Hunter - in MY world (backyard not pro) stagger cuts go like this: Say I have a very thick blank (an old 7’7"A or windsurfer blank or whatever.) The nose of the blank is maybe 2.5 inches thick… and I know that I eventually want the board’s nose to only be less than an inch. So after skinning the blank & blocking it flat, maybe I still want to remove 1.25 inches or 2 inches of thickness from the nose, or in that neighborhood. That’s a lot of foam and stringer, gotta get rid of it somehow?
One way to do that is with stagger cuts…ie., on the Botttom of the blank, first I run the planer along the stringer from 3 inches back of the nose, (let’s just say for example) a 1/8" deep cut all the way off the nose. Then I step back, put the planer on the stringer 5 inches back and again do a 1/8" cut, all the way to the nose (in the same slot I just cut before). So that slot cut is now 2 inches of 1/8" deep and 3 inches of 1/4" deep. Then I back up, put the planer 7 inches back from the nose, and make a 3rd cut, same slot. It’s now 1/8" deep from 7" to 5" back from the nose, 2/8" deep from 5" to 3" back, and 3/8" for the final 3 inches at the tip. Fourth cut, maybe start a foot back, repeat the process as long as necessary… You need to know ahead of time how thick you want the blank to end up, though! and what shape & amount of bottom rocker you want.
Depending how much foam is being removed, you may find that you’ll have to take down the foam on both sides of the slot before you finish it (and certainly afterward! When & how you do that is up to you, but the power planer works well, or a hand plane or sanding block if you’re nervous (or just need to work quietly because it is 3am).
And, you will want to run a full length cut to smooth out these “steps” into a nice curve/bottom rocker.
The exact numbers don’t matter, its just that you’re gradually bringing the nose of the board down toward its target thickness. get the picture?
Obviously what this does is rough out the bottom rocker at the same time. The more flip you want in the nose, the deeper your stagger cuts will be. If you’re making something flatter (longboard) then you might not do this, or you’d do much shallower, longer steps.
That may be totally the opposite of what the pros do (or mean by this term) but it seems to work for me, particularly on big old thick chunks of foam where you have thickness that is 2 or 4 times as much as what you want to end up with. Hopefully one of them will weigh in if I’ve told you something completely stupid.