Replies

1. 
   JohnWW | Mar 31, 2008 04:26am | #1

   Board foot estimations are useful for pricing a job but have little use in ordering materials.

   Basically for a chest like this you have to mentally go around the piece and list the wood you will need for the individual components, typically grouping them primarily by width and thickness, occasionally by grain for certain pieces, and of course by species. After that you throw in a big fudge factor to cover for mistakes and wastage, and the fact that wood is rarely perfect.

   Here's how I would pull together a stock list for the job:

   1. The outer case is 11" wide so you will want a board wider than that, 12" probably, and the length of the top, and two sides ( the bottom is secondary wood). For simplicity, all dimensions are rounded up so the top would be 15" plus 2 x 18" = 36" for the sides, the total would be 51". The front door panel could come from the same plank if you didn't have a special piece of wood in mind, in that case you will need another 16" of the 12" wide plank for the door bringing the total to 67", which I would round up to the next foot, which is 6 feet.

   At this point you would have most of the primary wood for the project accounted for. The various moldings, feet, drawer faces, and dividers wouldn't add up to anywhere near as much wood as the outer case, so just get two 6' boards and you'll have enough wood to choose the best for the case work with enough left over for the smaller stuff and wastage. The two 6' planks a foot wide and an inch thick are 12 board feet.

   You don't have to buy two 6' boards of course, a 4' and an 8' would serve as well, but a single 12' plank would be the best since that would guarantee all the wood will have matching grain and color.

   This is the minimum I would order, but getting an extra couple of feet wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Even when I've thought I've ordered comfortably more than I needed for a job there is rarely a lot of wood left over, and the leftovers are the start of a much needed stash of wood for small projects and to tap into when you come up short in the evening and want to keep going on a project.

   Secondary wood is cheap, and will always be needed around the shop, so it won't be wasted if left over, so get 10 or 12 board feet of it at the same time. The widest piece of secondary wood appears to be the bottom of the chest which is a bit under 10" wide so I would get at least one board of the secondary stock that wide at least.

   Two things to note when getting the wood:

   1. I'm presuming that you are buying rough sawn wood a full inch thick, which will give you the wood for the sides plus some slightly thicker stock for the 7/8" thick bottom moldings. If you are buying preplaned wood already 3/4" thick, you will need a bit of thicker wood for the moldings.

   2. You will need about 8' feet of quarter sawn stock, at least 2 inches wide, for the door frame. You probably won't be able to get this out of the wide boards, they are usually flat sawn, and you will need the wide boards full width for the sides, top, and door panel, so you will need to get a separate board with the right grain orientation for the door frame.

   Hope this helps, John White

   
   

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   Edited 4/1/2008 12:30 pm ET by JohnWW