Planing end grain

[Vince Kerchenski]

I am expanding my knowledge and wondering if anyone has had success running an end grain cutting board through a surface planer. My random orbital sander just isnt getting the job done. I have the Dewalt 13" planer with the two speed setting. Would the "finish" setting be prefered over the "dimensional" setting. I realize I'll get some tearout at the ends of the board, but would like to minimize as much as possible. Thanks for any help

[Jesse Thornton]

Besides probably being very hard on your planer blades, I think you might blow the end of your cutting board to bits doing that. Do you have a low angle hand plane? That's what I'd use - just make sure your plane iron is really well honed and clamp your board very securely to something solid and sturdy.
I can't say I know for sure that yout idea won't work, but I'd proceed with caution. I personally wouldn't try planing end grain with a power planer (I have the same machine btw), but if you do try it, let us know what happens!

A side note about the DW735 (and not related to your specific question, I just thought you might find this useful in general): This is from an email sent to me from a Dewalt rep - "DeWalt does recommend running the lumber through on the faster feed rate, that helps with blade life and still gives you a very good finish. Only run the wood through on the slower feed rate for your final pass if needed.
Also chips carry heat away from the blade and the larger the chips the better the heat is carried away from the blades, so some times it is better to take a little more off per pass than several very fine passes. Of course you have to use common sense when I state take off more per pass, you wouldn't want to try to take 1/8th of an inch off of a 12 inch wide oak board."

[Jamie Buxton]

SMC's Search function works well. It will find you many discussions of this very issue. In fact, if you'll scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll see that it has automatically found you a bunch of relevant threads.

[Brian Hough]

Besides the tearout,you will be replacing the knives.I had the same experience 3 weeks ago.
Merry Christmas to all,Brian

[Brent Dowell]

Sounds like a good excuse to get a new tool :D

I made a bunch of end grain cutting boards and was successful in convincing my accountant/wife that I really needed a drum sander in order to do it right....

[glenn bradley]

A large planer-style blet sander is much better suited to this but, I don't have one so it was the hand held belt sander and ROS for me. Expect a lot of tearout if power planing end grain on most woods.

[Jesse Thornton]

I'm not sure why belt sander didn't come to mind in my earlier post, but that of course would be a lot more effective than your palm sander, and probably a lot faster and easier than using a LA hand plane. And a drum sander, though it might be well out of your budget, is probably the best solution (I've never had the pleasure of using one of those, so it didn't even occur to me).
Brent might be on to something...

[Robert Waddell]

This can be done without much, note I said much blowout, and without damaging anything. You just need to take very small cut. Allow for the blowout and trim it off. I've done it a number of times with my Delta 22-580 13". 1/8 of a turn of the handle on the Delta. Can't remember how much depth this is. Also the lunch box, high cut /inch does a better job than a reg. planer as far as tearout.
Rob

[Vince Kerchenski]

Well I did it on my power planer. It took a while as I was milling off less than 1/32 with each pass. I did get some blowout on two boards as you can see the ends are thinner, but for the small board there was not as much. Here are a few pictures of finished products. I made two full size boards, and one small board. These are from a recent issue of Wood magazine. I did change the wood up a bit as I used Yellowheart for the center. The smaller board I rounded all the edges, and for the larger boards I just chamferred the edges very slightly. Thanks for everyones input

[Dave Hale]

I had really gouged my end-grain board with the belt sander. Got lazy and stayed in one place too long. I went ahead and put the roundover on all sides and went back to the planer. I've got the DW735 and switched to the 'bad' side of the knives (couple of dings in the past and gives me some mild grooves now, and took very little off each pass (Wixey gauge, .1 of an inch each pass) until the gouge was gone. Maybe the roundover kept a blowout from happening or maybe I was just lucky. :) Gotta say, it kept me from a couple of hours of sanding.

[glenn bradley]

Oh how I wish it were so. I have an unfinished cutting board that may never get done 'cause the surfacing effort brings me no joy.