Category
Carpentry Calculators
Plan woodworking and trim projects with exact numbers: board feet for buying hardwood and even batten spacing for accent walls.
Board Foot CalculatorBoard feet and cubic metres of lumber from thickness, width, length and quantity.Open calculator Board and Batten CalculatorBatten count, exact even spacing and boards to buy for a board-and-batten accent wall.Open calculator
Which calculator do I need?
- Board Foot Calculator
- Calculate board feet — the volume unit hardwood lumber is sold by in North America — and the equivalent in cubic metres.
- Board and Batten Calculator
- Plan a board-and-batten accent wall: how many battens to use, the exact equal gap between them, and how many boards to buy.
Buying lumber and planning trim
Hardwood is commonly priced by the board foot, a volume of 144 cubic inches (1 in × 12 in × 12 in). Rough-sawn hardwood is measured on its nominal thickness, so a board sold as 4/4 counts as 1 in thick even after planing. Construction softwood, by contrast, is usually sold by the piece or by length in standard sizes such as 2 × 4, whose actual dimensions are smaller than the name suggests.
Wood moves with moisture. Let boards for furniture and interior trim acclimatise indoors before cutting, and allow extra for knots, splits and cutting losses — for rough hardwood, 15 % or more is a common allowance.
- For board-and-batten walls, plan the spacing so the gaps are equal and the end battens sit evenly at the corners.
- Mark studs, outlets and switches before fixing battens, and adjust the layout so battens do not land in awkward places.
- Buy all trim for one wall from the same batch so the profile and colour match.