Douglas fir board foot calculator
Enter the finished size of your parts and this works back to the rough Douglas fir you need to buy. Price and weight are already filled in — change the price to whatever your yard charges.
- Ballpark price
- $5.00/bf
- Weight
- 34 lb/ft³
- Janka hardness
- 660 lbf
= 0.75"
Straight off the mill. You pay for the saw marks, the cup and the wane, and you mill it all away.
Ballpark — use your yard's price
Buy this much
7.80board feet
Estimated cost
$39.00
Approx. weight
22 lb
Finished volume
4.50 bf
Your parts contain 4.50 bf of wood. Milling 3/4" parts needs 1" rough stock, which takes that to 6.00 bf, and the Rough allowance of 30% for cutoffs and defect brings it to 7.80 bf.
Ask for
1 4/4 douglas fir, 12 ft long and about 8″ wide
8.00 bf — 3% over what you need, and each board yields 4 of your pieces. Hardwood is sold random-width, so expect the yard to hand you something close rather than exact.
Working Douglas fir
Stiff for its weight, which is why it frames houses and spans timber roofs. Vertical-grain fir is a genuinely handsome furniture wood with a strong orange cast. The hard latewood and soft earlywood sand at different rates, so it is easy to leave a rippled surface with a random-orbit sander.
34 lb/ft³ · Janka 660 lbf · prices reviewed 2026-09-01
Buying Douglas fir
Stiff for its weight, which is why it frames houses and spans timber roofs. Vertical-grain fir is a genuinely handsome furniture wood with a strong orange cast. The hard latewood and soft earlywood sand at different rates, so it is easy to leave a rippled surface with a random-orbit sander.
The price above is a national ballpark for reasonable-grade 4/4 stock, last reviewed 2026-09-01. Hardwood prices move with region, grade, width and supplier — treat this as a starting point and ring your yard before you commit to a budget.
Douglas fir questions
- How much does Douglas fir cost per board foot?
- Roughly $5.00 per board foot for 4/4 stock, as a national ballpark last reviewed 2026-09-01. Regional supply, grade, width and whether you are buying from a hardwood dealer or a big-box store move this a long way — the calculator lets you type in your own price.
- How much does Douglas fir weigh?
- About 34 lb per cubic foot at furniture moisture content, which works out to roughly 2.8 lb per board foot. The calculator estimates the weight of your order so you know whether it fits in the car.
- How hard is Douglas fir?
- 660 lbf on the Janka scale. For reference, red oak is 1290 and is the usual benchmark for a hardwood floor; anything much under 1000 will show dents in a tabletop that gets used.
- How much does Douglas fir move with the seasons?
- A 12" wide plain sawn board moves about 0.22" across its width over a typical seasonal swing, and roughly 62% of that if it is quartersawn. Design any solid panel wider than about six inches to float rather than be fastened at both edges.
- What should I know about working Douglas fir?
- Stiff for its weight, which is why it frames houses and spans timber roofs. Vertical-grain fir is a genuinely handsome furniture wood with a strong orange cast. The hard latewood and soft earlywood sand at different rates, so it is easy to leave a rippled surface with a random-orbit sander.