One of my client, Michel, has been very patient with me. He asked me in July for a 19 1/2 x 22 inch cutting board. But I had holidays already planned so there was a delay. Furthermore, it is REALLY hard to source quilted maple that is more than 1" thick. Since Michel wanted the final product to be 1" thick, I had to source wood that was thicker. In the end, I had to use 6/4 (1 1/2 inch) quilted maple and 12/4 (3") walnut. Thankfully, I was able to re-saw the walnut in half to obtain two board that are close to 6/4 thick. The width of the final product was also an issue. Since I wanted a solid piece of quilted maple in the middle, I couldn't do my usual two piece construction to run through the planer. One of the pieces was still wider than the 13" maximum width of my planer. So I had to glue up three boards and plane these to size (left).
This caused some issues with the gluing since I have to ensure that all the pieces are lined up absolutely perfectly because I can't really plane afterwards since the desired thickness is already achieved. So I have to use a LOT of clamps. First, I place the work on top and bottom cauls (tape covered 2x4s, the tape prevents the 2x4s from sticking to the finished board). These cauls are slightly convex to that they will apply pressure across the entire board once clamping pressure is applied. I clamp those down with a few short bar clamps.
Inevitably, this is not sufficient near the ends of the board, so I use 4 more speed clamps to ensure that the joints are lined up perfectly at the ends of the glue-up as well. The joint is between the walnut (brown) and the second piece of cherry (darker of the light woods).
Finally, I use all my big pipe clamps to apply the required pressure to glue the joint. There will be about 1/128th of an inch to level off at the joint, but that can be done with the sander.