Jim D Wood board foot measure tool.

Rob Keeble

Member
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12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
As promised here is my post on a gift i got from Jim Delaney at Burning Woods 2015. Thanks Jim.
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I wanted to post this stand alone for rookies like me.
Some of you have established relationships with a lumber yard and have overcome the hurdle/ threshold of buying raw lumber at one of these places.
I still battle with this. Getting better but they still not really customer friendly places in my opinion.

In reality few are setup to really sell to the small hobbyist. It starts with the fact that they sell in board foot something which causes a little anxiety when you look at a board and wonder how much is this. ?
You then pluck up the courage and ask and they say x dollars a board foot.
Boom as a rookie you are stumped. Now you out with your phone calculator , borrow a tape measure and start measuring and working out the price. At same time keeping in mind your project qty requirements , knots and other wood imperfections.
If you were a pro and did this every day heck you probably can guess and estimate this price knowing what you paid before.
But if you like me and take an age to use up what you last purchased then it aint a pleasure going lumber shopping and it should be. Its the start of a fresh adventure.
My local yard at least has price lists in bd foot hanging near the wood so you not humiliated or made to feel like a nuisance, by perpetual asking what the price is.
For the shorts section they have the price posted next to the stacks. But its still a material sold by volume and the measure is board foot. So like it or not we got crack the code.;) They aint changing the industry for us. lol

Well Jim's tool makes calculating board foot easy and more than accurate enough to estimate on the fly the number of board foot in a board.

To start you estimate a boards length, (use your own height as a benchmark) then establish thickness most at my yard is 4/4" or 1" or 5/4 which is 1.25" . Then place the tool across the width of the board read off the number of board foot from the length of board line.
Its that easy, and you have board foot.
Multiply by the price per board foot and boom you know how much that board is going to cost you.

Add this to Glenn's idea of keeping a plastic caliper http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=52906&cat=1,43513,43546
in your glove box (to measure thickness or bolts etc)and you have some easy to use tools to make your way through the lumber yard like a pro on your own.

Real handy tool. Thanks again Jim.
 
I got the original version of that 'calculator' from a magazine, but it was so long ago that I've forgotten which magazine.

It's very helpful at the lumber yard, and mine lives under the seat in my truck. It sees frequent use.
 
That stick will save ya a lot of money. I saved Hundreds of dollars from being shorted on my tally. I keep telling the wholesaler that he was shorting me on the BF he said I will sell you a lumber stick and have driver teach you how to read it, The next load that came the driver brought the stick and started measuring (only a 500 bf bunk this time) and it was short by 75 bf. We called his boss and he said I was figuring it wrong then the driver told him we used the lumber scale you made him buy. He was not happy but I was never got shorted from that supplier again in fact a lot of times it was a little long most of the time.

Best investment I ever made
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