Shadow boards are obviously worth it.
Making them is miserable.

Everyone who has ever opened a drawer and known instantly that a 10 mm is missing understands the value. The problem was never whether to make one. The problem was the making.

The traditional method is a Saturday: trace every tool onto cardboard with a pencil, cut it out with a knife, discover the pockets are a blade's width too small, do it again. The CAD method is worse — measure every tool with calipers, draw every outline by hand, and learn what kerf is the expensive way, after the foam is already cut.

Shadow Forge exists because there was a third option nobody had built: your phone already knows what your tools look like. Put them on a plain sheet of paper — any standard size, or a custom one — take one photo, mark the paper's corners, and there is enough information to recover true scale, correct for perspective, and trace a clean outline of every tool at once.

Everything after that is the part people get wrong by hand and computers get right every time: offsetting for kerf so the tool fits, filleting corners to a radius your bit can actually cut, nesting without collisions, and writing files a machine will accept without an argument.

What we believe

The geometry calculations belongs on your machine

Tracing, offsetting and meshing all run in your browser. Not because it is a clever trick, but because it is the correct architecture. Your calculations do not need to be on our server for the math to work, so they are not. Your machine creates the data. We store the data and the tool photo for you.

The files are yours

No watermarks, no per-export fee, and nothing that stops your files from working if you stop paying. We sell a tool as a service, not a leash.

No dark patterns

The trial does not take a card and cannot auto-charge you. Canceling takes two clicks and there is no retention script. If you feel the service is not worth the price we are asking, we would rather you left. No hard feelings; it's about value, not price.

Made for the shop floor

Every setting exists because a real tray came out wrong without it. That is not a slogan — it is just what happens when you cut foam and pay attention.