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About this tool
Convert timber thickness, width and length into board feet, cubic feet and cubic metres, with waste allowance and total cost.
A board foot is a unit of timber volume equal to 144 cubic inches — a piece one inch thick, twelve inches wide and twelve inches long — and this calculator works it out as thickness x width x length in inches divided by 144. It converts the same volume to cubic feet (the CFT that Indian timber yards quote), cubic metres and cubic inches, adds a waste allowance and prices the order on whichever unit your supplier bills in. Woodworkers, furniture makers and site supervisors use it to turn a cutting list into a purchase quantity.
Open Board Foot Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Enter inches, feet, millimetres, centimetres or metres in any combination.
Gives the volume in the unit your supplier actually quotes.
One tap for 4/4 through 16/4 rough hardwood thicknesses.
Multiply thickness in inches by width in inches by length in inches, then divide by 144. A 2 x 4 that is eight feet long works out to 2 x 4 x 96 / 144 = 5.33 board feet.
Exactly 12. A cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches and a board foot is 144 cubic inches, so 1,728 divided by 144 gives 12 board feet per cubic foot, or roughly 424 board feet per cubic metre.
It is rough thickness expressed in quarters of an inch, so 4/4 is one inch, 5/4 is one and a quarter, 8/4 is two inches. The board is measured before surfacing, which is why a 4/4 board planed on both faces finishes around 13/16 of an inch but is still billed as one inch.
Use the rough or nominal size the yard measured at, because that is what you are charged for. Softwood sold as a 2 x 4 actually measures 1.5 x 3.5 inches after surfacing, so a board-foot figure taken from the finished size will understate the invoice by about 34%.
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