Elm price per board foot

Plan on about $4.75 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 $19.00.

Elm refuses to split, and that stubbornness wrote its whole résumé: wagon-wheel hubs, the seats of nearly every English Windsor chair, even hollowed-out water pipes that carried London's water for centuries under the streets. Then Dutch elm disease swept the great street elms away, and now the boards at your yard come from salvage and hedgerows — survivors, every one.

Interlocked grain resists splitting — historic chair seats and wagon hubs. That same grain makes hand-planing a fight; power-mill it.

Elm at a glance

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):

Will it stay flat?

The interlocked grain that won't split also won't sit still while drying; elm can wander like a garden hose. Buy it fully dry, mill it in stages, and it settles down into a fine, tough companion.

The measured numbers: drying from green, elm shrinks about 9.5% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 4.2% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.

Buying elm without regrets

Supply is patchy and that's half the fun — quartersawn elm shows a wild 'partridge feather' figure most people have never seen on furniture. Red elm, when you find it, runs richer in color and a bit easier to source.

At the finishing bench

Coarse-textured like ash and handsome under oil. Just don't pick a fight with a hand plane: that interlocked grain tears in both directions. High cutting angles, or make peace with the sander.

Sources & further reading

• American Elm — The Wood Database
• Ulmus americana — Wikipedia

Plan a elm project

Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Alder ($4.60). A step up: Aromatic Red Cedar ($4.85).