Calculating Wood for cabinet doors and drawer fronts

[Mike Conley]

I am thinking about refacing our kitchen cabinets. I would be making my own doors and drawer fronts.

When I calculate the amount of lumber needed, how much extra should I add to my calculations for waste?

20% more, 10% more????

[David DeCristoforo]

Total Sq Ft of face + finished ends + 20% for FAS grade hardwood.

[Joe Fusco]

Mike you might what to make your calculations in board feet as opposed to square feet. Since you will be making your own doors and drawer fronts buying 4/4 rough stock is the best way to go in my opinion.

If you don't have the means to dimension and surface the rough stock I would then suggest buying the doors and drawer fronts as you will just about go nuts trying to use anything bought as 3/4" finished stock.

[Jim Becker]

I generally like to go way over on the material to allow for very careful grain and color matching on rails, stiles, etc., for projects like this. It really does make a difference in the end...and is something that will set your custom work apart from the typical manufactured cabinetry. How much is species dependent, but I'll often over buy by 50%. It's not like what is left over will not get used for later projects, too. And quality lumber can always be sold for pretty much what you paid for it if it's necessary to liquidate.

[Peter Quinn]

Really depends on several factors. Paint grade or stain grade. If stain grade, clear finish or stained/dyed/toned/glazed etc? Species matters a lot too.

For clear grade work in a natural finish, high end work with book matches and careful grain matching, I'm with Jim, WAY OVER, 45%? 65%? If you are being very selective the yield can go way down, or you may have good boards that simply don't fit the job at hand.

For paint grade, 10%-15% on hardwood. For stain grade 'commercial grade', where panels are multi strip glue ups, stiles don't need to match door to door, rails are not cut from the same board, etc, and where the finish will even out many of the differences, I'd say 20%-30% might be safe?

It also depends on the lengths and widths you are able to pull versus the width of your door parts and panels, and how much checking occurs in the species you are using. I have pulled wood where I couldn't cook a hot dog with the drops that were left from a job, and done other jobs where the yield was, well, less than ideal.

So somewhere between 10%-65% over on BF basis, does that narrow it down?

[Charles Lent]

A program like Cutlist Plus will make this much easier, but for it to help you, you will have to know the finished dimensions of all of your parts so that you can enter them into the program. I find that doing this forces me to plan the job better and I have much less waste because it reduces the board waste and also reduces the number of mistakes that I make. Cutlist is only one of many of these programs that are available. Some are free, but the best, like Cutlist Plus will cost you. A google search will bring up links to many of them.

Charley

[Harley Reasons]

I too have started using Cutlist. I'm working on my second project with it now. I agree with Charles Lent in that it does make you plan your work and that is something I really needed to learn to do. I've always flown by the seat of my pants when woodworking and never worried about pre-planning other than going and buying twice as much wood as I needed to cover mistakes. Now with cutlist I can control my waste and get a close idea of how much wood to buy in the first place.
This is especially nice if your on a budget and want to be sure you have enough wood of the same color range to do your project.

[Joe Fusco]

There are alternative programs to Cutlist that are free. One is Sketchup with a ruby add-on for doing cutlists and the other would be ecabinets.

www.sketchup.com
www.ecabinetsystems.com

[Ed Sallee]

A fellow creeker posted this link to a "cabinet calculator" that is an excel spreadsheet. http://www.woodcentral.com/bparticles/bpindex2.shtml

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and it'll be listed as a "Download" by Jay Heil.....

Looks like it'll do the job....