Woodworking Guides
Real-world cut lists you can use as-is or load straight into CutList to optimise your sheet layout. Every guide includes panel dimensions in millimetres, material specs, and a sheet count estimate.
Simple Plywood Bookcase
Seven parts with a ready-to-load calculator template
Plan a 900 × 600 × 300 mm bookcase in 18 mm plywood. Explained dimensions, an illustrated cut list and a template you can adjust in the calculator.
How to Read and Create a Cut List
The complete beginner's guide
Learn what a cut list is, how to create one from scratch, and how to plan your cutting sequence. Covers rip-first vs crosscut-first, sheet handling safety, kerf, and how optimisers minimise waste.
Sheet Goods Sizes & Dimensions
Plywood, MDF, melamine & chipboard — UK, EU, US
Complete reference for standard sheet sizes by region — plywood, MDF, melamine, and chipboard. Covers thicknesses, weights, grades, grain direction, and which material to use for each part of a cabinet.
How to Reduce Sheet Goods Waste
7 optimisation strategies for plywood, MDF & melamine
Plan layouts that reduce waste on sheet materials. Practical strategies including cut list optimisation, kerf management, offcut tracking, grain direction trade-offs, and batching multiple projects.
Basic Kitchen Cabinets
8 cabinets from sheet goods
Complete cut list for a one-wall kitchen with 4 base units and 4 wall units. Includes every panel dimension, door sizes, and sheet count for 18 mm plywood and MDF.
Blum Space Tower Pantry Unit
Tall cabinet with internal drawers
Cut list for a 2100 mm tall pantry unit with 6 variable-height internal drawer boxes. One door, uniform exterior, flexible storage inside using Blum-compatible hardware.
Plan an IKEA METOD-Inspired Kitchen
L-shaped kitchen in plywood
Plan an L-shaped plywood kitchen inspired by IKEA METOD. Includes cabinet dimensions, a full cut list and checks for your chosen doors and hardware.
Sheet Joinery Guide
How to connect cabinet panels
Compare pocket holes, biscuits, dowels, dominoes, and knockdown fittings. Joint selection, tools, assembly methods and practical trade-offs for small workshop cabinet makers.
Why use a cut list optimiser?
Every woodworking project that uses sheet goods — plywood, MDF, melamine, or chipboard — starts with the same question: how do I cut all these panels from the fewest sheets with the least waste?
Working it out by hand is slow and error-prone, especially once you have more than a dozen parts. A cut list optimiser does the maths for you: it takes your list of required panels and the stock sheet size, then finds a layout that minimises off-cuts.
The guides on this page give you ready-made cut lists for common projects. You can use the dimensions directly, or paste them into CutList to generate an optimised cutting diagram for your exact stock sheets.