How much edge banding do I need?

Every rectangular part has four sides: L1 and L2 are the two long sides, W1 and W2 the two short ones. For each side choose no edging, 0.8 mm, 1 mm or 2 mm. Band what is seen or touched — front edges of carcasses and shelves, all four sides of doors and drawer fronts — and leave hidden edges bare.

Agree which side is L1 before the list goes to the workshop. The same convention is used in the CSV columns L1, L2, W1 and W2 — see the CSV template.

The two bookcases from how many sheets do I need, with 1 mm tape on the front edge only:

Total: 16.35 m of 1 mm tape, which is one 50 m roll.

The metres Cutspan shows are the exact edge lengths. An edgebander needs tape to overhang each end so it can be trimmed flush, and the start of a roll, a jam or a re-run all use some more. Add an allowance before ordering — many workshops add a few centimetres per edge or a percentage on the total — and round up to whole rolls.

In the example, 16 edged parts with 30 mm extra each add under half a metre; one roll is still enough. On a large job with hundreds of short edges the allowance matters more.

A tapered side is a real side with its own length. For a door that is 2100 mm high on one side and 1600 mm on the other, the tape follows the sloping edge, not the rectangle around it. Cutspan measures edging along the actual outline, so a sloped or cut-corner part is not over-counted.

After calculating, the result has an Edging summary table: one row per material and tape thickness, with total metres and the number of rolls. The roll length defaults to 50 m; change it to match your supplier and calculate again. The job totals also show the metres of edging for the whole job.

Cutspan plans the part size you enter and does not subtract the tape thickness. Decide once whether your list gives finished sizes or pre-edging sizes, and keep to it.