something called "gang cutting", which means cutting all parts that are the same size at once. so after cutting them to rough size i will stack up all the tops and bottoms of the two shelves i plan to make, then cut them to their exact size at once. then i will stack up all the horizontal shelf pieces and do the same.
first, i rough cut the parts a bit larger than needed out of my large sheet of material, leaving an extra 1/4" on each part. this is because in the rest of the steps i'm going to be cutting all the same-size parts to final size stacked up 