Step Up Your Box-Making Game | Four-Corner Grain Match
One of the tricks woodworkers employ to make keepsake boxes look their best is to cut the box sides from a single board. If you keep the pieces in order, you can achieve a nice grain wrap around three corners. Unfortunately, the fourth corner will always be a mismatch. There is a way to get a nearly perfect four-corner match, if the material will allow for it. What I mean by that is the board needs to be thick enough to sustain a resaw down the center. In the case of this particular project, I had a board that was a full 1″ thick and after resawing I was able to easily get the desired 3/8″ thickness for my box sides.
To make a four-corner grain match, it all starts with careful layout. Draw a center line down the length of the board and then measure and mark the cross-cuts that will make up the box sides. The layout and cutting process is shown in the video and feel free to pause as needed to get the info you need. You’ll have to forgive me for not writing out every step as this operation is incredibly difficult to describe. So watch the video.
In the end, you should have four grain matched corners. They may not be 100% perfect but they’ll be close enough to serve their purpose. And even experienced woodworkers will look at the box and wonder how you did it. So step up your box-making game and give a four-corner grain match a try!
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