Material waste factor.

[Joe Chritz]

A while ago there was a thread about how much waste to figure on projects. Just for grins I kept track of what I used for the doors on the kitchen/bath project I am doing.

2.25" stiles/rails. Raised panels with mostly slip matched grain but no real time spent grain matching. The BF figures are exact measures from the finished sizes from a cabinet door program. The actual is measurements on the rough wood as I bought it.

Panels called for 54 BF. I used 69 and change with several full width short scraps, up to about 20" long.

Stiles/rails called for 37.4 BF, I used 41 and the scraps from the panels.

Lumping them together it called for 91 BF, I used just about 110 BF. Almost right on 20% waste. Lots of the waste was 1-1.5" strips as lots of the rough sawn was about 6" wide to start and I cut all the stiles double wide and did the cope cuts before ripping.

Mandatory picture attached. 32 doors in pieces. My baby feeder got a work out.

There ya have it. Almost forgot, it also generated about 150 gallons of chips. :eek:

ETA: Yeah I know the undershelf is terrible, that outfeed is getting torn up to make way for a torsion table outfeed.

[Lee Schierer]

You can generally cut down on your scrap by using an optimization program that will lay out your sheet goods and lineal pieces on the material you have available. You should be able to get your scrap down to 10% or less depending upon the project. Even with the optimization programs you still need to be picky about grain selection for pieces that make up wide boards or frames that will show.

I use a program called Sheet Layout that does both sheet goods and lineal pieces. Sheet Layout (http://www.sheetlayout.com/)

[Jay Brewer]

Hi Joe, if you bought your lumber rough, and had to joint and straighten the edges, that will account for a 5 to 10% loss in board footage. I always figure 20% waste just so I dont run out in the middle of a project.

I have lessened my waste by cutting out the larges pieces first. Panels, then rail and stiles, then all the left overs can be used for face frames and other smaller peices like mouldings. Hope this helps

[Joe Chritz]

I use cutlist and last time I did a full kitchen I layed out all the pieces using that. After straightening, cutting, etc I didn't notice a huge increase in savings. I try to buy up all the 5.5-6" and 8" wide boards possible. 8 inch to get nearly full use from the jointer and 5.5-6" for stile/rail pieces.

In this case I had a ton of narrow strips which accounted for a good portion of the waste.

I got almost no waste from the face frame pieces and counter top edge. Once drawer fronts are cut that will also be almost zero since I saved a few 6.25 or so wide pieces. After using two big pieces of scrap left over I will be back around 15%.

Plus the left overs make BTU's so they aren't really wasted completely. Although I try to buy as little kiln dried fire wood as possible.

Joe

[J.R. Rutter]

What species was this? Did you start with S4S? I think that 20% is doing pretty well for a solid wood door set. You should be happy, especially if the panels have decent width strips. That is about the best that we can do, not being able to pick boards.

We straight line rip first to get as much vertical grain as possible for rail/stile strips, then use the rest for panels. I don't use panel optimization, because when we use veneer panels, we try to cut for best grain patterns that match across doors of same height. Software doesn't care what the veneer layup pattern is.