Yes!
They are married.
And yes, they liked the present.
When they opened it they were gobsmacked. The board sitting there, the curves, the woods, the chamfer. For a second, nothing.
Then they focused on the engraving.
I will be honest: that always makes me cringe a little. The engraving took maybe twenty minutes of machine time once the settings were dialled in. The bent lamination took a few days of work that was considerably more challenging than twenty minutes. But that is fine. That is how it works. People see what they can name. And the little girl standing between the two electrical plugs, one name on each cord, the wedding date underneath, they saw her. They recognised her. That part landed.
My friend has started using the board. He was a little afraid to damage the engraving, which I understand, and he asked me how to take care of it. I told him to pick up some Walrus Oil wood wax and apply it from time to time. That is it. The wood will darken slightly over the years, the engraving will settle in, and eventually it will stop looking like a gift and start looking like something that has always been in the kitchen. That is the goal.
A few weeks of kitchen life. Knife marks on the maple. Still standing.
What I would do differently
Five things. In no particular order of importance.
Buy the jigsaw only when you know you need it.
I bought it for this project, found out quickly the precision was not there for MDF templates, and switched to CNC. It is still sitting in the workshop waiting to prove its worth. Buy tools for what you know you need, not for what you think you might need.
Test on small pieces first. Build the nerve before committing.
More practice passes on cheap offcuts would have saved a lot of anxiety. If you have MDF lying around, and you should always have some MDF lying around, use it. I now plan to use those leftover MDF pieces to test some clear crystal epoxy I have sitting around with no other purpose. MDF is never wasted.
A wood steamer helps. It is not required, but worth knowing it exists.
Moisture helps hard species relax into a curve. The purpleheart and cherry fought back more than they needed to. A steamer would have made the bending easier without changing anything else.
Cut the strips shorter.
The spring-open problem at the tight end of the curve was partly a length issue. Shorter strips have less leverage working against you when the clamps go on. Cut closer to final board length and accept the waste at the ends.
Use a drum sander rather than a thickness planer for the cleanup passes.
The drum planer is fast but aggressive, especially when the surface is uneven after a glue-up. A drum sander removes material more gradually and gives you much better control when the face is not yet flat. Less risk of taking too much, less anxiety watching the thickness number drop.
Own the boo-boo and move forward.
Every time I hesitated over a mistake, I lost time and introduced more anxiety. The gap in the flat glue-up, the trapezoidal planer scare, the two failed MDF templates. None of those ended the project. The hesitation around them cost more than the mistakes themselves.
What this project cost
The confirmed numbers:
Item | Cost |
|---|---|
Jigsaw (DeWalt, bought for this project) | 380 euro |
Workshop access + CNC, first curve | 3,500 Kc (~140 euro) |
Workshop access + CNC, first curve | 3,500 Kc (~140 euro) |
Total | ~660 euro / 15,974 Kc |
Not in the table:
Wood left over: maple, American cherry, purpleheart
Titebond 3 glue
Rubber feet
Sandpaper across multiple grits
Oil, wax, and finishing supplies
Access to a laser engraver (xTool S1)
Personal free time
...and the workshop hours that do not show up on a receipt. M and P saved this project more than once. That does not have a line item.
What I would actually tell anothe introvert
Five hours in the shared workshop. Body tired, brain tired, aware that everyone around you knows what they are doing and you are still figuring out which clamp goes where.
Three things I would hand you:
Ask if you do not know. Safety first, always, and nobody in a real workshop will think less of you for it.
Ask for a professional opinion. The expert advice genuinely saved this project more than once. The forced break saved it too. Pride is expensive in a workshop.
And the third one, the most important one: fuck it. You do you. Be ok with things not being perfect. That is woodworking. If you wanted perfect, a machine would do it for you.
Until I have my own space with my own tools, the clock will always be a pressure I have not fully made peace with.
But I went back. For an introvert, that is not nothing.
I was praying to the woodworking gods.
Turns out they were listening.
If you followed this project from the start, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below.
