End Grain Cutting board

I know there are a ton of these posted, but what the hey, I will add mine. First attempt at an end grain cutting board. I was in between major projects and had a bunch of scraps sitting around, and thought this would make for a cool gift for my wife. I think it is the wood whisper method or some amalgamation of processes on here. I glued up various strips and pieces along their edge grains, cut them into strips, flipped them onto their edge, rotated alternating strips, and re-glued them revealing the end grain.

I do not own a planer, so I had to get creative to level everything. I was cautious to clamp it flat on one side but the other had a lot of elevation differences. I ended up cutting it into 1.25” strips before planning it and then used my router table to “plane” the strips and then a quick pass through the table saw to even it out. Worked pretty well and when I did the final glue up, there was almost no gapping.

This overall method seemed to avoid the cupping and other issues I had read about. I used Titebond II for all glue up and finished with 5 coats of Watco butcher Block Oil sanding 220 grit in between the first few coats and then 320 between the last few.

Oh, I added some finger grips on the side and a juice groove on one side; the other side is flat. The wood assortment is pine, poplar, walnut, redwood, lypus, oak, and sassafrass.

And most importantly, the wife really likes it :-)