Rough stock to Flooring rule of thumb?

[nopoint]

I have some rough stock and am considering having someone with the appropriate equipment make it into flooring. Is there some kind of general rule of thumb when converting board feet of rough lumber into square feet of flooring? I have about 4,000 board feet of mixed maple, ash  and birch...What will I end up with?????? 3,000 square feet,,, 2,500.... Thoughts? The material isn't clear and has its share of small knots, very little splits etc. 

[beenthere]

So many variables come into play when trying to estimate recovery of flooring. You might contact a shop that will make the flooring you want from your mixed species and get their experience and advice.
The width of the flooring will be but one factor. The degree of defect/character permitted by you another. Random lengths another. Finished thickness another. Grade of the logs sawn, and grade of the rough lumber also.

Others may have some better thoughts to help you with some numbers.

[nopoint]

Thanks, "been there". I will have a talk with our local mill. While I totally trust them to do right by me they are sort of noncommittal. I suspect they will say something like, "we'll see how it goes and let you know" Time will pass, then when I'm least expecting they will call and say it's done. Perhaps so far from now that I have begun to suspect they may have sold my material to someone else or lost it in the shuffle.  I'm in no hurry so doesn't matter to me. "Been there" I like your byline. 

[Southside]

Is is kiln dried already?  What grade do you expect to get out of it? Like BT said, way too many variables and if you brought it to me you would get the same answer of "we will see how it goes".  Just drying alone could change the final outcome depending on how well it was sawn to begin with.  

A very, very, rough rule of thumb is to expect to loose 1" of width of everything, and that's presuming drying movement is minimal and board with isn't foolishly wide.  

[scsmith42]

Best I've done was 20% loss using own material.  This is longer length though; 8' - 24' strips.

Worst I ever did was 50% yield loss from some material brought to me from a sawyer with an old circle mill.  Lots of material that was too thin in the middle of the board (measured end to end) to make 3/4", and the sawyer did not follow any type of standards in terms of board widths.  I think that we measured around 15 different widths of raw material.  Usually I don't like to exceed more than 3 finished widths in one job, but even with going to 5 widths we still had a lot of waste.

[customsawyer]

The number of widths you are taking to them and the number of widths you are willing to install, are numbers needed.
Just for reference if I take rough cut 1x6s and just feed them through the planer for paneling I am figure on a min. of 22% loss. This is because you took a 6 inch wide board and it now covers 5.25" to 5.125" depending on the stock going in. If I do that same process with 1x8s then I am down to 14% loss or so. There is no way I would try to make flooring with out strait lining it first. So that will increase your percentage of loss, depending on how strait the lumber is coming out of the kiln. 
I know that my above numbers don't add up. I'm just saying that those are nice numbers to get yourself in the ballpark.

[nopoint]

Thanks everyone for the input it really helps. I appreciate the available knowledge and experience base!

[firefighter ontheside]

I made flooring for my bedroom a few years ago.  I made flooring for my bedroom a few years ago.  To maximize the use of my available lumber I made 2", 3" and 4" wide flooring.  You might consider something like that.

[scsmith42]

I forgot to mention above that I assume a 33% yield loss from green sawn width to net moulder width.  

If I want a 5" face width and a 16' length, I'll start with an edged blank that is 5-3/8".  I'll take 1/8" off of the tongue side, and 1/8" off of the groove side, plus 1/4" for the groove.  

Those edged 5-3/8" blanks were milled at 7-1/2" green, and dried down to around 7".  

Now if I'm making shorter lengths - such as 8', or trimming the defects out to net clear but short boards, then I'll mill an inch or so narrower.

[bluthum]

As already noted there's too many variables here but my first thought is 50%  just based on your description. Making flooring incurs loss at each step not to exclude during install.

I just got through making a tiny floor of short leaf pine starting with some nice 1x12's for 4 and 7" boards. I over figured , I though, for every step of the way and had almost zero left.  I used splines rather than t&g just to get around the set up time since it was such a small run which helps minimize waste quite a bit.

[Southside]

@Wudman and I straight lined some foolishly wide red oak today that I sawed for a client 5 or so years ago.  We are talking 18"+, 12' material.  He left it on stickers and kept a strap on it the whole time.  I dried it in the kiln recently, was extra conservative with the rate of removal, and cringed with what might happen, amazingly the movement, cupping, etc was almost zero.  Coming out of the edger there was zero stress showing up.  I remember that the logs had been sitting for a while when I sawed them, and he dried them in a small opening that was surrounded by timber, so wind exposure was nill. The biggest loss in cleaning the lumber up was really wayne and PPB / sapwood issues, some of the lumber really only required taking 1/2" off each side to get a nice, straight edge.  I was surprised to say the least.