Will my Byrd-Shelix head planer tear out an end grain cutting board?

[Roger Feeley]

I have a Powermatic 15hh with a helical head. When I’ve made end grain cutting boards in the past, I leveled the surface with about a million passes through my wide drum sander. Could I have saved myself some grief by using the PM? I would glue some sacrificial boards on the outside edges to avoid splintering.

[ChrisA Edwards]

I think I've seen MTMwood run his end grain cutting boards through his planer with support/sacrificial pieces glued on in many of his YT videos.

I think results will vary depending upon the wood species used.

I'm a bit of a wimp, after I've spent all the time cutting and glueing up the board, I usually go to my drum sander for final leveling. Don't think I've spent more than about 10 minutes, elapsed, passing the board through it.

I do have a CNC machine now, so my next cutting board I will try that with shallow surfacing passes.

[Roger Feeley]

I don’t have a CNC. Maybe I should break down and make a small slab flattening setup for my router.

[Robert L Stewart]

You have a good plan, a router slab flattening setup is easy to make and will get used down the road

[Andrew Hughes]

I have used my pm planer with the bryd head to level end grain boards. It does just fine it’s not a finished surface. To remove the insert head marks I Hand plane them out.
Im not a wood grinder
Good Luck

[Bob Falk]

I have made many endgrain cutting boards and use the planer to flatten before sanding on my drum sander. Shallow cuts and gluing a sacrificial board to the edges of the cutting board is the key.

[Frank Martin]

I have done it using the jointer with super light cuts. Tersa head on Minimax. Cuts down a lot of the sanding.

[al ladd]

Any planer will work, but shelix is much better and much, much more quiet. Easier than sacrificial end piece is to round all edges significantly with a router roundover bit before planing. This might not be feasible if you want sharp 90 degreeish edges, but most cutting boards benefit visually and handling-wise from a heavy roundover. It's also nice to send the board through on a sled with a supporting cleat to mitigate the action of bed rollers. You will need to follow-up with sanding (wide belt, stroke, drum or orbital in order of preference), but you'll be able to start with 100 or 120 . Made many hundreds this way.....

[Patrick Kane]

Ive done it, but i remember a fair amount of surface tearout. I dont mean blowout on the back of the cut as it exits the machine, i mean tear across the entire surface. If your glueup is really poor and the joints are 1/16"+ off of one another then the planer can get you closer to a finished surface by having to deal with maybe 1/32"+/- of tearout. I had a drum sander, and that is definitely the preferable means of leveling end grain. If you insist on running it through the planer, then i would slightly wet the surface before planing, and take very light cuts.

I have the 20" HH version of your machine, so i assume our results will be similar.

[al ladd]

Patrick's post reminded me that some woods do have a tendency to tear some, and feed direction matters, but it's unlikely the same direction will be best for every piece in the lamination. Generally softer woods are worse. I remember certain pieces of cherry being a problem. But woods maple and harder will generally cut almost perfectly, and if your inserts are sharp and well aligned sanding is a snap.

[John Goodin]

What Bob said. I do stand to the side of the planer just in case there is a issue.

[Jason White]

Buy a Veritas bevel-up jack plane. Perfect for this application.

[Jonathan Jung]

40 grit can easily remove 1.0mm in a pass, have you tried that on the drum sander? I kept 24 grit around for heavy levelling when I had my drum sander. That low of grit is just as capable as a planer.

[Matt Day]

Use the planer with light passes. Glue a sacrificial board to the end of it so that it tears out and not your board. Cut it off when done. Easy peasy. Don’t let the safety nazis scare you!