After all the theoretical math and three prototypes, one of MDF and two using scraps, I settled on staves around 2 3/4" wide, edge angles of about 3 degrees on each. Have a bunch of honey/black locust in 10 to 12" widths so that's what I went with for "the real doors". Layed out a bunch or boards and did the "slide this, flip that, turn this around, move this over there" shuffle to get the color and grain flow that looked right - to me. Then, using clipped together framing squares, set to the width and height I wanted, I searched for the best looking area of the layed up boards , When I found the combination I liked, I pencil lined things to identify what goes where, left room for adjusting after cutting and started cutting to approximate length and ripping the staves.
Here are my tests, with the actual doors I'm going to use in the background.
This honey / black locust looks kind of nice with 8 coats of 1 lb cut garnet shellac.