Hardwood calculations
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- This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 3 months ago by dborn.
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Ordering hardwood is causing me some confusion. It is sold as cubic feet or metres, so do I simply calculate how much volume this represents for my intended project and multiply that by the amount in £’s ? Also, does this timber represent a whole piece, which I then order to my own dimensions?
I think these are really obvious answers but I feel I’m missing something.
Franco, here in Canada we order it by the board foot which is 144 cubic inches
4/4 skip dressed aka rough is 1 inch thick and a 12 inch by 12 inch piece is 1 board foot.
In 6 inch wide boards, one board foot is 24 inches long.
8 inch wide boards its 18 inches long, etc
Then they sell thick boards named 8/4 which is 2 inches thick
12/4 is 3 inches thick etc etc
Widths typically are 6 – 12 inches wide, so I have to do my calculations to determine how many board feet of a typical width I need per project.
eg: the coffee table needs some 12/4 stock for the legs and 4/4 stock for the top, rails etc.
Sorry its not specific to cubic meters. I hope this helps and I hope my calculations I did in my head are correct!! 🙂
Thanks Dave. I did read about board feet when I searched the topic and realised it was specific to Canada and U.S. So the principles are the same though. You calculate the pieces you need, multiply it all together to get a total cubic foot (or whatever measure you need) and multiply by the price.
I guess as this is my first venture into buying hardwood timber, I have found the process is totally different than rolling up at the local hardware store and picking up some lengths of pine.
22 January 2014 at 9:32 pm #26402You will need to order more bdft than you calculate. If you calculate you need 10bdft that assumes you will get the exact right size boards you need and they all yield 100%. You will get different size boards with various widths and lengths that may not be optimal for your project (you need a 6″ wide x 62″ long side piece but you have to buy a board that is 6.25″ wide x 96″ long, etc) and there will be checks, knots, etc. that will end up being waste. Does that make sense?
Franco, ditto what Brian said, calculate 25 % extra for safety. I guess I’m fortunate in that my lumber store carries both dressed and rough lumber in various widths so I get to pick and choose. There’s nothing wrong with pine either, it’s easy to work and has nice grain sometimes.
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