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A board foot calculator, bill of materials
generator and lumber tabulator all in one.
The tabulator can help you tally up your lumber requirements for your
next project and create a professional-looking
lumber materials list. It computes board feet by species, total board
feet, cost by species, and total cost - with provision for an optional waste
factor. It can also accomodate resawing, a feature not generally found in
your run of the mill board foot calculators. |
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Tip: After clicking the Format for
printing button, you can use your browser's back button, enter additional
project data, and then reclick the Format button to display the complete
materials list. Notes:
1. Hardwood lumber is typically sold by the board
foot, a unit of volume equivalent to a board that is one inch thick, one
foot wide and one foot long, or 144 cubic inches. Lumber thickness is
expressed in quarters of an inch, beginning with 1 inch, so that 1 inch
lumber is designated as 4/4, 1-1/2 inch lumber is 6/4, 2 inch lumber is 8/4,
and so on. These units refer to nominal or rough sawn dimensions, not
surfaced dimensions. The Tabulator rounds lumber thickness up to the next
1/4" and lumber less than 4/4 is rounded up to 4/4. Thus, a finished
thickness of 3/4" will be treated as 4/4" material. The program
automatically computes rough thickness unless Rough thickness is specified
under Optional Inputs.
2. Resawing involves ripping a board into thinner
boards. For example, suppose you wish to resaw a 5/4" board to create two
7/16" thick pieces. The inputs to the Tabulator would be: Finished
thickness: 7/16, No. resawn slices: 2, Rough thickness: 5/4, Kerf width
(optional). If Rough thickness is not specified, it will be computed using
the values for finished thickness and kerf width. If Kerf width is not
specified, a default value of 1/8" will be used.
3. A waste factor of 15 to 20 percent is typically used
when determining lumber requirements to account for wood that is lost due to
knots, splits, warpage, and other defects. Naturally, the poorer the grade
of lumber that is used, the larger the waste factor should be. The Tabulator
can accomodate different waste factors for the various wood types used in a
project.
4. You can enter fractional wood dimensions as decimals
(12.75), or as conventional fractions (12 3/4). If you use fractions, just
make sure you leave a space between any leading whole number and the
fraction.
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