You've got a project and a list of parts. You're standing in the lumber aisle doing math on your phone, and you're not sure if it's two sheets or three.
Guess low and you're back at the store Saturday afternoon for one more sheet. Guess high and a hundred-dollar sheet leans on your garage wall for a year.
Type your parts and you get the plan: how many sheets to buy, which strips to rip off each one, and where every crosscut goes. A garage shelf unit, 72 tall and 16 deep with five shelves and a kick: three sheets. Make it 15 7/8 deep and it's two. The blade's eighth is what costs you the third.
Nothing you type here leaves your device. No account, no server, no analytics. Your numbers live in this browser tab and are erased when you close it. "Start over" wipes them now.
I wasted a lot of plywood learning this the other way. Now every project starts the same: pencil and grid paper, the measurements, the stock I already have, then the cut list. For the full layout I use a free optimizer, and it's better at it than I am. This page is the five-minute version you can run in the aisle: the sheet count and the rip order. Every board you don't waste is one you don't buy.
Planning the cuts: Instagram, Facebook. Breaking down a sheet on the floor, no table saw: Instagram, Facebook.
Rip the sheet into full-length strips, then crosscut them. A narrow part can ride beside a wider one, and the drawing shows where to split it. Every cut is numbered, in order.
Three 16-inch strips are 48 inches. A sheet is 48 inches. The two cuts between them eat a quarter inch, and the third strip comes up short. The page counts every kerf.
One part per line: how many, length, width, and a name if you want it. Fractions are fine. The longer side runs with the 8-foot grain.
Filled with the shelf unit so you can see it work. Clear it and type yours, or paste a list. A semicolon works as a new line.
A full 4x8 sheet and a 1/8 blade unless you change them. Measure your sheet if you're cutting it close.
Most problems are who-you-know. Name one person who'd hold the far end of the sheet. Breaking down plywood is a good third thing: one of you on each end, and you talk while you work.
Now make the call — ask: “got an hour Saturday? I'll buy lunch.”
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.
Free. This tool asks you for nothing — no gate, no email, no analytics. When the project's built, DM me a picture.