Just finished pouring our board-formed pillars and the front flatwork

I did board-formed walls for a raised planter bed last spring and your description of stripping day brought it right back. The part nobody tells you beforehand is how much the release oil matters. I skipped it on my first small test panel and the face boards pulled chunks of cement skin off with them. After that I wiped every board down with mineral oil before each pour and the forms came away clean enough to use again. My boards warped slightly between pours too, so I started weighting them flat under some scrap blocks in the garage between uses.

For the honeycombs, don't wait too long on the fix. I patched mine a day after stripping with a stiff mix of cement and fine sand, pressed in by hand, and it blended in fine once it cured. The patch I did a week later on a diferent spot never quite matched in color.

On the saw cutting, do it sooner than you think. I put mine off almost a week because of rain and the cracks found thier own spots before the blade did. Cracked the morning after the second night once the surface had hardened enough to walk on without marking, and the lines came out clean. A garden hose run along the cut line keeps the dust down and saves the blade too.

I went a different way with my own pillars last summer and used rough-sawn fir for the form faces instead of clean lumber, so the wood grain telegraphed right into the surface. It hides every wobble and honeycomb like nothing else. The tradeoff is the texture runs deep, and you have to go easy pressure washing later or you'll erode the soft grain shadows. Might be worth trying on those gate posts if you want a second look without the stress of perfect boards.

On the saw-cutting, don't put it off like I did. I had a patio slab going in during a busy work week, didn't get to the joints until day three, and the slab had allready picked its own crack locations. One hairline ran dead through the middle of a section with no joint anywhere near it. Cut them as soon as the surface stops tearing under the blade, usally the next morning. A handheld saw with a diamond blade riding against a straight board clamped down is plenty for an apron your size.

Also, having that friend there for the pour matters more than people think. Mine bailed halfway through finishing and I ended up on my knees with a magnesium float after dark, chasing a bleed spot across half the slab. The finish in that corner still tells the story.

Not sold on the rough-sawn fir idea from earlier. Changing the board texture doesn't actually fix a honeycomb, it just buries it. If the mix didn't fill in against the form, there's a void sitting behind that fancy grain pattern and it's still there wether you can see it or not. I had a spot like that on a short retaining wall once and you could tap it and hear it sound hollow even though the surface looked fine from a distance. For those gate posts, rodding around the rebar while you pour will do more than any board choice.

For the gate posts, try tapping the forms with a hammer while you pour. We did that on every job before vibrators were common, just whack the boards every few inches as the mud goes in. Shakes the air loose and pulls paste right against the face, kills most honeycombs before they start. An old broom handle works too if you don't want to bang up your forms. Between that and a slightly wetter mix on the vertical pours you'll strip those gate posts cleaner than the pillars, I'd bet on it.

One thing I learned on my own entry columns is that the clamp spacing matters more than people expect, because full height pours put serious pressure on the lower boards and even a small gap lets paste squirt through and leave a fin you have to chip off later. I ended up doubling up my horizontal walers near the bottom third after my first attempt bulged about a quarter inch, wich is surprisingly visible on a pillar. Since the forms are going to the gate posts next, are you planning any chamfer strips on the corners? A little beveled edge hides the tiny chips you always get at the reveals when stripping.

Update: gate posts went up this weekend. Tried the hammer trick from the older guy who replied here, whacking the boards as the mud went in. Night and difference from last time, barely a speck of honeycomb anywhere and I didn't even bother with the slurry patch. Reused the same form boards too, so the stacking-in-the-garage thing paid off.