On Sunday, October 14, 2018 at 12:48:59 PM UTC-4, dpb wrote:
On 10/13/2018 2:14 PM, John McGaw wrote:
On 10/13/2018 2:04 PM, dpb wrote:
On 10/13/2018 11:39 AM, DerbyDad03 wrote:
...

If I decide to move forward, it seems like I will be learning to use a
power planer ...

As the posters in the link said, the key is definitely to only take
hair-thin shavings to avoid major tearout.

The problem with more severe issues as the kickback and such is more
likely related to more gross misfeed like an end gets kicked up or a
glueline breaks or the like.

On conventional planers with feedbed rollers, there can be a tilt
caused by the leading edge moving over and if are set too high that
can be enough to cause the knives to catch front edge too deeply to
cut and given the endgrain is up, the side edge facing the knives is
harder to slice than when it's endgrain in normal orientation that
will split along the length more easily.

A full-length sled and a sacrificial trailing piece makes it do-able
with care but it's not a "learning" exercise imo, no...

It's the cat's meow job for the surface planer or rig up a custom jig
to use the router instead for starters...

--

I've found that using a sacrificial leading and trailing pieces works
out well for both the jointing and planing even with hard maple. I've
had to keep my boards down to 12" and under because of the size of my
equipment but doing it with the sacrificial pieces and keeping the cuts
super-light make it pretty easy and safe. No more than light sanding is
needed before oiling.

I don't disagree it's doable and can be reasonably safe -- my comment
was that I don't believe it's the very first use of a planer an
individual ought to make without some "time in grade" to really become
familiar with the particular machine in question and comfortable in its
idiosyncracies...

I agree wholeheartedly that the way to make it the "most safe" is with
leading/trailing edges; at worst they're tapered somewhat but still the
end grain with the workpiece oversized; at best they are sacrificial
sections of long grain; the problem there is one has to use something
more than simply a butt glue joint for strength to be sure there isn't a
failure there so it's quite a lot of extra work to do that.

--

"the problem there is one has to use something more than simply a
butt glue joint for strength to be sure there isn't a failure there
so it's quite a lot of extra work to do that."

What about making the workpiece extra long, then gluing and screwing the
leading and trailing end pieces? The piece would be long enough that once
the screws are removed, the holes in the actual cutting board would be cut
off also.

If using screws is a really bad idea because of the still-present danger
of the board breaking apart, I'd accept that answer wholeheartedly.