Ok, I have always been lousy with figuring out "Board Feet" for a project. I typically just do some rough measurements and then buy more than I need and the extra goes onto the shelf for the next project. If I run short then I go back and buy more as needed. But this is for a project at church and I will be charging them for the materials costs plus a per unit cost for my labor which will include all the finishing. So they need a rough price for materials so it can get approved before I start things up.

I will be making a total of 10 frames to hang on the walls of the foyer and hallway at church for different types of printed media in 2 different sizes (5 each). The material will be 5/4 Beech and these measurements are for each frame individually.

Large Frame:

Length- 12'

Width- 9"

Thickness- 5/4"

Small Frame:

Length- 10'

Width- 5"

Thickness- 5/4"

Thanks for helping out a "Math Challenged" fellow woodworker.

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Allen Worsham
Corona, CA

allenworsham@earthlink.net

http://www.awcreationsandwoodcrafts.com

'Graze in every man's field, but always give your own milk' J. Vernon McGee

Allen, as I calculate it the large frame contains 11.25 Bf each and the small contains 5.2 Bf each.  By my calculations you would need 56.25 Bf for the large and 26 for the small or a total of 82.25 Bf for the project.  Hopefully someone else will calculate this also.  Ralph Jones is the resident board foot calculator.

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Ron Dudelston
Above and Beyond WoodWorks

Hey Allan,

What is the depth of eachone going to be. Will need to know that figure out the footage. Or you can do it. Just multily your lenght x 2 + your width x 2 = inches x the depth

12" x 2 = 24

9" x 2 = 18

Total = 42 x 5 = 210" devided by 12 = 17.5 lineral feet

 

10" x 2 = 20"

5" x 2 = 10 "

Total = 30" x 5 = 150" devided by 12 = 12.5 lineral feet

 

Total footage will be 20 lineral feet

 

I believe that I am right.

If you plan on buying 5/4 think boards this should be right. Now if your depth is say 2 inches, buy a 10 foot long ora 12 foot long piece of 1x4 and rip it in half.

Allen,

As you are making frames I think you are missing dimensions for the width of the rails and styles.

to calculate your BF need take

length in inches x width in inches x thickness in inches, and divide by 144 (this is the number of cubic inches in aboard foot)

the formula for the large frame you have listed is:

(12x2) + (9x2) x (width )x 1.25 / 144

in summary you have 42" of length. assuming a style and rail width of 2" you will need 1.458333333 BF per frame

 

 You will also need to caculate in waste. this can be as high as 25% just for surfacing. Now add in for rip and cross cuts, unusable areas, splits, checks, set up, test cuts etc and you easily will need an additional 25%.

 

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Round Barn WoodCrafts, Plymouth WI
roundbarnwoodcrafts@hotmail.com

Thanks guys!

The frames will be minimalist and flat at 1" thick with nothing decorative on the edging. Just simple non-mitered frames that will have M&T joints or pocket screws (I can do either but my Harbor Freight mortiser is not real user friendly for more than a couple of mortises)

The measurements that I gave are for the lineal feet (2 sides and 2 cross pieces) which includes the total combined length of all pieces. The width is 1" wider to allow for trimming/squaring up. The thickness of the material will be 1" actual after surfacing and is sold by the lumber mill as being "5/4"

Here is a photo of the prototype of the smaller frame made from scrap 3/4" Poplar and Red Oak Plywood for the back. The larger frame will have the same construction but will be larger and square. The media will be installed from the top while hanging on the wall as it will have a plywood backing with the top cross piece milled down with 1" wide rabbits for the media to sit in.

This is the front side:

This is the back side.

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Allen Worsham
Corona, CA

allenworsham@earthlink.net

http://www.awcreationsandwoodcrafts.com

'Graze in every man's field, but always give your own milk' J. Vernon McGee

Allen, here's an easy project calculator that can be very useful-

http://www.woodworkerssource.com/project_planner.php

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Smitty
http://www.firstdesignwoodworking.com/

If you have a smart phone go to  woodshopwidget.com

This app is great it allows you to enter the dimension of the board and the price per board foot plus a whole lot more.

Thanks for the help guys. I got it all squared away and passed along the info to my guy at church. I allowed additional for scrap as well as finishing supplies. I had already given them a basic ballpark figure for price per frame including my labor costs off the top of my head and as it turns out I was pretty much spot on. I told them it should work out to be about $60-$70 per frame and now that I have the BF figures it will be right there in the mix.

I got the http://www.woodworkerssource.com/project_planner.php bookmarked for future use. But the next time I have to do this I will probably have forgotten that I book marked it and will ask you guys again.

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Allen Worsham
Corona, CA

allenworsham@earthlink.net

http://www.awcreationsandwoodcrafts.com

'Graze in every man's field, but always give your own milk' J. Vernon McGee

You could put the Woodshop widget on Tami's iPad. It works great and does all the calculation. I have it on mine and use it a lot to convert fractions and decimals.

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John Moody
John Moody Woodworks
http://www.johnmoodywoodworks.com

I will consider that John.

But maybe not as I don't want Tami playing around with it coming up with more stuff that she wants me to build. Also I don't want her to know the real costs for materials as then I won't be able to pad my figures to buy new tools.

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Allen Worsham
Corona, CA

allenworsham@earthlink.net

http://www.awcreationsandwoodcrafts.com

'Graze in every man's field, but always give your own milk' J. Vernon McGee

Good point, we just need to get you an iPad next.

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John Moody
John Moody Woodworks
http://www.johnmoodywoodworks.com