Bookcase Build - Accounting for Waste in Lumber Purchase

[Kris Cook]

I am planning to build a replica of Stickley's No. 700 bookcase. It is a relatively simple design, and I am using Robert Lang's book with shop drawings for the bookcase. I did a neatline calculation and came up with a little less than 41BF. I would like to purchase the wood once (and hopefully from the same tree). I am looking for suggestions on what I should allow for waste. I am thinking 20% but would appreciate input.

Thank you,

[Mark Wedel]

The main places where the waste comes from is width and length. Getting perfect width boards is hard, but when I'm buying lumber, I may sort through the materials to find something that gets more close to the desired width - if I need 10", a single 10+" board would do, or 2 5s, 6 & 4, etc (my supplier sells S2S, so I need to add an inch or two spare there). But this is also another consideration - S4S would likely have less waste than rough stock.
The other piece is length. If you need pieces that are 4'6" long, 8' boards would result in a lot of waste, 10' boards not much. So same point, when at the lumberyard, if I know the lengths I need, I can try to find boards that match (8 & 10' boards are fairly common). But this then may result in compromises in width - that 10' board may give me near ideal length, but be 3" wider than what I need.
I know the 20-25% is a general rule of thumb, but may be too high or too low depending on how much you can control the lengths and widths. If buying rough material vs S4S, you are going to have more waste just to get the straight edges (and once again, this can also vary by board)

[Kris Cook]

Thanks Mark. That is helpful. I should have mentioned I will be buying rough stock. I will be able to sort through the wood. I stopped by the supplier yesterday to see what they had. They had some pretty wide stock >12" and a lot of pieces in the 4"-7" range, all of it around 10' long. I will take another look at my cut list and see what I can do to maximize usage.

[George Yetka]

The place I go board are either a little more than 8' or a little more than 10'. It always depends what your making.it could be as little as 1%(unlikely) or as much as 30%. I always buy 20% over but round up along the way. If each shelf is 3.1 bf that is 4 bf each and so on. I will use the leftovers for other things down the road.

[Paul F Franklin]

The factor that always causes me grief is grain and grain match. I'm assuming this is QSWO, so maybe not as much a factor as it would be in other species, but I'm usually trying to get appealing grain match on glued up panels and nice straight grain on rails and stiles. This sometimes mean cutting pieces out at an angle to the sawn edges, which can make a lost of waste. In that bookcase you can use less attractive stock for the shelves and bottom, but there are a lot of "show" pieces. I've gone as high as 50% over on cherry pieces where I wanted no sap wood to show and wanted good color match, since cherry tends to have more color variation than some other woods. In your case since you are hand selecting the stock with your cut list in hand, you should be able to get by with 20-25%.

[Kris Cook]

Thanks George and Paul. Yes QSWO which is pretty spendy in my neck of the woods. Trying to balance between being a cheapskate and getting what I need.

I will probably err on the heavy side to be safe. This better be a pretty nice piece of furniture when I get it finished.

[Brian Tymchak]

I am planning to build a replica of Stickley's No. 700 bookcase. It is a relatively simple design, and I am using Robert Lang's book with shop drawings for the bookcase. I did a neatline calculation and came up with a little less than 41BF. I would like to purchase the wood once (and hopefully from the same tree). I am looking for suggestions on what I should allow for waste. I am thinking 20% but would appreciate input.

Thank you,

If you really strive to do your project with lumber from the same tree (difficult/impossible unless you work directly with the sawmill) I would recommend going to 50% over for waste and grain matching. If you were to come up short after your linitial lumber purchase you would never be able to meet your desire of having lumber from the same log.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

50 percent is a good number particularly for a small project. The wood will be ungraded if it comes from a small mill. Your location is going to make finding the wood tricky. In the UK lumber yards that sell furniture wood have whole logs stacked and stickered in the yard or warehouse. I process that way with the WoodMizer on a very tiny scale.

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[Mark Wedel]

Keeping extra for future projects is also handy - if you have some idea of things you might build down the road, this could also be useful - a 3" wide strip of leftover might be much more useful than a 1" strip.
I pretty much always buy more than I need, because I figure I'll use it eventually, and the time it takes me to get to the lumberyard and sort things out isn't worth trying to over optimize on getting just enough and ending up short. The local lumberyard also had spells of not having certain woods in stock at various time - it would be have been really annoying to be a few board feet short and not even able to buy any to finish it up.
I generally keep any scraps longer than 1' and wider than 1" to do 'something' with later. At one time, I made a bunch of dice towers - a bunch of friends are gamers, and since they are not very large, those small scraps work fine (even gluing up a bunch of 1" wide pieces to make something 4" wide for the tower works on that small scale, but would probably look wonky for something like a full sized bookshelf). Or I turn them into end grain cutting boards, as I always seem to have neighbors and friends who are wanting those. So I don't consider extra wood waste - it is just a future project waiting to happen.

[Kris Cook]

50 percent is a good number particularly for a small project. The wood will be ungraded if it comes from a small mill. Your location is going to make finding the wood tricky. In the UK lumber yards that sell furniture wood have whole logs stacked and stickered in the yard or warehouse. I process that way with the WoodMizer on a very tiny scale.

Screen Shot 2023-11-29 at 4.47.21 PM.png

Yes, Maurice - that is the critter, although a little red for my taste/plan. My supplier has 1,000BF of 4/4 in stock, and I have had pretty good luck with them in the past; wish me luck. Thanks for your input.

[Kris Cook]

Brian and Mark, thank you both for your input. I will break out the checkbook. As a percentage, the "show" pieces relative to the total needed are probably in the realm of 50%, although this is just a rough guess.

[Lee Schierer]

There are programs where you can enter the pieces you need and the program will identify how to maximize the usage of the materials on hand. These programs can significantly decrease your waste. I've used one that often left me with less that 3/4" of waste from a 8 foot board that made at least 12 pieces of differing lengths. However, if you do a lot of grain matching then your waste is going to be significantly higher.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

These companies and others like them might be a source. The minimum order is generally large.

Logs - Baillie Lumber - Hardwood Supplier

Inventory – Missouri Pacific Lumber