Help with bookmatching; what am I doing wrong?

[Nick Clayton]

I finally got around to installing a riser block and new thrust bearings in my used bandsaw last night and tuned it following Mr. Duginske's book; what a help. I set the fence up to make some thin cuts in a piece of 4" scrap and the saw performed quite well. Using calipers, I was making .057" cuts with a .001" difference from the front to back of the cut and a .003" difference from the top to the bottom of the cut.
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I figured I did an excellent job setting the saw up until I attempted to bookmatch the pieces I noticed that they didn't quite match up around the start of a small knot. 4461644617
Seeing as you are all volumes of ww knowledge, could someone lend a suggestion as to what I'm doing incorrectly? Are the cuts not precise enough or is it that the figure of the wood changes so dramatically that the removal of the width a saw kerf disrupts the pattern this much?

Thanks for your suggestions
Nick

[Ron Blaise]

common after you remove a little material for cleanup. Your seldom going to get the "perfect mirror image" on highly figured wood. What you do have is great! I just went through the same thing with some figured cherry. So dont fret!
Ron

[Earl Kelly]

Nick,

Sometimes when the grain runs thru the wood at an angle it throws the bookmatch off. This can be corrected, to some degree, by trimming the edge of one piece to make them match better. To decide if this will help overlap slightly and see if the match gets better or worse. Sometimes this will correct part of the match and make another worse. In that case leave it alone. Even with knife cut veneer and no waste, the matches aren't perfect all the time.

[Tony Falotico]

Like Ron and Earl said you did nothing wrong, just the nature of the beast -- I would ever so lightly trim the edge of the piece on the left to bring it in closer. To do that, I would place the veneer on a block that has a perfect 90 degree edge (top to side), overlap the edge of the veneer ever so slightly over the edge of the block and run a small sharp block plane along the edge using the block as a guide.

See reply #2 from Jamie in this thread http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?p=388534#post388534
It helped me out greatly getting a good trimmed edge.

[Nick Clayton]

As always thanks for the suggestions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dennis Peacock]

Nick,

You did good on the BS setup. Mark D's book is a good one. Very nice resawing you did and the match looks good too. The others already have you "covered" there with some very good info.

[glenn bradley]

What Earl said.