Price per board foot

[Al St. Aubin]

OK This may be a stupid question for the experienced one's here but bear with me, and you can laugh that's fine also. All I ask is when you done laughing share some wisdom.

Q; I may be interpreting this right but when a price say 2.00 per board feet that only means for the length right? So say at $2 a board foot, a 8 ft board would cost me $16?  They don't do some tricky math and play with width times length + board feet and here is your price. I ask because except for recycled wood I have always bought what I need at the big box stores. I have found a couple of local yards and want to see if price is comparable, as well as keep my money more local.

 

 

Told you it was a stupid question, you may now laugh, just don't ban me to the stupid question of the week club!  :-)

 

[Reynolds Negrin]

Is BF the same thing as LF I see next to the prices?

[Ken Rupkalvis]

Board feet = length X width X thickness in inches divided by 12.

[Ken Darga]

BF= board foot---which is the thickness x width x length (in inches)

divided by 144---

the resultant is "BF".

Board feet measures volume and is a 3 dimensional calculation.

A board foot is a volume of lumber.

Hardwood, oak, maple and the like, is generally sold by the board foot.

For an accurate price of lumber material, use board foot.

LF=lineal foot---is the length of the piece, for the applicable material.

A lineal foot = 12".

A lineal foot measures one dimensional distance and is expressed as a single number to represent that distance. The length of a 2x4 expressed as 96", illustrates 8ft lineal feet.

Lumber, pine and the like, is sold by the board foot, for the applicable thickness and width.

Square foot measure area and is a two dimensional calculation expressed as width x length.

The amount of tile needed to cover a 10' x 12' floor will be 120 square feet.

Some materials are sold by the square foot, such as tile, carpet, and the like.

Cubic feet

When calculating volume, the resultant is cubic feet.

EX: 12 x 12 x 12 = 1728 sq inches - a cubic foot.

Reynolds Negrin said:

Is BF the same thing as LF I see next to the prices?

[Scott G]

The other thing I've learned - recently - is that some lumber yards will only cut certain boards to certain lengths. For example, at the big orange store, they don't seem to care a lot about a little bit of waste, but at another lumber yard, they would only cut to some lengths depending on the board size. Not sure I'm making sense... so...

Example:

* At HD I got some 1"x6" oak. Had one piece cut to 8' and another to 6' from boards off the rack that were originally 10'    No problem. The extra 2' from one board and 4' from another just go back on their rack for sale.

* At the 'real' lumber yard, which I went to for the first time for my first more real furniture project, it wasn't that simple. For the 1"x6" oak I wanted they had one 6' length in stock, a bunch of 10 footers and some 12 footers. So I took the 6' board, but they wouldn't cut the 10 footers to 6' for me. They had to end up with at least 6' of these particular boards because they didn't think they could sell the smaller cuts. Other boards could be sold down to different lengths. (They had a chart.) This was a pain in the butt for me to re-figure out my cut lists and make sure I wasn't spending too much on waste. I could have gone elsewhere, but it was good wood and I was ready to build. Luckily it all worked out. But it was an education. Next time will have to plan better.

[Ken Rupkalvis]

My lumber source sells the board. They don't sell cuts. The wood is fantastic and the prices are very good so I don't mind getting a few board feet more then I asked for. I usually use it eventually anyway. It's nice to have ready stock when the whim for a project hits.

[Ken Darga]

Scott,

Many of us learn as we go.

Scott G said:

>>>...  it was an education. Next time will have to plan better./p>