After routing dog holes and gluing it to my top, I now need to flatten the last lamination for my bench top. This is a 4" wide, 2"thick and 7' long soft maple board that has been ripped and left acclimating in my shop for a few months (at the time, I also did some quick work with a jointer plane and my lunchbox planer to remove some material from both faces, to make them smooth and expose fresh wood to see if there were stresses that needed to be assessed).
When I began a few nights ago, the board showed some cupping, like a gentle banana shape with perhaps 1/8"+ dip at the middle. I placed it so I had the valley in the middle and shimmed the far edges underneath so it would remain stable. I then went at it with my No7 and things worked as expected: A first I was only removing wood from the edges, but eventually I started hitting the valley in the middle until I reached a point where I got continuous shavings all throughout. My longest straight edge is about 4' so it doesn't span the full length of the board, but by placing it in different locations, everything seemed flat enough.
The problem is that when I flipped the board against my flat top, it is not still flat; there is still a cup in the middle! Better than before, but still noticeable. At this point it can be closed up with clamp pressure; but I am wondering if I did something wrong (for instance, with the shims).
Any advice/opinions?