I'm probably going to set off a debate almost as big as if I had said what I was thinking about the dog that chewed up the door in another forum topic.
I have seen videos of people gluing sacrificial pieces to end grain cutting boards to run them through a planer. I've heard it works with a true helical cutter head. I have also heard the horror stories. There is wisdom in the counsel of many. What do y'all think? Does it work? Is it a crazy risk?
Ive done it with a Helical Head, glued strips on the ends and took small cuts.
So far its worked fine.
Just make sure the strips are as wide as your board.
Also did it by just bevelling the end so it didnt chip, but with less luck.
I've done it also with sacrificial rails aswell. In my experience, it's worked most of the time, but I've also had my project blown apart if there was a particularly high spot. I just use a belt sander now personally. A drum sander would be even better
Very sharp cutters/knives coupled with very light passes. On any given pass the wood gonna do, what the wood does, but most folks with a broken up mess are trying to take too much. MTM wood does it pretty frequently on his videos. I used to do it pretty frequently, but I've now got a wide belt sander, it's a much better tool for this.
I used to use the planer. When I did I used sacrifical sides and took VERY light passes - 0.002" to 0.005" at a time.
I have since switched to a router sled set up to get the sides even & parallel. Then several passes through the thickness sander to clean up router marks.
When the end grain explodes, it isn't just a destroyed project, but the damage the big chunks will do to the planer (speaking from experience). I had one of my inlays blow up in my DW735. I had to replace the blades and rebuild a fair amount of the drive system. Several of the gears were also damaged. Total cost was around $150 or so and a couple weeks without a planer while waiting for replacement parts. It was one of those things that was so loud and did enough damage that I won't do it again.
When the end grain explodes, it isn t just a destroyed project, but the damage the big chunks will do to the planer (speaking from experience). I had one of my inlays blow up in my DW735. I had to replace the blades and rebuild a fair amount of the drive system. Several of the gears were also damaged. Total cost was around $150 or so and a couple weeks without a planer while waiting for replacement parts. It was one of those things that was so loud and did enough damage that I won t do it again.
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