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The Wood Journal

Board feet are not a cut list: buy lumber for the parts you need

Ben Harlow — illustrated editorial personaBen HarlowSeptember 26, 2026
Wood & materials
Rough-sawn lumber stacked with spacers in a workshop
Illustrative AI-generated workshop image.

A stack can contain enough wood by volume and still fail to yield a single clean tabletop. Board footage helps you compare quantities and prices. A cut list tells you whether those particular boards will make your project.

Keep the units straight

One board foot is 144 cubic inches: a piece 1 inch thick, 12 inches wide and 12 inches long. With thickness and width in inches and length in feet, multiply the three dimensions and divide by 12.

For example, a board 1 inch thick, 6 inches wide and 8 feet long contains 4 board feet. If all dimensions are in inches, divide their product by 144 instead. Write the units beside the numbers before calculating; mixing the two formulas produces a very convincing wrong answer.

Ask what the seller is measuring

Rough and surfaced lumber are not always tallied in the way a beginner expects. Ask the yard how thickness, width and length are counted and which milling charges are separate. Compare quotations on the same basis rather than assuming the dressed dimensions determine the invoice.

Bring the required parts to the stack

List each finished part with its quantity, thickness, width and length. Add the machining allowances your process needs. Identify the demanding pieces first: long clear rails, wide panels or legs that must match visually.

At the yard, imagine those parts on the actual boards. Knots, checks, twist and unwanted grain may prevent a theoretically sufficient board from yielding the required shapes. Several short clear pieces do not substitute for one long clear rail.

Make a rough cutting sketch before buying. Leave space for saw kerfs and trimming, and keep attractive adjacent pieces together when the grain needs to match. A photograph of each selected board, with your proposed part names noted separately, can help you retain the plan back in the shop.

There is no single waste percentage that fits every project. A small box made from short parts and a table with long matched components have different needs. Calculate the volume, then make the final purchase decision from the parts and the available boards.

From the archive: How to buy sawmill hardwood, part two.

Further reading

Put this into practice

When comparing suppliers, convert board-foot and linear-foot quotes to the same billing basis. For sheet goods, use the kerf-aware sheet-yield calculator instead of a volume estimate.

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AI-generated portrait of Ben Harlow
Wood & materials

Ben Harlow

Practical guides to choosing lumber, understanding grain and planning for wood movement.

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