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Marc:Whenever I glue multiple boards together
for a panel, I try to create the illusion
that it's just one wide board.
Now, as wood workers we're sort of trained
to see those joints.
We'll almost always see the seam
where those two boards or three boards
came together.
But the average person won't be able to see it.
And fortunately, most times, we're not building
our furniture for other wood workers,
we're building it for regular people.
And they won't necessarily see those joints
if you're very careful about the boards
you choose and how you put them together.
All right, so I've got a couple examples
here from a project that I'm working on
and I think they really show in a really good way
how you can use grain and color to get those boards
to look like they actually are one single board.
So let me show you the examples.
Now, what I've got here are two table tops,
both for a tilt top table that I'm building
in the Wood Whisperer guild right now.
This one here is made of cherry, this one
is made of walnut.
There are a couple of tricks that I employ
to just create the illusion that these came
from one single board.
The first has to do with color.
Now, if you notice, this has basically a couple
of sap wood spots.
That's another trick we'll talk about later.
But ultimately the boards, the primary
heart wood color here is the same on all three
of these pieces.
That tends to help the illusion that this is
one single board.
If it varies in color too much, the eye
will be able to tell that that's a different
board there.
On this one, it's a little bit different.
I've got some streaking here in the middle
so there are multiple colors going on,
kind of like the sap wood on this guy.
But overall, these are the primary areas of color,
here, this darker brown, and that's very
consistent across the board.
The second trick has to do with grain.
Now, if you look on this one, you could see
there's a very wavy grain pattern and we've
also got, well I guess you could call it figure,
some may call it blotching.
In cherry it's very common.
But when it happens repeatedly like this
you get these dark spots and then, if it's
in a pattern, it looks like what we would say
as a positive looking figure as opposed to blotching.
All right, either way that's consistent
throughout the board.
It's all over the place, once again
reinforcing the illusion that it's the same
piece of material.
Pretty much the same thing on this side.
The grain, we've got a little a little cathedral
pattern here, some straight grain there.
So there is a lot more wild grain, but the
wild grain itself, you know, it's kind of
all over the place, varying colors.
It's still consistent.
I guess you could say it's consistently
inconsistent in the way it looks on the surface
so it still does somewhat give the appearance
of a single board.
Now, getting a good grain and color match
is really something that starts at the lumber yard
well before you cut any wood.
You'll want to inspect every board that you're buying
and try to make sure that everything is
fairly close in terms of color and grain.
You don't necessarily want to buy one board
that has wild grain, or wavy grain, and another
board that's very straight grained
because you know those two are not
going to go together.
And you really want to think about
the project you're building.
If you have an idea of the most prominent
pieces, like a table top, you could look
at the boards you're buying and ballpark
the amount and say, "Well, looks like I could
"get a piece here. I can get a second piece
"from down there."
And you can get an idea of what boards
will be destined for what part of the project.
Planning ahead will save you a lot of headache.
But the one trick, it's kind of cheating,
not really, it's just common sense really.
I don't necessarily feel like I have
the most developed eye for matching
colors and grains.
I do the best I can and I'm getting better
but, ultimately, one thing that saves me
a lot of heartache, is by making sure that all
of my stuff for a particular panel that's
going to be a wider panel, that it comes
out of one board.
All right, now of course, a single board
will generally have a fairly consistent color
and grain pattern throughout.
So, for something like a small table top,
I could look at this board and try to find
the spot on it where I would want to make a cut
and then glue a couple pieces together
because I could be pretty confident
that the board is roughly the same color
down here as it is up here.
And the grain in most boards is also
consistent throughout.
So you could chop it into smaller pieces
and it's really just stacking the cards
in your favor.
That both grain and color will match up.
Now, the final trick I like to employ
is distraction, and both of these boards
use that very well.
This one, in particular, is actually comprised
of three separate boards.
There's two on the ends here and then
you've got one in the middle.
This is comprised of only two boards
and the joint's right down the center.
So what I did, here, was I left the sap wood in.
That's something that a lot of people
will cut out.
I just wanted something that looked really cool
and the sap wood, over time, is going to
stay light while the heart wood gets darker.
So this contrast is actually going to get
better and better over time.
But the interesting thing is, the joint
is in the sap wood.
All right, so it makes it a little bit harder to see.
Because the eye is so drawn to the fact
that there's this color variation and the joint line
is right in line with the grain in the sap wood.
The average person will look at this and
they will never know that there is a joint
going all the way down here.
Or two joints, I should say.
Now, to a little bit of a less extent, here,
in the walnut piece, but you can see
there's a light area in the middle.
That light area crosses both of these pieces.
So it brings them together and makes it look like
this is one, single light zone.
When, in fact, it's just two boards
that were butted up together and they both
just happen to have a lighter streak.
Put those together, now that seam
just disappears.
As you get more experience under your belt,
you'll find that these things just become
second nature.
You don't really have to think too much
about matching boards, it's just something
that you do as you're selecting your material
and cutting out the rough boards in your shop.
You start to think along those lines
and you just can't not think about it.
It just becomes an automatic thing.
You do run into a problem, then, where sometimes
you just don't have the right boards on hand.
You look at everything you've got
and you just can't find a match that looks good.
Sometimes that's the price you pay for perfection
and you may need to go back and buy some more
boards to make sure you get just the right
look that you're going for.
And sometimes it's worth it.
Some projects it's not, but that's up to you.
All right, so I hope this helps you
on your journey to making multiple boards
look like single boards.
Thanks for watching.
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