The Pulpit Cut List

When last we met, I provided a detailed list of steps for building the pulpit. There are a lot more steps for this project than there were for making the corner cabinet. I ended the post saying we were going to talk about purchasing the wood in this, my next post. In order to purchase the wood, we need a cut list. Actually, the cut list is also needed to build the project -- after all, how can you build something without knowing what parts you need to cut?

As usual, I used the Cut List & Materials plug-in for Sketch-Up to generate the cut list for the pulpit. I then went to import it into CutList Plus. And I hit a snag. You see, I have CutList Plus Silver Edition, which has a limit of up to 50 parts for any project. What with all the maple & purple heart parts that make up the moldings, there were well over 100 unique parts in the resulting CSV file. CutList Plus wouldn't import the list.

So what to do? The Gold Edition of CutList Plus has an unlimited number of parts & even allows you to combine separate cut lists as components into a larger project. This is useful for generating an estimate for building the cabinets for a whole kitchen, where you can have multiple copies of several different basic cabinets. But I didn't want to pay the extra money at this time for the extra features. I just don't know that I'm ever going to use that functionality, and what with the price of gas these days, I can use that money to get to work.

So I ended up importing the CSV file into Excel and modifying it manually. What I did was estimate how much maple & purple heart I would need and distilled it down into whole boards. I then doubled that amount of maple & purple heart & ordered 1 hard maple board at 6" x 48" and 2 purple heart boards at the same size. My thinking is it's better to have too much on hand than too little, right?

I then grouped together all of the glue-ups as single units. If you refer back to the images I posted in My Next Project: A Pulpit, you'll see that I need 12 panels for the fronts & ends, plus the removable lectern top. What I'm going to do is to combine the top & bottom glue-ups into one rough glue-up, then cut the individual panels from these larger panels after first squaring them up.

So I actually need to make a total of 6 glue-ups, two for each end, two for the wing fronts, and one for the center front, plus another for the lectern top. I grouped these items together in one list with a note indicating that they were the rough sizes of glue-ups. This way I didn't have to specify something like "20 4/4 boards at 4 3/8" wide x 42" long". I'd let the guy picking the lumber give me what he had that would add up to the rough width I needed, hopefully all of it with good cathedral grain.

Then I grouped the items in the list for the posts, rails, & the center stile in the front into another list, indicating what they were for. Again, my hope was that I'd get boards with good straight grain for these parts. I then grouped the remaining parts together in the list. While I'd like straight grain for most of these parts, cathedral grain wouldn't hurt.

With all of that done, I also attached pictures of the pulpit so the guy picking the wood could see where the intended part was going to go & hopefully pick better grain for that part. Below is a sample of what the spreadsheet that I sent to the lumber yard looked like.

And here's a list of what I got from the lumber yard. The following are all red oak boards:

• 8/4 x 10 1/4" x 48 1/8"
• 8/4 x 10 1/8" x 48 15/16"
• 8/4 x 10 1/8" x 48 1/2"
• 6/4 x 9 5/8" x 48 13/16"
• 6/4 x 9 5/8" x 48 3/4"
• 4/4 x 5 1/8" x 15 1/16"
• 4/4 x 2 1/16" x 49"
• 4/4 x 4 1/2" x 48 15/16"
• 4/4 x 5 1/4" x 21"
• 4/4 x 5 1/4" x 30 15/16"
• 4/4 x 5 11/16" x 17 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5 3/4" x 14 3/8"
• 4/4 x 6 3/16" x 21"
• 4/4 x 5 3/4" x 24 15/16"
• 4/4 x 5 1/16" x 25"
• 4/4 x 4 3/4" x 25 1/2"
• 4/4 x 4 11/16" x 25"
• 4/4 x 4 13/16" x 42 5/8"
• 4/4 x 5 3/4" x 43 3/16"
• 4/4 x 5 15/16" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5 11/16" x 43 1/8"
• 4/4 x 5 3/4" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5 3/4" x 43 1/8"
• 4/4 x 4" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5 5/8" x 42"
• 4/4 x 6" x 43"
• 4/4 x 6" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5" x 43"
• 4/4 x 6" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 4 1/12" x 42 13/16"
• 4/4 x 5 1/16" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5" x 43 1/16"
• 4/4 x 5 1/16" x 43 1/8"
• 4/4 x 5 13/16" x 43 1/16"

In addition to the red oak, I got two (2) 4/4 purple heart boards and one hard maple board, all about 6" x 24".

The price for the rough lumber was fair & no more expensive than it would have cost me to get it locally. But the shipping was approximately $3.20 per board foot, up 300% from last October when I bought the wood for the corner cabinet from the same yard. I very nearly decided to just go to the local yard & pick the lumber myself, but I decided not to do it myself.

The advantage, for me, of going with this yard is that it saved me from taking a day off work to pick through the stacks locally. The owner does an excellent job of matching color and he's very conscientious. And to be honest, I think he does a better job of picking lumber than I do. It's just the cost of gas that's killing the price.

Next time, we'll get started milling lumber.