Butternut price per board foot
Plan on about $6.50 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 $26.00.
Butternut is walnut's gentle country cousin — same family, half the weight, and a warm tan the old-timers called 'white walnut.' During the Civil War, homespun uniforms dyed with its bark gave Confederate soldiers the nickname 'Butternuts.' Today the tree itself is in quiet trouble: a canker fungus has been erasing it from American woods since the 1960s, and every decade there's a little less of it at the yard.
Walnut's lighter cousin — warm tan, carves easily, weighs little. Soft enough to dent; increasingly scarce, so prices climb.
Butternut at a glance
| Price per board foot | $6.50 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 27 lb/ft³ · 2.3 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 490 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 6.4% tangential · 3.4% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $65.00 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $162.50 |
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 | $26.00 | 9 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $39.00 | 14 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $52.00 | 18 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $78.00 | 27 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Wonderfully stable and almost weightless in the hand — carvers of church panels and altarpieces have leaned on that combination for generations.
The measured numbers: drying from green, butternut shrinks about 6.4% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 3.4% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying butternut without regrets
When you see clean butternut, buy it; the next stack isn't guaranteed. And know what you're getting: this is a soft, display-grade wood that dents if you look at it sternly. Boxes, panels, and carvings — not tabletops.
At the finishing bench
Oil it and you get walnut's warmth turned down to candlelight. Its softness means crisp sanding matters — use a block, or every edge quietly rounds itself over.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Hard Maple ($5.95). A step up: White Oak ($6.75).