Just working on a sketchUp file and it got me to thinking about utilising a sheet of MDF to its maximum potential.

You are probably familiar with stackable Babushka Dolls (even if you have to ask your partner what their called like I did).

Which got me to thinking about this whole slices of MDF speaker design I have been working on... Really there is a lot of wastage in the middle (which you can't really do too much about) but what about the outside?

If like the Babushka Dolls there was a way to cut several speaker boxes out of the same piece of MDF.

So here's the theory... Lets say I want to build three speaker boxes that are all slightly different sizes but the exact same shape (using a single template). If I size the MDF rectangles to suit the largest of the boxes and cut the outside edge of the biggest box first, this would trim off the excess from the rectange and form the outside of my largest box.

Now I make a second cut say 30mm in from the first cut, this would make the wall thickness of the cabinet 30mm. This second cut is actually two cuts, it is the inside cut of the largest box and the outside cut of the second largest box...

You can now see where I am going with this... I repeat until I have three different cabinet slices from the same piece of MDF.

Now the tricky bit... if I was trying to use the same template for all cuts, would it be possible to make the template guide for the outside cut of the largest box?

Thinking the only way to achieve this is to possibly make three templates (which would also make it possible to use the same template guide for all three, saving lots of money).