Wrote out every cut list by hand for 6 years, then a guy at the lumber yard in Fresno called me out

Brooke Walker · 2026-09-15T15:00:05.235291+00:00

I always did my cut lists on a notepad because that's how my first boss taught me back in 2018, and I figured software was for guys who couldn't do math in their head. Last month a yard guy in Fresno watched me redo a stair stringer list three times because I kept transcribing numbers wrong, and he just said 'you know the board doesn't care how you figured it out.' I switched to a free spreadsheet on my phone and my scrap pile dropped from about a third of every lift to maybe 10 percent on a 40 sheet cabinet job. The math was never the problem, it was me copying numbers from one page to another at 6am. Anyone else fight this switch or am I the last guy holding a pencil?

The Community Guide

Loading…

Wrote out every cut list by hand for 6 years, then a guy at the lumber yard in Fresno called me out | Carpenters - The Community Guide