Blog · 2026-09-05
What a furniture quote actually costs
How much timber a chair takes is not L × W × T of the finished part. The millimetres between the drawing and the yard.
A 23 mm blank is a 32 mm board. A quote typed from a drawing is usually the wrong volume — not because somebody cannot multiply, but because the finished part is not what leaves the yard.
The finished leg is smaller than the blank it is cut from, and the blank is smaller than the board it comes off. Charge the finished part and you have priced the sawdust at nothing. Charge the blank at the size it will be after the planer and you have sold a thickness that is not on the rack.
What follows is not an argument against a spreadsheet. It is a way to put a number on one step that a sheet almost never contains — using figures a sawyer already uses, rather than a coefficient typed by eye.
The three volumes
Take a rectangular leg. The drawing says 630 × 100 × 23 millimetres.
That is the finished part, or a blank guessed from it. The yard does not sell 23 mm. It sells 26, 32, 40 and 50. The faces will be dressed. The rip needs an edge. The stop on the saw is set to a round figure, not to the millimetre on the sheet.
So the same part, bought rather than drawn:
Length +50 mm, then rounded up to a full 50. 630 becomes 700.
Width +10 mm. 100 becomes 110.
Thickness +4 mm for the planer — 27 — then up to a board that is actually sold. 27 is not sold. 32 is.
630 × 100 × 23 is bought as 700 × 110 × 32.
That last step is the one nobody does in their head. 23 mm looks like a 26 mm board. With the 4 mm a planer takes it needs 27, and the board is 32. On a chair that step is not a rounding error. It is the timber.
Why not a percentage on the length
A percentage grows with the part. A 1415 mm foot becomes a 1600 mm blank nobody saws. A 2900 mm one asks for 3190 mm, a length that is not sold at all.
Flat 50 mm, rounded up to a full 50, is what a sawyer sets the stop to. Two 1500 mm feet come out of a 3000 mm board with nothing left over. 2900 becomes 2950. Short parts stay short: 420 becomes 500.
A sheet is not a board
Plywood and MDF keep their own thickness. Nothing is planed off, nothing is rounded up to 26 mm, and there are no knots to allow for. +10 mm each way for the saw and the edge. A seat of 480 × 440 is bought as 490 × 450 and stays 15 mm thick.
A free L × W × T calculator will give you the seat you typed. It will not give you the sheet you have to order.
Too thick is a question
Nothing above 50 mm is invented. A 100 mm part is refused, not rounded to a size the merchant does not carry. The workshop says whether it may be glued as a block — stacked in the thickness — or as a panel across the width. Gluing three wide lamellas instead of four narrower ones costs more timber. That is their money, so it is their decision.
What the spreadsheet is genuinely good for
One chair, one rate, a morning. A grid is the right tool for that.
The trouble starts when the same file becomes the record: when the second customer gets a different cubic metre because last week's sheet and this week's sheet disagreed, and nothing minted a number when the paper left the house. The costing and the offer lived in the same columns, so the customer saw the oak and the rate.
Put your own number on it
Three checks, answerable this week.
Take one part you already sell. Write the finished size. Write the board you actually buy for it. If those two lines are the same, the quote is still the drawing.
Count how many quotes last year used a thickness that is not sold — 23, 28, 35 — as if it were.
Count how many times the same stool left at two different cubic metres, because two files held two multiplications.
If the number is small, keep the sheet. That is a legitimate answer.
If it is not small, the useful question is not which program to buy. It is whether the volume the customer pays for is allowed to be the finished part.
The board, then the paper
Estifex is a Vivifex product for that step. It keeps the finished part and the board apart, charges the board, and numbers an offer when it leaves rather than when it is tried. It does not touch stock. It does not drive a CNC. It does not invent a board that is not sold.
If you quote ten chairs a year and you already know the board, you do not need it. If you have sent the same stool at two volumes, you already know the cost.
Open Estifex →
Try the board on your own part →