What is Kerf?
Kerf is the width of material removed by a saw blade during each cut, typically 1/8 inch (3.2 mm) for a standard table saw blade.
Kerf refers to the width of the slot a saw blade creates as it cuts through material. For most standard table saw blades, this width is about 1/8 inch (3.175 mm). Thin-kerf blades remove less, around 3/32 inch (2.4 mm).
The slot exists because saw teeth are "set" (bent slightly outward from the blade body). This makes the cut wider than the blade itself, preventing binding in the material.
Why kerf matters for cut lists. If you ignore blade width when planning cuts, your finished pieces come out shorter than planned. On a single sheet with 10 cuts at 3 mm each, that is 30 mm of material gone to sawdust. Multiply that across a full cabinet project with 40+ cuts and you can lose over 5 inches of stock to the blade alone.
Kerf by tool type. Circular saws run around 1/8 inch, band saws closer to 1/16 inch, and laser cutters as thin as 0.1 mm. CNC routers depend on the bit diameter.
How to measure yours. Make a single cut in a scrap piece, push the two halves back together, and measure the gap with calipers. That gap is your blade's removal width. A cut list optimizer like SmartCutList factors this into every calculation automatically, so each piece comes out at the exact dimension you need.
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