White pine board foot calculator
Enter the finished size of your parts and this works back to the rough eastern white pine you need to buy. Price and weight are already filled in — change the price to whatever your yard charges.
- Ballpark price
- $4.00/bf
- Weight
- 25 lb/ft³
- Janka hardness
- 380 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
$31.20
Approx. weight
16 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 white pine, 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 eastern white pine
Light, soft, cheap and forgiving — good for shop furniture, boxes and anything that wants to look old. It dents if you look at it, and the knots bleed resin through paint unless you seal them with shellac first. Buy it dry; construction-grade pine is usually not.
25 lb/ft³ · Janka 380 lbf · prices reviewed 2026-09-01
Buying eastern white pine
Light, soft, cheap and forgiving — good for shop furniture, boxes and anything that wants to look old. It dents if you look at it, and the knots bleed resin through paint unless you seal them with shellac first. Buy it dry; construction-grade pine is usually not.
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.
White pine questions
- How much does eastern white pine cost per board foot?
- Roughly $4.00 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 eastern white pine weigh?
- About 25 lb per cubic foot at furniture moisture content, which works out to roughly 2.1 lb per board foot. The calculator estimates the weight of your order so you know whether it fits in the car.
- How hard is eastern white pine?
- 380 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 eastern white pine move with the seasons?
- A 12" wide plain sawn board moves about 0.18" across its width over a typical seasonal swing, and roughly 33% 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 eastern white pine?
- Light, soft, cheap and forgiving — good for shop furniture, boxes and anything that wants to look old. It dents if you look at it, and the knots bleed resin through paint unless you seal them with shellac first. Buy it dry; construction-grade pine is usually not.