re: My first end-grain cutting board

Wow this is an incredible cutting board. I can’t believe I missed this one when it was first posted. A work of art for sure.

I just made a couple of end grain boards. I read the comments above about running it through the planer. I use my planer because I don’t have a drum sander. I stand off perpendicular to the feed and push the board in with a long stick. I don’t think there is any risk of the board exploding (as long as it’s thick enough and was properly glued). You should glue a sacrificial strip to the front and back edges to prevent tear out. The leading and trailing edges of the board are where the risk lie. And, of course, you must take micro passes. I do 1/64" passes (1/4 turn of the handle on my planer) and it seems to work just fine.

I did have a board tossed out of the planer one time because I did not carefully set the planing height, but since I was standing away and using the long stick to feed it, no harm was done. Except to the board itself. I had to trim off 1/2" because of the damage. But despite being tossed across the room, there was no other damage to the board except where the planer knives dug in.