Cabinet building question

[Lloyd McKinlay]

Getting ready to gut our 12x17 kitchen and start anew. Even with three doors it's going to be a lot of face frame cabinets with raised panel doors/drawers. I'm getting the lumber direct from a specialty mill about 5 hours away, so I only want to make the trip once. Using good quality lumber, how much waste should I plan for? I've always been conservative calculating materials for previous cabinets. I used local stock so I could always get another few boards if I ran short or made the inevitable layout change.

Any good tips on how to acurately calculate the board feet of 4/4 RS random width stock required including waste?

[Jim Becker]

Well...it depends on the species and quality of the wood as well as how the "random" widths work for your intended design. Some species you go as high as 50% more. Personally, I always like to buy a lot more than I need for a project and keep inventory so that I can more easily do grain and color matching.

[Steve Clardy]

I usually figure 10% more ply and 20% hardwood than I actually need.

[Dennis Peacock]

I'm not as a pincher as Clardy. I usually figure 20% more plywood and 30% more on solid wood to allow for cutting around knots and splits if the need arises. If not, then it goes in the shop for inventory. ;)

[John Piwaron]

I always figure at least 30% extra. With some species (like cherry) that might get a little higher depending on how much cutting around defects I have to do. In the case of cherry, defects include sapwood, which is not a grading defect like a knot or check, but is visually undesireable in my opinion.

[Jesse Thornton]

I find a generous 30% works well for me, and I know that my former mentor would always figure in 30% more than his calculated need. It's always really nice to have some good stock left over (it always gets used up, so no money is wasted), and a real pain to come up just a little short, so if it's budgetable I'll be quite liberal in my lumber purchases. I love having a wide assortment of species kicking around for smaller projects anyhow.

[Rick Christopherson]

You should be able to calculate plywood exact. However, when it comes to lumber, the first question I ask the mill is where are the price-breaks. If you are redoing a whole kitchen with R.P. doors, then you will be up in the ballpark of price-break quantity.

Because of the RP doors, you can actually be a little closer on waste. You use the wider boards for ripping into frame stock, and the narrower boards for gluing into panels. Your efficiency goes down if you have to rip frame stock from narrow boards.