How to Make a Cut List That Works at the Saw
Every ruined sheet starts on paper. A panel cut 18mm short, a carcass with one side missing, a run of doors with the grain going sideways: trace them back and the fault is almost never the saw. It’s the cut list. Here is how to make one your shop can actually cut from.
What goes on a cut list?
A working cut list needs six things for every part: a name, the length, the width, the quantity, the material and thickness, and the grain direction if it matters. Name parts so a stranger could find them. “Base unit 600 side” beats “side x2” when forty panels come off the saw in an afternoon. Length and width should follow a fixed convention (length along the grain is the usual one) so nobody has to guess which number is which. Quantity catches the doubles: every carcass has two sides, and the lists that miss one are the lists that send someone back to the merchant. Material and thickness stop an 18mm part being cut from 12mm stock. Grain direction locks the parts that show and frees the rest to pack tighter.
Six columns. Anything less and you’re relying on memory, and memory is what cut the panel short last time.
Should a cut list show finished sizes or cutting sizes?
Finished sizes. A cut list should record what the part must measure in the finished piece. The cutting plan (kerf allowances, which edge gets cut first, how parts share a sheet) belongs to a separate step. Mixing the two is the classic error: someone adds 3mm “for the blade” to a part, someone else adds it again at the saw, and the part comes out 6mm proud.
There is one deduction worth making on the list itself: edge banding. If a 600mm door edge gets 1mm banding on both edges, the core panel is 598mm, and that is the number to cut. Decide once, per part, whether listed sizes are pre- or post-banding, write the convention at the top of the list, and never mix the two on one job.
Kerf is different. It belongs to the layout, not the part, so leave it out of the part sizes and let the layout stage handle it. That’s how Cutzilla works through a job: you enter finished sizes, set your blade’s kerf once, and the software subtracts it between parts when it draws the layout.
How should you group the parts on a cut list?
Group by material and thickness, not by cabinet. The saw doesn’t care that a panel belongs to the third base unit; it cares that the panel is 18mm birch ply, because every 18mm birch part on the job can share the same sheets. A list sorted by cabinet forces you to flick back and forth totalling materials before you can order a single board. A list grouped by material gives you the board count per material at a glance, and it’s the shape any optimiser or spreadsheet needs the data in anyway.
Keep the cabinet identity in the part name instead. “Base 600 side” carries its origin with it, so the finished stack still sorts back into cabinets at assembly, even though it was cut in material order.
What are the most common cut list mistakes?
The five cut list mistakes that cost real money, in rough order of damage:
- Missing doubles. Two sides, two ends, four shelves. Write quantities explicitly rather than listing a part twice; duplicated lines are where counts drift.
- Mixed conventions. Half the list is length-by-width, half is width-by-length, or one part is pre-banding and its neighbour post-banding. Pick a convention and write it on the list.
- Ignoring grain. A hobbyist can flip a shelf; a kitchen with door grain running two directions is a remake. Mark grain per part, and only on the parts that need it, because over-constraining wastes sheet.
- Baking kerf into part sizes. As above: it gets added twice, or subtracted from a part that sits at a sheet edge and never needed it.
- Ordering boards from area. Adding up part areas and dividing by sheet area tells you the theoretical minimum, not what fits. Real parts are rectangles that pack imperfectly, and the gap between the two numbers is where mid-job merchant runs come from. If you want the honest board count before you order, put the list through a sheet cutting calculator and let it lay the job out properly.
Do you need software to make a cut list?
No. A cut list is just a table, and a clipboard or a spreadsheet does the recording job fine. Software earns its place at the next step, turning that table into a cutting layout. Arranging forty rectangles onto sheets so the least material is wasted is a genuine packing puzzle; a person with a pencil does it slowly and loosely, and a cut list optimiser does it in seconds, with the board count and the offcuts worth keeping shown alongside the layout.
So the honest division of labour is this: you own the list, because the names, sizes, quantities and grain calls are decisions only you can make. Let software own the layout. A tidy six-column list going in is what makes the layout coming out trustworthy.
Get the list right and everything downstream gets easier, from ordering through to assembly. Get it wrong and no optimiser can save the job.
Try it free. Cutzilla turns your cut list into a cutting layout in the browser, with no install and nothing to update. Start free.