Brant Custom Wood

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Estimating Board Footage

There are many scales for estimating board feet of lumber in LOGS.

There is another for measuring board feet in lumber and there are different way to do this depending on whether you are measuring hardwood or softwood.

They say to measure hardwood you figure the face area of the board and then round off to the nearest foot.  Round up one time and down the next figuring that they will balance out.  Then when you have all of the surface measurements done you multiply the total by the thickness of the lumber. If less than 1 inch thick, we still use 1.00 as the thickness.  Thick is always in 1/4 inch increments.

As softwoods are usually sawn to widths of whole inches this rounding up and down is not used.  Round to the closest 1/100 (or 0.01) BF.  You can also use the 'nominal' size and not the exact size.  This means a 2x6x8' is exactly 1.5X5.5X8' is 8.00 BF and not 5.50 BF

Board Foot vs. Square Foot

A board foot is equal in volume to a square foot of lumber 1" thick.

A square foot of lumber / flooring etc would be 12" x 12" (or similar dimensions totaling 144 square inches) but could be of any thickness.

If you know the thickness of the lumber you could calculate the board footage from the square footage.  Flooring may be sold by the square foot since that is the measurement you are likely to take when you are calculating the size of the area to be covered, so it is a convenient unit of measure for floor coverings.

In one-inch thick lumber or less, the board feet and square feet are the same.  This is called surface measure not square foot measure.  Any thickness over one inch must multiply surface measure gby the thickness of your board foot measure.

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Last modified: 12/02/06