Woodworking Project Math: Cut Lists from Drawings, Joinery Allowances, Board Yield & Cutting Plans, Wood Movement, Finishing and Project Pricing

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Turn the overall sizes of a hall table into a cut list: rail lengths with tenons, leg length under the top, the size of a shelf between the legs and the running metres of solid wood.
• Add trimming and planing allowances to every part, pick the thinnest yard thickness that still planes down to size and total the rough length to order per thickness.
• Sort ten rough parts longest first, then check Jonas's plan for three 2.4 m boards: the length each board uses including saw kerfs, what is left and whether a board is overfull.
• Count how many panel parts fit on a sheet in a grid with INT, test the grid turned by 90°, order whole sheets and measure how much of the sheets ends up in parts.
• Convert the rough parts into cubic metres and board feet, price each line by timber with a waste allowance and cost a whole order of tables.
• Look up a fictional movement coefficient by timber and cut, estimate how much each part changes in width between a dry and a humid season, size the gap on each side of a floating panel and flag the parts that need room to move.
• Calculate the surface area of every part, turn it into litres with the coats and coverage from a fictional label, buy whole tins for a batch of tables and price the finish.
• Cost two designs for the same commission from hours by stage, an hourly rate with workshop overhead and the materials, quote a rounded price with a margin and chart where the hours go.