The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Making a Stovebolt Bed Board Feet, Figures Frequently Forgotten

Been around this old world a long time and have built many things from wood over the years. Used to subscribe to all the woodworking mags, even have a signed picture of Norm in my wood working side of the basement. Bought a thousand feet of Oak once and still have a whole wall of hard woods just waiting to be sculpted into furniture.
The one thing that I have always had a major problem remembering is BOARD FEET!!!
I can never remember how to calculate board feet. I’ll drag all the books out and write notes and make mental notes and a week later I’ve forgotten how to figure it, AGAIN.
So anyway, the question is how many board feet does it take to cover the bed of an AD Chevy 3/4-ton truck????
In the mean time, I will get all the books out and write it all down and probably forget it all before I get to the task!
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

I dunno Denny-I vaguely remember board feet in high school shop, but I just called Mar-K & they sent me wood on the brown truck. Brian

I have always found wikipedia helpful with stuff I have forgotten or don't know.
Here is what they have on board feet.

last fall I purchased the wood for my '50 1/2 ton, I went to a local shop here & purchased rough cut red oak, here's the way they charged me for the wood, If the board was 4" wide, a board foot would be 3' long. A 6" wide board would be 2' long. A 9" wide board would would be 1-1/2' long. A 12" wide board would be 1' long. I got the boards for $102, the boards were 10' long & 7/8" thick, I have a neighbor that does alot of wood work that will plane them down to 3/4" & cut the grooves.

Denny:
It gets even more complicated since you pay for board feet in the sizes that were cut from the tree. It shrinks during drying and they cut one side to make it straight, but you still pay for the part they cut off. A 6 inch board will only be about 5 or 5-1/2 inches wide. Also, you won't likely be able to buy hardwood exactly the widths you want without wasting some. We use 10 foot boards for long beds to cut off the ends that may be cracked. Allow 10 feet long boards for your 3/4 ton and the overall width of the bed is 50 inches, so figure 5 feet wide. The amount of board feet you will need is 5 X 10 = 50. If yours is an early AD it uses 9 boards and they are somewhat narrow, so it may take a little more than that, depending on how much waste on the sides you have.

Mar-Ktech

Denny Graham,


I work in the wood products industry, therefore I probably know less than anyone about wood!

A easy to remember formula is, a 2x6 one foot long equals 1 board foot. Don't tell your friends where you heard this.

Stu-wood

I've just been disappointed in just about every reproduction thing that I have bought for this truck that I was going to do it my self to control the quality. Almost everything I've gotten from light bulbs to floor mats was short, they skimped on material, was to thin, was to thick, they used poorly made molds in the manufacture, made from cheap cardboard or roofing paper, etc. I've had to remake most everything that I have been sent.
So I'm aware that if I go to the local Carter's lumber yard that a 2x6x12is a nominal size for a board foot, and that the actual size is 1 3/4 x 5 3/4 x 12, that's soft wood construction lumber. Southern Yellow Pine, Clr. or Btr. for the truck in question would use eight-1x6x96(38bf) and one-1x8x96(appx.6bf)or a total for pricing purposes of approx. 38 board feet. Adding another couple of feet for each of the nine boards(for split ends) and your looking at a approx. 56 board feet of Southern Yellow Pine. Right???

Now my hard wood guy is gonna sell me 4/4 x 6 x 12 actual size and call that a board foot, right?
The calculation still comes out the same, about 56 board feet.
The actual area of the bed is 86" x 50" or 4300 sq. in. or 29.86 sq ft., does that sound right?
So in conclusion your gonna use about 30ft. of wood and you’re gonna make about 26 ft. of kindling for the fire place.

Here are some basic board foot prices pulled from just one supplier, Hard Wood Store of North Carolina for 56 board feet;
Red or White Oak - 4/4 - $2.95 Totals: $165
Yellow Pine - $2.50 Totals: $140
No shipping/handleing/cutting charges are in the figures, this is rough sawn lumber. Tack on about .50c more for finishing both sides and ripping one edge. Then you have to figure the time to cut to size, dado, layout and drill and countersink the holes.
Mar-Ktech, thanks, I'm probably gonna end up buying the wood from you all in the end. What flavor is your Oak, red or white and is it clear?? Also you only call out Pine, is it Southern Yellow Pine and is it, clear and free of knots?? Comparing cost per board foot I looked here; Mar-K finished, Oak $380, Pine $240

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

actually I just got 31.35BF of clear rough cut lumber to do a short fleetside bed [slightly bigger than a stepbed], allowing for waste .... not sure why you're calling for 56BF

but if you don't have access to the shop tools to do the shaping/finishing yerself, yes it's better to get MarK's

Bill

A board foot is 1 foot x 1 foot and is 1 inch thick.

35 trucker,

Thats' pretty darn close to a 2x6 one foot long.


Stuart

Denny, I got the pine from Mar-K for old black truck, it was clear yellow. Fit perfectly also. Brian

Length times width times thickness divided by 144 inches. all the calculations are done in inches. example 4.5 inches wide by 77 inches long = 346.50 inches times 4/4 thickness 1 inch = 346.50 again divide this by 144 = 2.40 board feet. This example is for one of my bed boards. I figure about 27 board feet for my 53 1/2 ton.
Thickness for the last mutiplication are as follows=
5/4 wood multiply by 1.25, 6/4 wood multiply by 1.5, 8/4 multiply by 2, 4/4 multiply by 1

6.5 width x 77" length = 500.50 x 1 [4/4] =500.50 divided by 144= 3.48 board feet
6.5 x 77=500.50 x 1.5 = 750.75 divide by 144= 5.21 board feet

Denny:
Check your numbers and it is not quite as bad as you calculate. I think your 56 board feet should be about 47 board feet. It still amounts to a lot of kindling.

We use red oak, Appalachian, and the pine is southern yellow pine cut from forests in Arkansas. We use suppliers not generally available to the hobby wood cutter and the quality is excellent. No knots, except an occasional tiny knot on the back side of the pine, not visible on the top surface.

Mar-Ktech

Bill, just adding a foot to each end in case the ends are split, quite common you know. I think our tech from Mar-k also mentioned it earlier.
That’s also pretty close to 2” x 6” x 12” Stu.
Thanks Brian, that’s encouraging, that’s most likely what I’m gonna end up doin’.
Coach, that’s an exact figure your working with, but ya gotta figure a bunch of waste in there when buying standard sized lumber and even more when your carving it out of rough sawn lumber.

Sounds Great Techie, you’ll probably be hearing from me this summer. Like I said, I was figuring standard sized lumber with an extra foot on each end for waste. I have been following your “durable finish tests” and I guess I’m still just as confused as to what the best one is as you all are. Guess you just need to close your eyes and pick one.
Thanks guys, been fun.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

If your supplier can furnish 14 or 16 foot boards, you can save a little by cutting two bed boards from each one. You don't have to waste as much from cutting the splits out of the ends. Even if there are no visible splits, you should still cut the end back as much as you can because they may show up later.

After 1960, the beds have board widths that are a closer fit to regular dimensional lumber, so you might not waste as much. These early beds make a lot of kindling.

We have not added to the wood finish tests http://www.mar-k.com/installation_hints.html for a while because there is not anything new. The painted wood still looks as good as when we put it out in 2005. The pine with Helmsman over Pelucid is the most durable clear finish, but is showing minor failures. Most people would not leave their truck outdoors 24/7 for a year and a half so your experience will be better than this.

Mar-Ktech

You are correct Denny on that being an exact number of board feet. We went today to the lumber yard to buy our wood. We are doing a bed of Cherry and Purpleheart. Purchased 34 board feet of lumber to do the job. Some of it is rough and some has been planned on 2 sides. We spent about an hour going thru the lumber piles to get the best size boards and avoid too much waste. I have alot of years experience in the woodworking and cabinet making trade, plus we have all of the machinery to surface and cut our lumber. We were allowed to cut the purpleheart at the lumber yard to rough dimensions which helped on keeping the waste down.

I spent considerable time & effort staining/sealing mine using Helmsman polyurethane, & was disappointed how fast it failed. Maybe if you are near the coast better products are availble(boat varnish). I then painted it w/JD black & it has held up fine.

Sorry, I’m not familiar with JD black can you clue me in to that?
What-cha gonna do coach, alternate one cherry, one purple heart, etc.??
Anyone see a problem with Cypress? one of the guys here, Ralph, did his with it an man does it have a nice grain to it. I would think it would hold up to the weather real nice also.
I'm gonna stay pretty much original on this one so the Pine is probably gonna do it for me this time around. Are Helmsman and Pellucid local brands of paint? I'm bout 60mi west of Chicago and I don't think I've seen those brands around here. This tain't no trailer queen but she tain't no daily driver either. It's gonna be garaged and only used locally for a Sunday drive or occasional trip to the hardware store. No mo bad weather for the old gal. So the floor should hold up as long as I do. Gonna look for another one when I’m finished with this one.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

You hit it on the nose Denny 5 cherry boards and 4 Purpleheart boards. I have $178 in wood. Went to a wholesale hardwood lumber yard today. Could have done it much cheaper with Oak or Pine, but was looking to do something different. We took a piece of our painted sheet metal with us today to see how it looked with the purpleheart. We already have cherry in the cab on the doors and the seat bottom. All purpleheart would have been too over-powering for us. I found about 5 different species of hardwood today that I would have loved to use. But of course some like wenge or Zebra are $15.00 a board foot. The cherry was actually more expensive than the purpleheart.

There is a good on-line seller of S4S (surfaced 4 sides-sanded on one)dimensional hardwood lumber on line at bairdbrothers.com. They have red oak, white oak, hickory, ash, cherry, and others. Good pricing and availability.

Rough/green lumber is sold by board-foot. After finishing, it is typically sold as dimensional lumber by the lineal foot.

I build cabinets and anything else people want and buy a good bit of lumber.

I compute Board Feet like this.

Length in inches X width in inches X Thicknes in inches divided by 144. Thickness can be no less than 1 inch.

There can be an up charge for longer or thicker lumber.

I also find it easier to have the lumber sufaced and straight lined on one edge than buying rough stock.

I would suggest finding a cabinet shop or builder and making a deal with him for your lumber. These guys buy in large quantities and might cut you a deal.

I would not buy from one of the home centers, the B/F price is too much.

Denny: Details about the finishes are in the link. Just click on "wood finish testing information II" for details. Minwax (Sherwin Williams) makes Helmsman and POR 15 makes Pelucid. Pelucid is great for adhesion and strength of the bond, and Helmsman provides UV protection. Helmsman should be available locally and Pelucid is easily mail order, link is in the article.

Mar-Ktech

Sorry Denny-its John Deere enamel tractor paint-very tough, very happy w/it. Brian