Butcher block cutting boards (ones that have the end grain on the faces) are pretty simple to make. If you are not going to make a complex pattern or shape then just a few decisions pretty much define them: size, wood type and pattern (squares or brick shapes etc.). In this case it was 16 x 20 x 2"/all Maple/brick pattern.

I made the "bricks" large in keeping with the substantial size of the board, although their dimensions were carefully considered; With lumber easily available only in 1" and 2" thicknesses and typically up to only 6 or 7 inches wide, judicious choice of brick size is necessary to prevent wasting a substantial portion of an incompatibly-dimensioned piece of lumber (e.g. making 1.5 x 4" bricks out of a 2 x 6" board would waste half of it). The only real complication in construction was the large size but I managed to perform all the needed operations with my existing equipment.

The finished size of the board necessitated a pretty chunky starting piece. I bought a decent-looking 8/4 x 7.2" Maple board that was 8' long and which I had the vendor cut in half to better fit into the car for the trip home. They were a bit surprised that I didn't care exactly where it was cut but since it would ultimately be chopped into 2"-long pieces I wouldn't lose more than 2" of usable wood wherever they cut it.

The figures below show a sketch of Yours Truly with the not-yet-cut board and then a schematic representation of the resulting two pieces getting cut/glued/cut/glued into the finished cutting board.

The maple plank was pretty nice and decently straight-grained. It had a large knot near one end but I used only 3/4 of the length so I was able to eliminate the dark/loose knotty portion.

The first step was to get the wood into lengths that were 1.8 x 3.6" in cross-section. The plank was a bit narrower than I'd hoped so I didn't quite get to the target dimensions. Ultimately that cost about about an inch in length and width of the finished cutting board - although you'd still need a pretty long carrot to hang off the ends.

After cutting to size the six pieces of wood, they were glued together and clamped.

I used Titebond III glue for the board. It is fully waterproof although that isn't really a requirement for a cutting board.

That operation resulted in the six-wide lamination shown in this shot. There should be more than enough wood here for the 16 x 20 board.

I needed a flat and square edge as a cutting guide so I started by cutting one end square (but not particularly straight).

Then to achieve straightness the jointer was used on the cut side. There was a line pencilled on to help make sure the resulting edge remained square.

Scrap wood pieces were clamped to both ends of the stack to prevent tear-out at the end by the jointer blade.

To cut the "slices" I used a guide that clamped onto the extended band saw table. It was positioned to achieve a 2-1/16" cut and the straight edge of the wood was placed against it. When the cut was done the guide was moved and the process repeated.

Frankly this isn't a great way to get either straight-edged or consistently-sized pieces but my lazy plan was to just sand my way to consistency.

Due to space considerations, 16" x 20" was as large as the board could be. I ended up cutting 9 slices but the overall width of those exceeded 16" so I used only 8.

That extra wood on the near ends was glued on prior to cutting to prevent chipping if I had to put the slices on the jointer; they will be cut off later.

The brick pattern was achieved by the simple expedient of moving alternate slices half a "brick" width. I also flipped some of the boards to get a better-looking grain pattern.

So then it was time for the final glue-up. I wanted to ensure the slices kept a fairly exact end-to-end relationship so I lined them up accurately and taped on guide blocks. These blocks were clamped together to prevent the slices from sliding lengthwise against each other. I used foam-cushioned cauls to maintain vertical alignment and waxed paper kept things that were not supposed to be glued from being glued.

Any glue squeeze-out (a lot, in fact) was scraped off before it fully dried. This is a shot of the composite piece after the glue has dried (yes yes, technically it sets rather than dries but you know what I mean).

And then it was on to the star of the show: the drum sander. It was just a simple matter of passing the board through the sander, well, hundreds of times.

I started with 36 grit sandpaper (beach-sand-sized grit) to get all the slices to the same level and this was done for both sides. I then progressed through 80, 120 and finally 220 grit papers to gradually remove the scratches left by the previous grit. The sander works very slowly due to the large size of the wood and the fact that it is sanding end grain so I was able to take only 0.001 to 0.003" off per pass. My imperfect cutting and gluing alignment meant that .05 to .06" needed to come off both sides.

The sides remained a bit ragged-looking so I trimmed those off square to the long sides. The piece was just hand-held on the bandsaw since I'd need to straighten the sides after this anyway.

The straightening was accomplished with a few passes over the jointer, after clamping on anti-tear-out wood pieces as was done about a dozen pictures ago.

The board is pretty heavy (14 lb) so to aid in moving I routed some 3/4"-diameter finger grooves into the sides. This shot shows one of the passes on the router table.

All the corners were nice sharp 90° angles which you don't really want on something made of wood so I used sanding blocks to put small radii on all the edges and corners.

The surface was decent when the board came off the drum sander but there were still some faint scratches visible in the right (wrong?) light. The random orbital sander was used to get rid of those. In this shot a fresh sheet of 240 grit sandpaper is being added to the sander.

I used the 240 grit to get rid of any visible scratches and then 400 grit for a semi-polished surface.

When the sanding was done I added self-adhesive feet and then rubbed in a coat of a mineral oil/beeswax blend made for cutting boards. When that dried I polished it up.

Done.