Timber volume & waste calculator
Enter your cut list and get the total volume in every unit UK merchants actually quote — m³, cubic feet, board feet — plus linear metres per cross-section for PAR pricing, with a waste allowance so you order enough the first time.
| Part | Thickness (mm) | Width (mm) | Length (m) | Qty | Net vol. |
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Rough-sawn boards typically lose 20–30% to waney edges, end checks and planing to thickness — see below.
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Add thickness, width and length to see linear metres per cross-section.
How UK merchants price timber — and what your quote actually means
The unit you get quoted in usually tells you what you're buying. Rough-sawn boards are priced per cubic metre (m³) for European species and per cubic foot (cft) for American imports. Machined or PAR (planed-all-round) sections are priced per linear metre, for a given cross-section — that's what the "linear metres per cross-section" figures above are for. Flooring, cladding and sheet material are usually priced per square metre (m²), which is a different job to this calculator and isn't covered here.
The one conversion worth memorising: 1 m³ = 35.315 cft ≈ 423.8 board feet (bft). A board foot is 144 cubic inches — a 1″ × 12″ × 12″ block. The classic sanity check: a 1″ × 6″ × 8′ board is exactly 4 bft. You may also see the hoppus foot (≈1.273 cft) on a supplier's price list — that's a unit for round or standing timber that bakes in an allowance for squaring it up, and it doesn't appear in the results above because it's meaningless for a sawn cut list.
The waste factor exists because you buy rough volume but only keep finished volume. Waney edges, end checks, defects and the thickness lost to planing all come out of the board before it becomes your part — and every cut you make around a knot or a bit of poor grain costs you more of it. That's why the "to buy" figures above are always ≥ the "net" figures, rounded up: you can't order 96% of a board.
The cut-to-size trap
Cut-to-size and PAR timber from online merchants is convenient, but it typically runs 2–3× the price per unit volume of rough-sawn stock from a yard. Always compare quotes on a like-for-like basis — per m³ or per cft — before deciding whether the convenience is worth paying for, or whether it's worth machining rough stock yourself.