Bookmatching is a process of sawing a wooden board in half to create two symmetrical pieces. It is commonly used in furniture and musical instruments, especially with quarter-sawn lumber, which improves the wood’s appearance and aging properties. Bookmatching helps preserve the quality of instruments by allowing them to warp symmetrically over time.
Bookmatching is a process that transforms a wooden board into two thinner pieces. Once the pieces have been sawn in half, they can be opened like a book, revealing two mirror-image wooden planks. There are many different uses for the wood that has been styled for books, although it is particularly useful for making high quality musical instruments.
It’s not difficult to cut a piece of lumber to match. The process involves sawing the wood through the center. The book-matched pieces are the same length and width as the original piece, although each is only half as deep. Opening these two pieces like a book will reveal two pieces of wood that are symmetrical in grain.
Bookmatching works best with quarter-sawn pieces of lumber. This method of logging involves quartering a log and then cutting the quarters into planks. Although it creates fewer large boards, it improves the grain and quality of the board. The quarter sawn boards, when mated, reveal a much more symmetrical grain when the two pieces are opened. In musical instruments, quarter-sawn lumber is ideal because the appearance of the wood grain is much improved and because the wood ages predictably.
The most obvious reason for matching a piece of wood is that symmetrical pieces of wood form an aesthetically pleasing mirror image of each other. The grain of the wood and the pattern on it are the same on one side as on the other. The technique is commonly used to form two identical sides of a piece of furniture or musical instrument.
The predictable aging pattern of bookmatched wood is particularly important in the creation of musical instruments. The acoustic properties of many wood instruments, such as guitars and violins, depend on the shape of the instrument. While the instrument is precision made, the organic materials that make up the wood can warp over time due to weather and age. Using lumber that has been matched to a bookmatch helps the instrument warp symmetrically, preserving the quality of the instrument.
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