by To start, I have personally heard or have read plenty of comments suggesting that running an end grain cutting board through a power planner is a terrible idea. Their claims is that the planer will rip off the ends of the board which in turn could and has caused damage to the board and the power planer.
Well, this is actually true. However, I suspect that the methods that they were using were the cause of said damage. My belief is that the biggest reason for damage is trying to take too much wood off at one time. Just imagine those spinning blades really digging in deep into that grain and therefore they are going to grab more wood at a time to then rip off big chunks of wood.
I have several ways of combating the above issue. Also be sure to watch the above video to see these methods in action!
First is by applying a small chamfer to the leading and end edge of the board as seen in the below picture. I personally use a power sander to apply the chamfer. What this does is to not allow the spinning blades to grab the very ends of the board. If the blades were able to grab the very edge, they would again have a better chance of ripping off some chunks of wood.
Second is by limiting the amount of depth per pass to an extremely small amount will reduce the chances significantly of ripping off chunks of wood. Now just imaging the spinning blades just barely shaving off small amounts of wood per pass. Much less chance of damage.
The third method kind of goes along with the first solution. And that is to be sure that you are not starting the board through the planer already set too deep. In other words, I start passing the board through the planner before the rollers of the planer are even grabbing the board. I then lower the blades just a bit per pass until the blades finally make contact with the wood. Again, this is to just reduce the chances of taking off too much wood at one time. At times I have taken up to around ten passes before the blades even start cutting.
A last and popular method that I didn’t mention in the video is to use a sacrificial piece of wood attached to the board. The piece of wood should oriented so that the grain is either edge grain or face grain facing upwards. Then this piece of wood can be cut off after the planing is complete.
I hope these methods help you out in your woodworking journey. If you have any questions please leave a comment below.
To finish up here I would like to say that woodworking with power tools can be and usually is dangerous. So using the above methods please do so at you own risk.
