OP here. writing for my own reference. Found great pointers so far.

I'm going to try https://sawdust.diy and https://fluidcad.io/ for the short term.

For the long term, I have noted FreeCAD + Blender + $ai_model to be a good general purpose workflow that yields more control, and will probably get me lost into the details.

https://janne-alatalo.fi/en/articles/silhouette-modeling/ and its accompanying SKILL - https://github.com/janne-alatalo/image-to-cad-skill

FreeCAD MCP: https://github.com/neka-nat/freecad-mcp

Woodworking specific FreeCAD resources : https://github.com/dprojects/Woodworking

Two YouTube Channels related to FreeCAD + woodworking :

1. https://www.youtube.com/@dprojects.woodworking

2. https://www.youtube.com/@ga3d_._tech528

There goes the weekend! Cheers HN!