Board foot

[CWStrickland]

I am in need of the book that tells you how much board foot is in the boards I saw, for pricing purposes?  Also, would like to know the name of a Insurance company to purchase insurance on my mill, as well as liabilty insurance.  Went to Insurance company that holds my homeowners policy, and was told that if I operated the mill on my property I could jeopardize my homeowners policy.  The Mill I own is a Wood Mizer LT40, just purchased it on 08282006.  Any information anyone could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

CWStrickland

Strickland's Custom Sawmilling

[Tom]

Welcome to the forum CW!!

I know that book you are talking about and I have a better idea.

The book will give you board feet for the boards in the book, but not for the boards that you saw.  Your boards may be different lengths or widths or thicknesses.  They haven't the space to include "everything". 

Get a little pocket calculator and use this formula.

Height in inches X Width in inches X Length in feet / 12 = board feet for that stick

Just remember to multiply everything together and divide by twelve.

Height x width x lengthe x quantity /12 = board feet for a stack of the same lumber.

The formula will measure anything from the BF it takes to side a wall to a tightly stacked stack of lumber.

You have to use some discretion about rounding and are generally safe to round down.  Lengths are usually rounded down to the nearest foot and widths to the nearest inch.

You will find that there are some complicated rules for judging BF in the grader's mind.  If you want to do that, you must study grading rules.  I think the formula above will suffice to give you a good on-site billing figure.

Be sure that you work in nominal figures.  a 1" board is called 4/4 (four quarter) because thickness are measured in quarters.   It is a 4/4 board until its thickness reaches 1 1/4 and then it becomes a 5/4 board .....until its thickness reaches 1 1/2 inches and then it becomes a 6/4 board, etc.

For the sake of the formula they are 4/4 = 1, 5/4 =1.25, 6/4 = 1.5, etc.

The formula is good because it allows you to figure parts of and inch and odd feet.

Here's an example that you won't find in the book.

3" x 7" x 25'    It has 43.75 feet in it.

[CWStrickland]

Thanks, Tom.  That will give my wife something to do. :D

[DanG]

Welcome, CW!  Where in Fla?

Woodmizer has a little slip card type footage calculator that I find to be real handy.  Be sure to register your mill with them so they'll know who has that one, and to smooth out the road when you call them about it.  When you do that, I bet they'll send you one of the little calculators.

Go 'Noles! ;D :D :D :D

[pigman]

Welcome CW.  I kind of did it backward of the way you did. I got my sawmill first and then got into woodworking. I now do more woodworking than sawing. Of course we want to see your table tops. 8)
Go Cats. 8) Don't laugh, Ky football is going to rise again. : I know, we have been saying that for over 50 years since The Bear left town. Someone has to be the whipping boy for the Fla. teams. :(
Bob

[Phorester]

Ditto on what Tom said.  Use the formula, not  board foot tables.  If you use tables you have to saw all your boards to fit their sizes.  ;D

Ahem........, VA Tech 38, Northeastern 0.

[Ron Wenrich]

Or you could use our handy dandy board foot calculator.  You can even put in your pricing values, and print out a copy.  How do you get the calculator?  Go to our forum toolbox.  Its the red thing on the bottom of the advertisers bar on the left.  Or go to forum extras at the top right.  It takes you to this page:  https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?action=toolbox

Look over some of those calculators.  We spent time to give something that we hope is useful to the small operator.  The best part is that they're free, and you can download them to your computer to be used at any time.

As for football  -  Penn State 34  Akron 16.  We are ....

[Tom]

Ron's right!

There's some benefits in the Forum Toolbox.

Lots of effort went into making them too, and he's one of the major players for developing them.

Go Dawgs!!

[thecfarm]

Welcome to the forum CWStrickland.Glad to have you here.

[Left Coast Chris]

Tom..... since I have not sold lumber but have so far kept it all for hoby work (the barn is getting full!)  I to was wondering something............

All of my lumber is rough sawn and most is at 5/4 thickness.   The reason I went to 5/4 is to be able to plane it down to 4/4 or even 3/4 for the twisted boards and thus save more usable lumber.    So ........ if I sold the 5/4 rough sawn lumber would I charge for 4/4 because it is not finished?     Also what is the general rule for culling out warpage..... ???   as in how warped does it have to be to cull it?

If I did sell some I want to be fair and uniform with the industry.....

[Tom]

Farmer,
I appreciate your effort to be fair.

In all honesty, you have to be aware of grading rules for the wood you are selling to do it properly.  It can get quite involved.

I saw a lot at 5/4 for the same reason.  If I were to sell it, I would make a judgement as to what I thought it would produce finished.  The rule for 4/4 is that it be thick enought to produce 3/4.  I would generously interpret the rules as  It has to be thick enough to arrive at the finished thickness after dressing.

You have to understand that lumber that is too thick will eat up the mans planer, so those might even be a detriment to him and fairness would be "cut-rate".

Ron Wenrich is more attuned to those rules than I am.  Perhaps he will offer an answer.

[beenthere]

farmer77
Selling your hardwood lumber will depend a bit on who the buyer is, what agreement you have with the buyer, and if you are going to sell it by grade, or sell it as log run.  
Chapter 5 Wood Handbook  describes commercial lumber and might be helpful to you to read it through.
I suspect you want to sell it with the least amount of your time and additional work involved in getting it ready to sell as possible.  
And like Tom says, Ron is helpful in this type of question.

When Tom said "It has to be thick enough to arrive at the finished thickness after dressing." I believe that is the actual cutting from the board that makes up the grade has to dress to finished thickness, not the entire board. So some degree of warp won't affect the NHLA grade.  Our member Inspectorwoody can chime in here too. He's a hardwood lumber grader.

[Ron Wenrich]

Thickness is one of those things that is kind of tricky.  If you're sawing softwoods and talk about 2" stock, it may only be finished out to 1 1/2".  In hardwoods, that's called a piece of 6/4.

For the commercial hardwood markets, 4/4 is sawn 1 1/16".  But, the problem comes from uneven board thickness throughout the board.  Most buyers want a 4/4 to be sawn 1 1/8".  They will accept lumber up to 1 1/4" for 4/4.  If you saw your boards at 1 1/4", you have sawn 4/4, not 5/4.  4/4 hardwood lumber should plane down to 7/8" after drying.

Warpage can be a problem.  A lot depends on the usage of the lumber.  If you are using in con struction, hit and miss planing might be acceptable.  For finish work, it has to plane down on both sides.  Furniture manufacturers get around warpage by cutting narrow boards, then matching them.  The one panel shop we send to doesn't use anything wider than 4" or narrower than 2".

We sell most of our lumber green, so that isn't a problem.   The drying becomes a user issue.

Warpage on wide boards can be reduced by resawing the boards to a narrower width before planing.