Board feet? i am stumped

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Paul Ellis
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Location: Pretoria, South Africa

Board feet? i am stumped

Post by Paul Ellis »

Someone must please help me. I loaded 5.1 and then loaded a job that I am busy with, did the nesting then opened the cost sheet. The price for the job more than halved. I then had a look at the price of my board stock and saw that you cannot input the width for the board stock. My question is - when price per board feet is used, is the board a specific width? Our solid wood is sold per cubic meter. Previously I calculated a price for say a piece of wood that is 300mm (about 1 foot) by 120mm (just under 5 inches) by 25mm (1 inch) thick. I then could specify any length of board stock and input the price per board foot and all worked out fine.
Please explain to me how I should work this out now..ie what width is used for the board stock?

Just as a last comment...This forum is like a drug to me...If I don't get a chance to read it EVERY day, I get withdrawal symptoms! :lol: :?

Paul Ellis
Paul Ellis

"If it works, don't fix it"
Justin D Melhiser

Post by Justin D Melhiser »

Paul

Can you send the file to me? My email is cabinets@thermwood.com
Paul Ellis
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Location: Pretoria, South Africa

Post by Paul Ellis »

Justin,
Thanks for replying...I dont think there is something wrong with the job. I think is just me that is confused. When talking about price per board feet, is it the 'width' of the board that is one foot? With the length and thickness taken as what? If I know this then I can calculate a price and input that in the material cost. As I said previously the price worked out very accurately for me ( I checked this a few times with excel) Hope this explains my problem better.

Thank you
Paul Ellis
Paul Ellis

"If it works, don't fix it"
Kerry Fullington
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Company Name: Double E Cabinets
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Post by Kerry Fullington »

Paul,
Maybe I can help. Until now you had to enter frame stock like a re cut molding. 1\", 2\" 6\" and so on and price these \"Moldings\" by lineal foot. Now you simply create one material 4/4 Red Oak and this is priced by the Bord foot which is 1\" X 12\" X 12\" and you then tell the software the width of face frame parts and the software calculates how many board feet are in the face frames. The length of the stock does not really matter as the software does the calculations. Use your average stock length as this will let the yield calculated by the software to be correct.
Hope this helps.
I am going through my libraries and changing all the different board stocks 1\", 2\" etc. to a generic 4/4 board stock. Now when change wood species I just have to change the Board Foot Cost of this material to whatever species I am using and change one texture image to reflect the new material.
eCabinets is now going to do the cost calculations that you were using your spread sheet for.
Kerry
Last edited by Kerry Fullington on Thu, Mar 01 2007, 10:41AM, edited 1 time in total.
Wally Schneeberger
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Re:

Post by Wally Schneeberger »

Paul Ellis wrote:Justin,
Thanks for replying...I dont think there is something wrong with the job. I think is just me that is confused. When talking about price per board feet, is it the 'width' of the board that is one foot? With the length and thickness taken as what? If I know this then I can calculate a price and input that in the material cost. As I said previously the price worked out very accurately for me ( I checked this a few times with excel) Hope this explains my problem better.

Thank you
Paul Ellis
Paul -- 1 board ft is 1" x 12" x 12"= 144 cu/" All calculations are done by this. If you have a 1x6 x 72" long you have 3 board ft. 1x6x72=432/144=3.
Paul Ellis
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Location: Pretoria, South Africa

Post by Paul Ellis »

Kerry and Wally,

Thank you, now I am no longer confused - I can now calculate my price by using (300mm/1000) times (300mm/1000) times (25mm/1000) times all of this with the price per cubic meter. This I then input as a price in my board stock....I did this and VIOLA no more confusion!


Thank you :D

Paul Ellis
Paul Ellis

"If it works, don't fix it"
Denis L'Heureux
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Post by Denis L'Heureux »

As for pricing your material, you will have 423.776 Boarc Feet in 1 Cu Meter of wood.

You price per Cu Meter divided by 423.776 should be what the cost per BF for the software.

Cheers
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Paul Ellis
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Post by Paul Ellis »

Thank you Denis - your method works even closer to the real thing!
And its simpler to calculate!

Paul Ellis
Paul Ellis

"If it works, don't fix it"
Mitch Cain
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Company Name: M Cain Woodworking
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Post by Mitch Cain »

So let me ask this...are you guys buying your wood flat sawn?, rift sawn?

does this play nicely with the yield in the cost calculations so that you can back off the yield on a flat sawn board?

For example, in a flat sawn piece of cherry, i will use the straight grain on the ends of the board for face frame and door and rail stock and cut away the heartwood where the grain goes awry. So in a 6 inch wide board, the inner 2 inches is mostly unusable for face frames, etc. How are you accounting for that?
Black Bear Custom Cabinetry
Kerry Fullington
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Post by Kerry Fullington »

Mitch,
You would have to adjust your board stock yield to show this waste. For some applications you might only get a 50% yield from boards.
Kerry
Rob Davis
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Post by Rob Davis »

Mitch,
You can buy cherry from mills that remove the heartwood as a defect in the board so you are only buying usable material. Another option is to buy cherry sorted for color, which most mills that cut large amounts of cherry sort for. You might pay a little more than you are now paying for the lumber but the yield is vastly improved by not having to edge or trim boards to remove ugly wood or wane. The lowest priced lumber is very often the most costly when you are done!

(In a former life, I ran a large sawmill!)
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