Yeah, see, that's what I was thinking, that horizontal grains wouldn't look all that nice and a seam in the middle wouldn't look that bad - Thanks for reaffirming my opinion on that one. I was just at the wood place and the guy at the counter was just sorta challenging me on why I wanted that ("Why not just run it horizontal? Nobody's looking at the wood if they're looking at the tank") and I was starting to doubt myself that I'm putting the bar too high. But I think I want vertical grains... It's not that hard to butt-end the pieces together, glue and sand and be done with it..
I do have a catwalk already on the back of the tank. The stand sits nearly 40" tall and the tank itself is 30" tall - being that I'm 5'9" (69") that pretty much mandates the catwalk as mandatory
I should be documenting what I've got so far in a tank journal thread, it's just that I ran out of room on my shaw webspace and I've been procrastinating about setting up a photobucket account, but once I've done that I can start posting pictures again.