End Grain Cutting Board Calculator

Why Kerf Loss Adds Up

Every pass of a table saw blade turns a sliver of wood into sawdust — typically 1/8" for a standard blade, a bit less for a thin-kerf blade. Ripping eight strips out of one board means seven cuts, and seven cuts at 1/8" each is nearly an inch of wood that simply disappears as dust. Ignore that and buy a board exactly as wide as your strips add up to, and you'll come up short by the time you're done ripping — the raw stock always needs to be wider than the sum of the finished strip widths.

How to Use This Calculator

Enter the width you want your finished cutting board to be, and the width of each individual strip before you glue them together (a common choice is 3/4" to 1.5" strips for a classic end grain look). Adjust the kerf value if you know your specific blade's kerf width — 1/8" (0.125") is standard, thin-kerf blades run closer to 3/32" (0.094").

How We Calculate It

Number of strips = finished width ÷ strip width, rounded up. Raw stock width needed = (strips × strip width) + (strips − 1) × kerf, since you make one fewer cut than you have strips. For example: a 12" finished board from 1.5" strips needs 8 strips and 7 cuts — 8 × 1.5 + 7 × 0.125 = 12.875" of raw board width.

A Few Notes

This gives you the raw width needed for the strips themselves, ripped from one board's width — it doesn't include the extra length needed if you're also cutting the strips to length from a longer board, or the additional stock needed if you plan to cross-cut and re-glue for a checkerboard pattern rather than simple parallel strips. Always buy a bit more than the calculated minimum to allow for defects, tear-out, and a strip or two going wrong during glue-up.