Which side should I use for this table?

Thanks for the warning...gives me a lil time...

 

My old man does commercial cabinet finishing. When he does this stuff, he says: build up a finish with oil based spray poly and plan on a lot of coats. The idea is to create a lot of layers and slowly fill in the cracks. It can get expensive but will absolutely give you the best finish. He does the same thing but, in a spray booth.
From experience, go easy on the orbital and belt sanders. I have put my fair share of bites and swirls into table-tops. It is a pain in the butt to go slow but you will only have to do things once. If you put a bunch of swirls in and don't catch them, you will have to re-do parts of the finish which will ultimately take a lot more time.

 

Also, maybe you could clean out the chips with an air compressor.

Do you plan on any type of stain? That might impact the path you take concerning fillers.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about the cracks. Fill them in during the finishing process and if they open up, fill them in again with a clear coat spray poly.

 

Pictures of Dave and I chasing Mad Dog around in his Azzless Elf suit again??

 

Hmm...maybe I need to sleep on the garage floor again...

 

Thanks for all the advice so far. Not at the finish stage yet. I’ll do some internetting to make sure I know the differences between products

I got a belt sander and went after it with 50 grit. Thanks for the swirl of sander mark advice. Although it really helped smoothing out the planer lines, there were a few “scratchy” spots

gonna hit it with 80 next then let the kids use orbital with 120. This was supposed to be a family project but they are not strong enough to belt sand unassisted. Here’s the piece after sanding. Happy with how the sides got cleaned up. It was pretty rough.

 

I'd rub that fine sanding dust in the cracks and Medium CA glue them in.
Or use instant coffee for a little darker contrast.
Or...God put the cracks there, why would i fill them?