Setting out to create a Residential Architecture 101 entry on wood seemed like an obvious topic to cover – although I haven’t been focusing on this series in a while. The first post was on Architecture 101: Materials (and the real focus was on how to transition materials and showed all sorts of terrible “don’t do this” type of pictures). The other turned out to be so popular that it’s really part of the reason I closeted this series. It’s the now infamous Architecture 101: Shutters [or “shudders” as they are now called by people who are a member of the secret Life of an Architect club – if you don’t know how to join, that’s probably why you aren’t in it].
I decided to put something together super quick on this topic simply because I had to have this conversation on site the other day and I realized there were 4 grown men standing around using their hands trying to describe the difference between book matched and slip matched wood flitches.
Don’t know what a flitch is? Then this post is definitely for you. When talking wood veneer (a thin slice of wood), a flitch is a stack of sheets of veneer all cut in sequence. If you lay them up side by side with the same side up on all of them, this is a flitch match. If you flip every other sheet of a flitch, it is book matching … got it? Pretty clear isn’t it? No, it isn’t, and I think I just made it worse.
Let’s back up a bit and start with the different cuts of wood – how you cut the wood has everything to do with how the pattern of the wood appears in the finished product. In my world, there are three main cuts –
- Plain Sawn,
- Quarter Sawn, and
- Rift Sawn
Let’s start with Plain sawn since it’s the simplest version.
Plain Sawn [also called “Flat Sawn”] is the most common type of lumber you can find because it is the most inexpensive way to manufacture logs into lumber because it yields the most lumber. The patterning you get what is known as “cathedraling”, which is when the rings start into the pattern and return back on themselves so as to create a point to the growth ring. (You can see this “point” in the sketch middle of the sketch above)
Quarter sawn is more expensive than plain sawn (obviously) and is the most typical wood we specify on our projects. The boards are cut within a 60° to 90° angle to the growth rings and as a result, you get a very consistent and straight pattern that lends itself to modern design.
Rift sawn is the most expensive type of cut to order and produces the most waste (least yield) from the log with the boards being cut perpendicular to the growth rings. This is also the most dimensionally stable cut of lumber.
Hopefully that makes things a bit more clear. The next tricky bit is to talk about how these boards can be “laid up” … which is trade talk for saying “how they are going to be arranged”. There are actually loads of different ways wood can be arranged but I am going to focus on just a few
- Random Match
- Slip Match
- Book Match, and
- Herringbone Match
Now that you have your entry level wood grains done, let’s take a look at how you can arrange them –
Random Match is just what is sounds like – it’s random. This is typically done with lower grades of veneer and when budget is a concern. The leaves (or individual pieces of wood) can be of varying color, grain, and width. We never use this is our projects although my own home is resplendent in this “style”.
Slip Match is achieved when the veneer slices are joined in the same sequence they were removed from the log and without flipping the pattern. The nice thing that happens as a result of slip matching is that when you combine this with a “Rift” or “Quarter” sawn veneer, the joints between the separate pieces of veneer will not be very noticeable.
Book Match is similar to Slip matching except that alternating pieces of veneer are flipped so that they face each other just like they would if they were pages within a book. That one is easy to remember for obvious reason.
Herringbone Match is another type of book matching but is matched up with a production method that cuts the wood quarter sawn style but the flitches are laid up in a particular manner.
If you really wanted to go crazy, there is also; Balance Match, Center Balance Match, Running Match, End Match, Continuous End Match, Panel End Match, etc., etc. and so on and so on for about another 30 different types of veneer match patterns. There are endless possibilities available to choose from and you are really only limited by your imagination.
So hopefully you have a better grip on the different ways wood can be cut and the impact it makes on the resulting grain pattern. This knowledge, along with your options at the various different kinds of match techniques, really do open up a world of possibilities.
Happy veneering,
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A great post, very well explained.
In terms of working with solid stock (my world) what is missing is that plain sawn glue ups will mean an enormous of waste, these boards will contain more flaws, knots and such. Quarter sawn, and even more rift sawn, while using a log less “efficiently”, will produce more usable lumber.
A log with knots is a log with knots… whether it is sawn plain/flat or rift. It is true that from the green state, rift/quarter will show less dimensional change and drying flaws than flat. Both flat and rift will contain any flaws that were in the log before it was cut. The rift and quarter will show spike knots while flat will have round knots.
I think it’s more about the look you are going for… some woods are typically sawn one way over another for appearance.
Durning my time in custom cabinetry, it always amazed me, the number of big/famous/expensive companies which tout their solid-lumber raised panels, yet not bother to colot or grain match the glue-ups used for the panels.
Bad enough on production runs, but, these outfits would not even hand match the one-off samples for their catalogs! (A certain large, nationally-known, company actually makes all their panel blanks by gluing up bunk-length 4/4 x 1 1/2″ lumber, and would stack any “shorts” guaranteeing color & grain mismatches; which was not improved by their refusal to use a toning pre-stain.)
Great post Bob. Which is your favorite?
Thanks for this post, I literally had no idea what those terms meant until I read this. 🙂
Thanks for the neat primer, Bob. Just a heads up, right before your match diagrams you have an incomplete sentence.
Another very common way of cutting veneer is rotary cut. This is typically used for veneer core plywood but is also seen commonly on birch plywood.
‘Reconstituted’ veneer is also becoming quite common in the cabinet industry. Fast growing poplar trees are processed into sheets and then re-glued and cut again- revealing a very regular, linear pattern similar to a vertical grain cut. These veneers have the advantage of being very consistent to match the ‘grain’ and colour(Canadian spelling!). They look right at home in contemporary architecture projects.
my experience with rotary cut veneer is that the grain is wildly irregular – are you are saying that this is not the case?
Recall your tree anatomy–rift cutting is almost along the ring lines, rather than acrsoss them. As the cut starts out in the sapwood, the grain lines are widely spaces, and faint, too. As you cut in deeper into the heartwood, the grain lines get ever closer together. Wher the grain is figured, it will be in elliptical “eyes” at ever branching the original baulk had.
Now, in a pronounced-grain wood, like Oak or Maple this can appear as a Log-scale sort of grain pattern. Laid up on plywood or veneer core, it’s a judgement call for whether to book match or not.
In a fine-grain, or near grainless lumber–Ash, Poplar, Alder (sometimes), you can get a really hip sort of “Danish Modern” grain effect going. Sad part is that this look can read too much like a plastic laminate product for its own good.
It certainly doesn’t have a ‘tight’ look to it like rift and quarter, but depending on the log it comes from it can have a pleasing look to it. I’ve seen it used (esp. birch) as wall paneling in quite a few modern interiors, to an interesting (if not lower budget) effect. I also thought to add it to the discussion as it was the one sawing method you didn’t mention. Nice sketches on the others!
I’d also add that there is nothing worse than badly or non-sequence matched veneers over large expanses of an interior (I guess that’s my glass block…).
Thank you Bob! Working for myself I miss these types of office discussions.
glad to bring you into the fold! There are about 20 or 30 more graphics I wanted to make for this post, there is a lot of information in this area that is a lot easier to understand visually than with a verbal description.
Bob, this was a breath of fresh air, thank you for taking the time to sketch up and explain this! Doing commercial work with our set standards being a private company we do not get into these discussions and I love them.