Sizing Your Job

Getting an exact estimate of how much useable lumber you will get from your trees and how long it will take to convert those logs to lumber is difficult to do. It varies greatly depending on the shape, species and size of the logs. Contact Us for a free estimate.

Some general guidelines may help you to estimate the size of your project. In general, larger diameter logs are more cost effective to work with. Logs smaller than 10" in diameter are frequently not worth the effort to convert to lumber. Our sawmill can handle a wide variety of sized logs both small and large. We can mill logs up to 32+ inches in diameter and 22 feet long. We commonly work with logs 15"->25" in diameter and 6 to 10 foot long. Such logs will take roughly 30 to 60 minutes each to convert to lumber.

To estimate how much lumber each of your logs have in them we recommend using the long established Scribner Decimal C Log Scale. In the table below "bdft" stands for boardfoot. A boardfoot is 144 cubic inches of wood. To calculate the number of boardfeet of wood in a board multiple the number of inches of width times the number of inches of length times the thickness divide by 144. For example a board measuring:

12 inches wide by 8 foot long by 1 inch thick is 8 bdft
(12 * 8 * 12 * 1 / 144 = 8 bdft).
10 inches wide by 8 foot long by 1 inch thick is 6.66 bdft
(10 * 8 * 12 * 1 / 144 = 6.66 bdft).
6 inches wide by 8 foot long by 1 inch thick is 4 bdft
(6 * 8 * 12 * 1 / 144 = 4 bdft).
8 inches wide by 4 foot long by 2 inch thick is 5.33 bdft
(8 * 4 * 12 * 2 / 144 = 5.33 bdft).

Scribner Scale for 8-foot Logs

Log Diameter Inches	BDFT (Boardfeet)
10	30
11	35
12	40
13	50
14	55
15	70
16	80
17	90
18	105
19	120
20	140
21	150
22	165
23	190
24	200
25	230
26	250
27	275
28	290
29	305
30	330
32	370

To use the above scale simply measure the diameter of the smaller end of the log and match that diameter in the table. For example suppose you have an 8 foot log whose smaller end is 20" in diameter. Then roughly speaking you can expect 140 board foot of wood from that log. Since our mill using a band instead of the older style circular blades we frequently can get more lumber.

Cleaner logs (free from dirt, rocks, mud) are much faster to work with. Call us before attempting to move your logs yourself. Moving the logs may not be necessary to do and it may keep the logs cleaner if they are simply milled where the tree fell.