One board foot is 144 cubic inches, so a cubic meter — the unit international timber trades in — holds about 423.78 board feet. Exporters often quote per m³; multiply to compare against domestic $/BF pricing.
| Cubic meters | Board feet |
|---|---|
| 0.1 | 42 |
| 0.5 | 212 |
| 1.0 | 424 |
| 2.0 | 848 |
| 5.0 | 2,119 |
| 10.0 | 4,238 |
The board foot is a North American unit; nearly everyone else trades timber in cubic meters. Import an exotic species and the exporter's invoice reads in m³ while your yard's price tag reads $/BF — this conversion is the bridge. European sawn dimensions come metric too, which is why imported beech shows up in odd-feeling sizes like 26 × 160 mm.
Britain, characteristically, once split the difference: log buyers there used the hoppus foot, an eighteenth-century unit that deliberately under-measures a round log by about 21% to pre-charge for the slabwood lost in squaring it. The Doyle scale on our log calculator plays the same game with different math — every timber culture invented its own way to argue about waste.
Working up a whole order? The planner totals every part with waste and tax.