Forest Products Laboratory

Title: Estimating the board foot to cubic foot ratio

Author: Verrill, Steve P.; Herian, Victoria L.; Spelter, Henry N.

Date: 2004

Source: Res. Pap. FPL-RP-616. Madison, WI: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory: 18 pages

Station ID: RP-FPL-616

Description: Certain issues in recent softwood lumber trade negotiations have centered on the method for converting estimates of timber volumes reported in cubic meters to board feet. Such conversions depend on many factors; three of the most important of these are log length, diameter, and taper. Average log diameters vary by region and have declined in the western United States due to the growing scarcity of large diameter, old-growth trees. Such a systematic reduction in size in the log population affects volume conversions from cubic units to board feet, which makes traditional rule of thumb conversion factors antiquated. In this paper we present an improved empirical method for performing cubic volume to board foot conversions.

Keywords: Scribner scaling, diameter, length, taper, truncated cone, smoothing, calibration

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Citation

Verrill, Steve P.; Herian, Victoria L.; Spelter, Henry N.  2004.  Estimating the board foot to cubic foot ratio.   Res. Pap. FPL-RP-616. Madison, WI: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory: 18 pages.