How to Calculate Board Feet

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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At times, woodworking or construction projects may require that you buy the amount of wood that you need in board feet. The board foot is the method of measuring lumber and it is equal to 144 cubic inches of wood. You can use a very simple equation to calculate board feet for these projects.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Calculate the board feet needed for a board which is 24 inches in length, 9.5 inches in width and 1 inch in thickness. You can round the width in this example to 10 inches and use this value when substituting into the formula that follows in Step 3.

Step2

Use the formula [Length (inches) X Width (inches) X Thickness (inches)]/ 144 to determine the board feet for this example since all the measurements are in inches.

Step3

Substitute the values for the length, width and thickness from Step 1 into the formula in Step 2. You get that [24X(inches)X 10( inches)X 1( inch )]/144= 1.66 board feet. This is the amount of wood you need for this project.

Tips & Warnings

Realize that a board which has the dimensions of length= 12 inches (1foot), width= 12 inches (1 foot) and thickness = 1 inch would be equal to 1 board foot.
Know that there is a second formula you can use to calculate board feet if the length is in feet. This formula is: [Length (feet) X Width (inches) X Thickness (inches)]/12. It is wise to keep track of the units when calculating with either formula to ensure getting the correct figure amount of wood to buy.
You measure the thickness of hardwood in quarters of an inch.