How to Convert Metric Board Feet to Cubic Meters
A board foot, a three-dimensional measure, equals the volume of a piece of wood one foot square by one inch thick. You may think that a metric board foot (MBF) is therefore one metric foot (30cm) by one metric foot by one metric inch (2.5cm). However, as discussed on the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources website, a metric board foot equals a thousand board feet. The "M" in "MBF" refers to one thousand, not one million. Instead, "MMBF" refers to a million board feet.
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Instructions
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1
Convert the Imperial units of a board foot (BF) into metric. Specifically, one foot equals 304.8 millimeters (mm). One inch equals 25.4 mm.
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2
Multiply the mm conversions together to get a BF in mm. Specifically, 304.8x304.8x25.40 = 2.360x10^6 mm cubed, where the 10^6 means the decimal point is moved six digits to the right.
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3
Multiply by 1,000 to get a MBF in mm. Specifically, 2.360x10^9 mm cubed.
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4
Convert this number to cubic meters. Specifically, divide the result of step 3 by a billion. This gives 2.360 meters-cubed (m^3) per MBF.
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Tips & Warnings
The upshot of the above steps is to effectively multiply MBF by 2.360 to get the cubic meter count. Arbor Resources of New Zealand however uses 2.358.
Keep in mind that a BF in practice is truncated. For example, to find hardwood lumber board footage, multiply length in feet times width in inches and divide by 12. Then truncate (don't round) any decimal places. Then multiply by nominal thickness in inches, which is 1 inch for boards under 1 inch width. As discussed on the Woodweb website (see References), the calculation for softwood lumber is still different.
