Hey, I'm looking for any tips you can give a rookie on how to plane an end grain cutting board. When I try to google I'm just getting stuff about how to run one through a power planer, or how to plane the end of a board. Not really finding anything about planing a large surface of end grain.

I'm making an end grain cutting board obviously, and struggling with some areas. It's got a bit of a cup to it from the glue up, so I've been working on flattening the domed side of the cup. Some parts go great, some won't avoid chattering the blade no matter what angle I seem to come from. I started by flattening the perimeter, 2 sides were good and the other 2 were cupping up. That was pretty straightforward. I started hitting the high spots on the cupped sides, with my plane perpendicular to the edge (basically, a little skewed sometimes) and go in about 2". Then I'd gradually make a series of wider passes until the straight edge said it was good. That part mostly went well, lot of elbow grease though lol.

The part I'm struggling with is the interior. I figured I'd start at the middle of the cup again and try to go all the way across, and just slowly start taking things down until they matched the flat perimeter. I can't make a pass all the way across it just seems like too much for the plane and it just chatters and skips around. I tried doing a bunch of really short elliptical strokes going across and that was a bit better but I still get a lot of chattering. I tried the elliptical strokes with all kinds of different skew angles and directions but I just can't get anything to go well.

For tools I only have a Stanley Bailey #4 smoother for now. I've only got one blade and it's sharpened with a slight camber for doing smoothing. Any tips on technique would be greatly appreciated, or some recommendations for blade setup or tools. I don't know maybe I just need a bigger heavier plane for this part, or a blade sharpened a different way.