Tongue and Groove Made To Order

Tongue and groove, and the other names for it

T&G and TG both stand for tongue and groove: a machined tongue on one edge that fits the groove of the next board, so the boards lock together and the joint stays closed as the timber moves. The same family of boards goes by several names. Matchboard or matchboarding is the traditional joinery term and still the usual word in restoration work. TGV, VTG or V-jointed boarding has a chamfer on each edge that leaves a V groove at every joint. Bead and butt and beaded matchboard carry a small round bead instead of the V. Lining board usually means the lighter boards used on ceilings and in lofts. Shiplap and loglap are rebated cladding profiles rather than true tongue and groove, but they are machined to order alongside them.

Applications run from wall panelling, ceiling boarding and floorboards to external cladding, shed and workshop linings, and the boarded panels used in door manufacture.

How to match an existing tongue and groove board

• Send a sample if you can. A 150mm offcut taken from a spare board, a cupboard back or an unseen corner tells the machinist everything at once: profile, thickness, cover width and species.
• No sample? Photograph the end of the board square on, with a tape or steel rule lying in the shot so the scale can be read. A second photo of the face shows the bead or V detail.
• A drawing works too. Trace the end of the board onto paper in pencil, then scan or photograph the tracing. That is enough to grind a cutter from.
• Say what the boards are for and where they sit, inside or outside. Exposure decides the species and the thickness as much as the profile does.

What to measure before you ask for a price

• Cover width and overall width. Cover is the face you see once the boards are pushed home; overall includes the tongue. Give both, because coverage is worked out from one and machining from the other.
• Finished thickness, taken on the flat of the face rather than over a bead. Cladding commonly runs 12mm to 25mm, flooring 18mm to 28mm, and heavy sections up to 44mm double tongue and groove. Thicker and wider boards can be machined to order.
• The face detail: plain square joint, V joint, or bead, and whether it appears on one edge or both.
• Lengths you need, and the longest length that will physically get into the room or onto the site.
• Quantity in square metres of coverage, with an allowance on top for cutting and waste.

Choosing the timber

For interior panelling, ceilings and floorboards, redwood and pine are the usual choice for painted work, while oak (European or American), ash, maple, walnut, beech and sapele are used where the grain is meant to be seen. For external cladding, Accoya, western red cedar, larch, Douglas fir and iroko are the species that hold up best in UK weather. Most tongue and groove profiles are designed to be fixed vertically and will run horizontally as well, depending on how exposed the wall is.

Boards are normally secret nailed through the tongue so nothing shows on the face. Let the timber acclimatise in the room, or under cover on site, before fixing, and coat all faces and the cut ends before external boards go up.

Heritage and restoration work

Replacing rotten or missing boards in a listed building, a conservation area or an unlisted period house usually means copying what is already there rather than buying the nearest modern equivalent. Original matchboarding, dado height panelling, boarded ceilings and pitch pine floorboards were machined to widths and bead details that no longer appear in standard ranges. Because every board here is cut for the order, the original section can be reproduced, in the same species or in a more durable one where the board is exposed.

How the quotes work

Choose the closest profile, tell us the timber, the sizes and the quantity, and the enquiry goes out to UK suppliers who can machine it. Several quotes come back for you to compare, and there is no charge for asking. If nothing on this page is close enough, use the tongue and groove to match page or the wider made to match service.

Further reading

• Help with tongue and groove boards
• Tongue and groove guide
• Timber cladding profiles
• Wood flooring and floorboards