What Is Blade Thickness in Stock Cutting?
Blade thickness — known technically as "kerf" — is the width of material that a saw blade or cutting tool removes every time it passes through stock. It sounds trivial, but ignoring blade thickness is one of the most common causes of parts coming out undersized and sheets running short. Understanding kerf is essential to accurate stock cutting.
Kerf: the material the blade destroys
When a saw cuts, it does not split material along an infinitely thin line. The teeth grind away a strip of material equal to the blade width. A typical table-saw blade has a kerf of about 3.2 mm (1/8 inch); thin-kerf blades remove around 2.4 mm (3/32 inch), while CNC routers remove a strip equal to the bit diameter.
Every cut consumes that strip. Make twenty cuts across a sheet and you could lose 60 mm of usable material to kerf alone — enough to lose an entire part on a tight layout.
How blade thickness affects part dimensions
If you place two 600 mm parts side by side on a 1220 mm sheet and forget kerf, you assume they fit with 20 mm to spare. But a 3 mm kerf between them means you actually need 1203 mm — still fine here, but on tighter layouts the cumulative kerf can push a part off the sheet entirely.
Good optimization software inserts the kerf value between every adjacent part so the layout reflects reality. The reported sheet count and offcuts are then trustworthy.
Choosing a kerf value
- Table saw / panel saw: typically 3–4 mm (measure your actual blade).
- Thin-kerf circular blades: roughly 2–2.4 mm.
- CNC router: equal to the cutting bit diameter (e.g. 6 mm).
- Laser / waterjet: very small but not zero; check your machine specs.
- Glass scoring: effectively near-zero, but allow trim for breakout.
Setting kerf in CutList Machine
In CutList Machine you enter the blade thickness once in the sheet configuration, and every layout, diagram, and report accounts for it automatically. This keeps your cut parts on-dimension and your sheet counts honest, so you buy the right amount of material the first time.
Frequently asked questions
Is kerf the same as blade thickness?
Effectively yes. Kerf is the width of the slot a cut leaves behind, which equals the blade or bit width plus any blade wobble or set of the teeth. For planning, use the measured width of the cut.
What happens if I ignore blade thickness?
Parts come out slightly undersized, and tightly packed layouts run short of material because the cumulative kerf was never accounted for. Always include it in your cut list.
Put this into practice
Plan tighter layouts and cut less waste with the free CutList Machine optimizer.
Launch the optimizerRelated articles
Understanding Kerf in Panel Cutting
Everything you need to know about kerf and how to measure and apply it for accurate panel cutting.
OptimizationHow to Calculate Sheet Yield
The simple formula behind material efficiency — and the factors that move it up or down.
FundamentalsWhat Is Stock Cutting?
A plain-English introduction to stock cutting, the cutting stock problem, and how optimization saves material and money.