginally higher than the other. To correct a trapezoid in the planer you keep passing it through until both sides read the same. Each pass costs you a fraction of a millimetre you are not getting back. The board had started this project at 4.5cm. I was watching the number drop and doing the maths in my head each time. There is a version of this where you overcorrect and end up with a board too thin to be useful. That dark cloud was never far from my head while the planer was running.
We got it flat. Somewhere around 3.5 to 4cm. Still enough.
Back to the CNC
The board came out slightly trapezoidal, one side marginally higher than the other. To correct a trapezoid in the planer you keep passing it through until both sides read the same. Each pass costs you a fraction of a millimetre you are not getting back. The board had started this project at 4.5cm. I was watching the number drop and doing the maths in my head each time. There is a version of this where you overcorrect and end up with a board too thin to be useful. That dark cloud was never far from my head while the planer was running.
We got it flat. Somewhere around 3.5 to 4cm. Still enough.
Second curve done. The almond eye already visible on the CNC.
The second glue-up
Same process as the first. Same Titebond 3, same clamp sequence, same need for at least two people.
Less dramatic, because by that point I knew what to expect. I had stopped chasing perfection and started working with the reality that the strips were not going to cooperate fully and that was fine. You keep the pressure even, you work from one end, you get M or P to hold the stack while you reach for the next clamp.
Second glue-up clamped. Less panic, same amount of clamps.
Somewhere in the middle of that glue-up I think I understood something about woodworking I had been resisting. It is a series of boo-boos and fixes and things you cover up along the way. That is the stress. That is also the fun. And it is what makes the piece yours rather than something a machine stamped out. A stranger looking at the finished board will never know about the gap on the first bend or the dark cloud over the planer. They will just see the almond eye.
What came out from under the clamps
Not pretty. But both curves are visible now for the first time.
Not pretty. Glue everywhere, strips still proud of the surface, the curve extremities extending beyond the board on both sides. Both curves visible now for the first time, crossing near each end. You can already see where the saw will go and where material will be lost again when the ends get trimmed.
After cleanup and flattening: the almond eye.
And then after cleanup and flattening: Wow!
The almond eye.
The shape I had drawn on paper and been working toward through the gap, the trapezoidal planer scare, the kickback, the splinter, the two failed templates. For the first time it looked like something. Not a board being worked. A board becoming something.
What this session cost
Workshop access and CNC time: 3,500 Kc (roughly 140 euro).
When you do not own a CNC, a drum sander, or a workshop full of hardwood offcuts, you are not paying for the machines. You are paying for the people running them. M and P saved this project more than once in ways that do not show up in a budget line.
That has been worth every pennies.
Next up: the chamfer that made the board look half as thick as it is, the laser engraving test, and the moment it started looking like a wedding gift.
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