You want three equal pieces out of one board, and the board is 16-3/8 wide.
Divide it straight, cut on your lines, and the blade eats an eighth at every cut. Your
middle piece comes out short, and you find out when your shelves don't match.
The blade is the part your math forgot.
Type your board's width and how many pieces. You get the fence
setting with the blade counted, and the tape trick for when your phone is in the house.
My offcut: 16-3/8, three shelves, an 1/8 blade. Fence at 5-3/8. Three equal shelves.
Nothing you type here leaves your device. No account, no
server, no analytics. Your numbers are erased when you close the tab.
Why this one exists
The laundry room left me a butcher block offcut and I wanted three floating shelves out
of it. On camera I said it out loud: "I'm not very good at math." So I didn't do any.
I tilted the tape until 18 landed on the far edge, because "you bring it to a number that's
easily divisible by three," and marked 6 and 12. Then I set the fence a hair short, at
5-3/8, because "I'd rather go short." Fresh blade, one pass a shelf: "right on the money."
This page does the same thing, with the blade counted on purpose:
Instagram,
Facebook.
Part 1 — Your board
Measure the face you're splitting, edge to edge. Decimals are fine:
16-3/8 is 16.375, 3/32 is 0.094.
Filled with my offcut so you can see it work. A full-kerf blade is about 1/8,
a thin-kerf about 3/32. Not sure? Cut a scrap and measure the slot.
Part 2 — Your cut
The split
this page doesn't know your saw
Rip against a fence or a clamped guide, never freehand. Riving knife or splitter on, push
stick on any rip under 6" (every rip in the example), and stand out of line with the blade.
Measure your own blade's kerf. With a clamped guide, add your saw's base offset. Your saw's
manual wins.
The boulder question
Most problems are who-you-know. Name one person with a table saw
you could borrow an hour on.
Now make the call — ask:
“can I bring a board over Saturday?”
Washington or Dakota County, Minnesota. Off-market, or straight from the
owner — I'm the buyer, not a middleman passing it along. Woodbury, Cottage
Grove, Hastings, Stillwater, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville.
If that's you, or you know somebody quietly thinking about selling, I'll lay out
your options — all of them, including the ones I don't make a dime on.
Nothing to sign, no walkthrough unless you ask.
That was free and nothing here sits behind an email. If it was
useful, here's the whole exchange: send it to one or two people who'd use it
too. That's it. I'm trusting you with it, you pass it on.
Want the next one before anyone else? I'm building an interest
list — no selling, no sequence, your address goes nowhere.
Exactly what that means, in plain words.
The list itself isn't open yet — I'm still setting it up, and
I'd rather say that than put up a box that doesn't work. The ask above stands
either way, and it's the one that matters. If you want to tell me what to build
next, my DMs are open.