The Cutting Plan

The illustration below shows two octaves of the keyboard blank. Notice that there are 7 “white keys” (labeled C to B) and five black keys (sharps) in each of the two octaves shown. A little study of this picture should make it clear that the only place we can cut completely through from top to bottom is between the E and F keys and between the B and C keys. So we will begin cutting out the keys by cutting between all the E’s and F’s and between all the C’s and B’s. This is like taking a 4' x 8' [1219 mm x 2438 mm] sheet of plywood and drawing a cutting diagram onto it to make the most efficient cuts.