Board Foot Calculator

Calculate the board foot of hardwood lumber needed for you project. Enter the number of pieces, thickness, width and length to calculate board feet.

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What is board foot?

Board footage is a term often used in construction. It refers to the total volume of board when purchasing lumber. This is not the same as square footage.

1 board foot is equal to 144 cubic inches or 1/12 of a cubic foot. In other words, it’s feet of length times inches of width times inches of thickness/12. The reason this is used is because when working with lumber, thickness and width is usually measured in inches, and therefore visualizing the amount of lumber in cubic feet would be difficult.

How to calculate board feet?

board feet = length(ft) * width(in) * thickness(in) / 12

Lets look at an example:

First, you need to determine how many pieces of lumber we are going to buy. We will choose 12 pcs.

Next, you need to measure or determine the size of each piece. We will use 12 FT length, 12 in width, and 2 in thick.

Finally, plug all of this information into the equation or calculator above, and we have our board feet of 288 board FT.

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