Basswood price per board foot
Plan on about $3.25 a board foot for 4/4 stock at U.S. retail (our 2026-08 estimate — your yard gets the final word). A typical board, 6″ wide and 8′ long, will run you around $13.00.
In St Paul's Cathedral there are limewood carvings by Grinling Gibbons so delicate that they tremble when traffic passes — cascades of flowers and game birds cut three centuries ago from basswood's European twin. That's this wood's ceiling, and its floor is charming too: nearly every wooden venetian blind and a shocking number of budget electric guitars. Soft, even, and grainless, basswood is whatever your knife says it is.
The carver's wood: soft, uniform, nearly grainless. Too soft for hard-use furniture; perfect for models, moldings, and shutters.
Basswood at a glance
| Price per board foot | $3.25 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 26 lb/ft³ · 2.2 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 410 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 9.3% tangential · 6.6% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $32.50 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $81.25 |
What common thicknesses cost
Same 6″ × 8′ board, priced by rough thickness (thicker stock often carries a small premium on top of this — figured on volume alone):
| Thickness | Board feet | Cost | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4 | 4.0 | $13.00 | 9 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $19.50 | 13 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $26.00 | 17 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $39.00 | 26 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Featherweight and utterly inert — it dries without complaint and then holds carved detail through decades of seasons. For a carver, that's the entire job description.
The measured numbers: drying from green, basswood shrinks about 9.3% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 6.6% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying basswood without regrets
Carving suppliers sell basswood in tidy little blocks at jewelry prices; hardwood yards sell the identical wood as lumber for a fraction. Buy the board, cut your own blocks. The best stock is nearly white with no visible grain at all.
At the finishing bench
Too plain for clear-finished furniture, perfect under paint and gilding — which is how the old masters used it. Carvers firm up the surface with a wash of thin shellac before painting; it makes the last details crisper.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Poplar ($3.10). A step up: Eastern White Pine ($3.40).