It's a cutting board. No need to be too careful. You're just going to be chunking at it with a cleaver as soon as you've cleaned it up.
I'd sand it thoroughly. Start with 40- to 100-grit paper to get through any crud and give a flat, even surface. Do it again with 100- to 200-grit to make it smoother.
Sticky date puddingJen I use Stephanie Alexander's recipe, which is dead easy. 170g dates, stoned and chopped (do this with kitchen scissors) 1 tsp bicarb soda 300ml boiling water 60g unsalted butter 3/4 cup castor or...
Wrapping a strip of the paper around a rectangular block will make it a lot easier to operate.
If you want to do scraping-type work (bread baking, e.g.) right on that surface, you might want it even smoother, so a 200- or higher-grit could be called for, but going beyond 240 or so will seal hardwood and make it harder to get oil to penetrate, so oil well before this last sanding if you're going that far.
If you want it looking almost polished you can keep walking up the sandpaper grades until you hit 2500-grit (the finest 3M makes, and hard to find), but you hardly need that for a cutting board. I use 2000-2500 and a buffing wheel on a dremel to polish light scratches out of CDs and DVDs (but this is not for the faint of heart, as the sandpaper scratches the surface to do its job, and the buffer can cut right through it if used at too high a speed or pressure...lessons learned the hard way...)
--Blair
