Board and Batten Cabinet Doors?

My wife bought me a rather expensive woodworking book for Christmas. I am trying to make the best of it, though I would have preferred the equivalent in wood.

Anyhow, on a section on board and batten cabinet doors, it says to route a grove in both sides of all the boards (except of course the outside ones) and cut splines to fit in all the groves. Then glue the splines in all the right side groves, and dry fit the splines into the left side groves. The boards are not to be glued together to prevent them from splitting or curling. The boards are actually held together by the battens.

The implication was that this is the only way to product a solid wood (non-framed) door.

Questions:

1)If the groves and splines are purely for alignment, wouldn't biscuits look better and be easier and cheaper? Or even tongue and grove? 2)If you can glue up a wide board from narrow boards, why can't you glue up a door? Why would a door split or curl when a wide board doesn't? (I glued up a 50"x20" chest lid about a month ago. Should I be expecting problems, since it essentially a door?)

until the boards shrank and the biscuits started to show.

should be fine.

you can. don't put a batten on it if you do, and if any of the individual boards wants to warp at all you're screwed

if the door is going to experience much in the way of seasonal humidity changes you're likely to have problems with the fit going from too tight to too loose. frame and panel doors are a traditional design that addresses exactly this problem.

doors pretty much by definition are used to make a division between two different environments. at the extreme, an entry door has heated/cooled/conditioned air on one side of it and rain/snow/sun/weather on the other side. the opposite sides of the door are trying like hell to do different things. it's amazing that doors can be built to stay flat at all.

very possibly. if the wood was all well dried and stable and will be kept in a temperature and moisture stable location, you may be fine.

another way to stabilize a panel like that is with breadboard ends.

Bridger