# How many board feet in my lumber pile?



## Al14 (Nov 15, 2012)

Anyone know how to estimate how many board feet in my lumber pile? I'm just looking for a rough guestimate. Rather than measure each board and calculate it, I want to do this the easy way. If I have a pile of rough cut lumber stacked (and stickered) about 4 ft high, 3- 4 ft deep and 10 ft long how many bord feet do I have? Wood is mainly 1 in thick, with some boards at 2 in. Just interest to know how much this walnut tree yielded when I got it back from the sawmill…


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## donwilwol (May 16, 2011)

if its 4' high, you probably have 23 ish rows, count them. Add of the width of a couple of rows and average it. If you have mostly 10" boards and its 3' deep it would be about 30" (2.5').

so it would be 2.5×10 x 23 give ot take for some margin of error.


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## lumberjoe (Mar 30, 2012)

Not sure if this is accurate at all, but assuming you have a stack that is 40 inches thick (4 feet minus 8 for the stickers), 36 inches wide and 10 feet long, you have about 1,200 bf


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## WDHLT15 (Aug 15, 2011)

If each layer is 4 feet wide and 10 feet long, that is 40 BF. Figure the average width in feet, multiply by length in feet, and that is the BF per layer. Count the layers to get the total. If you have 2" thick stock, count that as two layers. Figure the width of the stack as if the boards are butted up in a solid layer with no gaps.


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## steve6678 (Oct 4, 2012)

exactly…think of it as a huge, solid block of wood.


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## bondogaposis (Dec 18, 2011)

Measure the stack and subtract the stickers, that will give you cubic feet then multiply by 12 for bf.


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## kizerpea (Dec 2, 2011)

230 bf ish just a calculated guess


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## rhett (May 11, 2008)

It would be 3x that estimated guess if the entire stack was 36" wide and every piece was 1" thick.

48" tall stack of 1" wood with 1" stickers is aprox 24" of actual wood thickness +/-

(24×36 x 120) / 144 = 720 bdf

There is approx 1000 bdf in your pile +/- 100 bdf


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## RogerM (Oct 31, 2011)

I think rhett has it pretty close


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