Been messing around with some 3D designs for small table tops. I did them in end grain because it's just easier to work with. I'm on my third top. First one was okay and I'll probably hang it on my wall, given my lack of pictures and too many little holidays in the piece that it's not something I would sell.

Second one came out a little better, thought I had the angles nailed, but I didn't and it turned out to be a real pain in the ass. This one turned out better. Unfortunately I framed it out in jatobo, because I had some laying around. Thought I could find something to match it for the base because that stuff is heavier than lead. Not sure how it'll end up, but I'm going to keep it. Still not happy with some of the things going on with it, so no sale.

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Working on this last piece and overall very pleased. The second piece I glued up the design into a single piece about 3/8" thick. Glued down one corner of the frame onto some baltic birch. Glued up the back of the design and it sprung up like one of those square minnow nets. A real nightmare wrestling with it to get it down on the birch.

This last piece, I just glued the substrate and laid down the 3 pieces, which were six of those triangles glued up like a parallelogram. Figured they wouldn't curl quite as badly like that, but they did. So I preglued each row, three of those parallelograms with CA glue and then glued them to the birch. Easier to control two long pieces than six short ones.

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My question is this, I'm using titebond 2, but for gluing the design to the substrate would epoxy get soaked up into the grain like the titebond and cause it to curl as badly. I think I've got a reasonably good system worked out, but if I could keep the wood from bowing while I'm doing it , that would make things a lot easier