Timber Cost Calculator

Timber Cost Calculator for lumber orders. Enter the board size, count and a quote in any unit to see the total with tax and spares, cost per board foot received and a second quote.

Timber Cost Calculator for Comparing Lumber Quotes

Lumber prices come in six different units, and two yards rarely quote the same one. The Timber Cost Calculator turns any of them into a full order total with spares, milling, sales tax and delivery. It then shows what you pay for each board foot of wood that actually arrives, and whether a second quote beats the first.

Pick softwood at nominal size, rough hardwood or surfaced S2S hardwood, then enter the size, the board length and how many boards the job needs. Quote A takes a price per board foot, per thousand board feet, per linear foot, per board, per cubic meter or per cubic foot. Spares, milling, tax and delivery sit in one accordion, and a second yard's quote in another.

One Price, Six Ways to Quote It

Every unit converts through the board feet in one board. Softwood is tallied on its nominal size, so a 2×6 counts as 2 by 6 inches even though it measures less.

$$BF=\frac{T\times W\times L}{12}$$

T and W are thickness and width in inches and L is length in feet. A 10 foot 2×6 is 10 board feet, so the default $9 per board works out to $0.90 per board foot, $900 per thousand board feet and $0.90 per linear foot. The Your Price in Every Unit table lays all six side by side for both quotes.

Board feet per linear foot changes with the size, which trips people up. A Fine Woodworking forum member once worked out a ratio of 1.5 board feet per linear foot and asked if it held for all lumber. It only holds for that size. A 2×6 carries 1 board foot per foot, a 2×4 carries 0.667 and a 1×6 carries 0.5.

What You Pay per Board Foot Received

Nominal billing counts wood that was planed away at the mill. A dressed 2×6 measures 1-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches, 68.8% of the 2 by 6 inches on the bill. David Briggs's conversion guide from the University of Washington calls the nominal figure the gross tally and shows 100 MBF gross of 2×4s holding only about 66 MBF net.

The third card divides everything you pay by the wood that arrives. With 10% spares and 7% tax, the default order of forty 2×6s is billed at $0.90 but costs $1.40 per board foot received, or $10.59 for each board you use.

The gap gets wide on small stock. On the Woodworking Talk forum, one member found big-box 1×2 poplar at $1 per linear foot, which is $6 per nominal board foot. The real wood in a 3/4 by 1-1/2 inch stick makes that about $10.67 per board foot, against $1.86 at his yard for rough poplar it milled to 3/4 inch.

Hardwood follows NHLA rules, where surfaced lumber is still tallied at its rough thickness. S2S 4/4 arrives at 13/16 inch, so about 19% of the billed board feet never reach you. The Hardwood Quarters table shows the rough and surfaced size for each thickness from 4/4 to 16/4.

Cubic Meter Quotes on Softwood

The American Softwood Lumber Standard, PS 20, says dressed sizes are used when softwood is measured by cubic measure. A 10 foot 2×6 therefore holds about 0.0162 cubic meters, not the 0.0236 its nominal board feet would suggest.

That changes how a cubic quote compares. At $600 per cubic meter, a straight conversion at 423.776 board feet per cubic meter gives $1.42 per board foot. On the PS 20 dressed basis the same quote is $0.97 per nominal board foot, and the tool flags the difference whenever a softwood quote is cubic.

Not every market measures that way. Wooduweigh, which serves UK timber buyers, computes cubic meters on the nominal thickness and width. Ask which basis a cubic quote uses before comparing it with a board foot price.

Comparing Two Yards on the Same Order

Quote B gets the same boards, the same spares and the same tax, plus its own delivery and fees. With the defaults, Quote A totals $423.72 and a $780 per MBF Quote B with $75 in fees totals $442.22, so A saves $18.50.

The fourth card also finds the break-even, the Quote B price where both orders cost the same. It takes Quote A's total, removes Quote B's fees and tax, and spreads the rest over Quote B's pricing unit.

$$P_B=\frac{(C_A-F_B)/(1+t)}{u_B\times n}$$

C_A is Quote A's total, F_B is Quote B's fees, t is the tax rate, u_B is Quote B's units per board and n is the boards bought. Here the break-even is $740.70 per MBF. Any Quote B price below that wins the order.

Milling charges belong in the comparison too. The same Woodworking Talk thread puts a local hardwood dealer's milling upcharge at $0.20 to $0.30 per board foot, and the Milling Charge presets cover that range. The tool taxes lumber and milling but leaves delivery untaxed, so check how your state treats delivery charges.

For a mixed list of sizes, the Board Foot Calculator tallies each line the way dealers do. For the cost of the wood left after jointing and planing rough stock, use the Rough to Finished Lumber Calculator.

Lumber Pricing Questions

How do I convert a price per linear foot to price per board foot?

Divide the linear foot price by the board feet in one foot of that size, which is thickness times width divided by 12. A 2×8 holds 1.333 board feet per foot, so $1.20 per linear foot is $0.90 per board foot.

For softwood, use the nominal size, since that is how the yard tallies it. For hardwood sold S4S by the linear foot, ask whether the price is on the rough or surfaced size, then set Stock Type to match.

Is a lumber yard cheaper than a big-box store?

Often for hardwood, not always for framing. The Woodworking Talk comparison found big-box poplar at more than three times the yard's price per nominal board foot, and over four times once you count only the wood received.

For a handful of 2×4s the difference can vanish once delivery or a second trip is counted. Enter both prices as Quote A and Quote B, with each one's delivery, and the fourth card shows which wins on your actual order.