Short by a tenon
The sideboard drawing is signed off. Someone at the bench writes the cutting list on a sheet of paper: legs, rails, top, drawer fronts, sides, backs. Rails are listed at the shoulder length, and the tenons are forgotten. By the time it is noticed, four rails in oak have been cut short. The oak came from a board chosen for its figure, and there is not another like it.
On another job, the client changed the depth by 30mm after the list was written. The drawing was updated. The list was not.
Where the list goes wrong
A cutting list is a translation from design to timber. Every translation by hand is a chance to drop a detail.
- Joinery allowances such as tenons, housings and tongues are added from memory.
- Rough sizes for machining and finished sizes are mixed up.
- Design changes reach the drawing but not the list.
- Parts in the same timber and thickness are not grouped, so boards are not used well.
- Grain direction and matching notes live in the maker's head.
Workshops that use CAD, such as SketchUp, Fusion 360 or Cabinet Vision, are often still writing lists by hand because the drawing and the list are not connected, or the joinery detail was never modelled.
What a wrong list costs
Hardwood is expensive and the right board is not always available again. A mistake means waste, a trip to the timber yard and sometimes a piece that does not match. Bench time is lost too, and the job slips. In a small workshop, one bad cutting list can cost a noticeable part of the margin on a commission.
Cutting lists from the design
- We capture your joinery rules: how long tenons are relative to rail thickness, allowances for housings and tongues, machining allowances for rough sizes.
- Where you design in CAD, parts and dimensions are read from the model. Where you draw on paper, parts are entered once into a simple form per piece.
- The cutting list is produced with finished size, rough size and joinery allowances for each part, grouped by timber species and thickness.
- Notes for grain direction, matching and which parts should come from the same board are carried on the list.
- The list is linked to the job and design version. When the design changes, a new list is produced and the old one is marked superseded, with the changed parts highlighted.
- For sheet material, parts can be passed to a nesting tool or your CNC software to plan cuts.
| Detail | Handwritten list | Generated list |
|---|---|---|
| Tenon and housing allowances | From memory | From your rules |
| Rough and finished sizes | Sometimes mixed | Both shown |
| Design change | List not updated | New version with changes highlighted |
| Grouping by timber | Rarely | By species and thickness |
A workshop that cuts once
The maker at the bench works from a list that matches the approved design, with allowances included. Changes reach the list automatically. Boards are chosen for groups of parts, which helps both yield and grain matching. The cutting list also becomes the basis for timber ordering and costing, so the quote, the order and the cut all start from the same numbers.
Generated lists also help when you take on help. A maker who is new to the workshop can cut from a list that already includes your allowances, rather than learning your rules through mistakes. And because each list is tied to a design version, it is always clear whether the parts on the bench match the drawing the client signed.
Is this happening in your workshop?
- Cutting lists are written by hand from drawings.
- You have cut parts short or to an old design.
- Joinery allowances depend on who writes the list.
- Design changes do not always reach the bench.
- Timber is ordered without a proper list.