Following up on how the ends are attached to the field, the traditional way is to glue and pin it at the center and to pin it with elongated holes at the outer tenons. I would do that except I want to finish the ends separately. Why? Because the field is going to expand a lot while the ends won't, so a film finish will crack along the joint. This happened with my friend's table a couple of years ago and it makes perfect sense. So, I will finish the ends separately and then attach it. I could still use the traditional way of attaching it, but I might not actually attach the ends until I put the top onto the base at the customer's house in order to keep the weight down. In any case, I'm using Zipbolts to attach it. To use them, you route a recess in the underside, drop them in, and tighten them with a 4 mm hex drive. Here's one installed under the table top.
There is plenty of side-to-side slop available for the field to expand/contract. Assuming I wait until delivery day, I'll glue the center tenon as I install the ends, then tighten the Zipbolts. They will be hidden from view by the base of the table, too, in case anyone looks underneath.
Moving on to flushing the ends with the field I used a couple of hand planes and then sanded it. That worked great on the bottom, and now I'm working on the top. I have the ends flushed with the field now.
Now before I sand it I'm filling the cracks and holes with 5 minute epoxy with some Transtint Honey Amber dye.
After the glue has cured I'll scrape them flush and then sand the entire top. Which brings me to this challenge. When I planed the boards I was trying to preserve as much thickness as possible. I stopped at 1-1/4" but had this one small area in one board that's about 1/16" thinner.
So, how would you deal with this? I don't want to plane/sand the entire top down that much. But if I sand just that area there's going to be a 1/16" deep depression. Is there a compromise where I can sand/plane it some and feather it out over a large enough area that it won't show?
One more thing. I mentioned how well the boards lined up when I glued them up with biscuits for alignment. Here's a shot of the worst mismatch.
A fingernail barely catches.
John