A free cut list optimizer for your next board order

Before you buy lumber it helps to know how many boards you actually need — not how many the guesswork says. This tool takes your part list and your stock length, accounts for the material every saw cut turns into dust, and lays out the tightest packing it can find. It runs in the browser: a phone at the lumber yard, a laptop at the bench, either works. It's one of the free shop tools we keep at MikeyFilms, a veteran-owned woodworking shop in Menifee, California.

What it does

You give it two things: the cuts you need — each part's length and how many — and the length of the stock you're buying. Optionally a third: the kerf, the width your saw blade removes. It sorts the parts longest-first and drops each one onto the first board with room, opening a new board only when nothing on hand can hold it.

That's first-fit-decreasing packing. It isn't mathematically perfect, but it's fast, it's close, and it beats laying boards out by eye on the back of the receipt.

• The fewest boards for your part list, packed and counted
• A cut diagram for each board, drawn to scale
• Leftover per board and total waste, kerf included
• A copy-to-clipboard cut list to carry to the saw

How to use it

Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for. Enter numbers, read the diagram, cut.

• Enter each part as a length and a quantity — 24 in x 6, 18 in x 4, and so on. Fractions are fine.
• Set your stock length: the board you plan to buy — 8 ft, 10 ft, whatever the yard actually stocks.
• Set the saw kerf. The default is 1/8 in, a fair guess for a standard blade.
• Read the packing, hit copy, and take the list to the bench.

Why kerf matters

Every pass of the blade turns a thin strip of wood into sawdust. That strip is the kerf, and on a full-kerf blade it runs about 1/8 inch. Ignore it and the math comes up short: ten cuts on one board means the blade eats its own width nine times between neighbours, and those gaps add up to the last part not fitting.

This optimizer puts one kerf between each pair of cuts on a board — n cuts, n minus one kerfs — so the layout it hands you survives contact with a real saw instead of falling apart at the last cut.

• Full-kerf blade: about 1/8 in — the default here
• Thin-kerf blade: nearer 3/32 in
• Dado stack: much wider; measure a test cut when a nesting is tight

Less waste, a smaller lumber bill

Waste costs you twice — once for the board you didn't need, once for the offcut you'll trip over for a year. Packing cuts tightly means fewer boards on the receipt and a shorter pile under the bench. The tool shows the leftover on each board, so you can see where a different stock length or a re-ordered part list would save a whole board.

Real lumber isn't a clean number, though. Boards carry knots, checks and snipe on the ends, and a run can come up short. Buy one extra of anything critical — the optimizer plans the ideal; the yard sells the real thing.

Built by a working shop

We wrote this because we run the same math on our own bench before every build. MikeyFilms is a made-to-order woodworking shop in Menifee, serving Riverside County — sliding barn doors, hardwood tables and cedar planters, each one cut to a customer's exact dimensions. There's no fixed catalog; every piece is figured from real numbers, same as your cut list.

If you'd rather hand the cutting to someone else, that's the day job.

• More free tools at /tools: a board-foot calculator, a wood-movement calculator and a shop reference
• Want a piece built instead of building it? Get an instant estimate at /quote