Making Book Matched Panels

Book matching can produce some very striking results. The mirroring of the grain usually makes for some dynamic looking panels. Book matching lumber (as opposed to book matching sliced veneer) can be a bit tricky. You have to try to judge the pattern from the outside since you won't see it until you cut the piece open. You look at both sides and try to make an educated guess as to what may be going on in the interior of the piece. The more material you remove after the initial cut, the more the grain pattern can change. When you do finally make the cut for the book match, you get to see if your suppositions are correct. You can also run across defects in the wood that weren't visible from the outside, like cracks, knots and voids. Since commercial veneer is sliced there is no loss of material between slices and the match will be about as good as you can get.

To compensate for these inherent difficulties I try to use material where the grain is fairly straight through the thickness of the board. Extreme angles in the grain from top face to bottom face can result in a poor match. I also keep any thickness planing to a minimum on the faces I want to match. I leave the material a bit long and wide, just in case there is any movement in the wood after milling. Sometimes to achieve a good match the boards must be offset lengthwise a bit and the extra length is necessary.  Eventually I will size everything to exact size but I will not do that until I have glued the panels together.


With the lumber all approximately sized and planed I set up the bandsaw to re saw the panels.

First re saw,

then set aside the sized piece and joint the band sawn face of the other piece,

then back to the bandsaw for the second piece, and repeat. 

I could have milled everything down to the same thickness, then re sawn, but I wanted to keep the thin cuts that would be left over for future use.

Once the re sawing was done I then ran everything through the planer. 

Now it is all stickered and I will see if anything changes after being opened up.

Here are the panels for the front of the chest. It is a little hard to see the figure but if you click on the picture you can see it larger.

A closer shot of one of the panels

Next I'll be gluing the panels up, then sizing, fielding, and finishing them. Then I'll start on the framework.

Thanks for taking a look. I hope you check back again and see what I've been doing.