: Btw, just had a thought that I should have posted earlier, you tend to find
: wood priced properly in yards that specialize in hardwoods, which are also
: getting harder to find. Hardwood though has traditionally been rough cut
: so was always priced per board foot, since the sizes varied considerably
: from piece to piece.

: Bill H.

Somewhere around page 11 in that article they mention that in March 1923 one thing the lumber companies agreed on was that "Board Feet" was a unit of measure used by the logging and timber industries to estimate the volume of wood in a tree.

". . . Another problem had to do with board measure. It was emphasized during the discussions
that the board foot is used to measure logs and standing trees. Consequently, it applied in the
green condition. Forest Service statistics were based on nominal rough green dimensions. Any
volume lost in shrinkage due to drying and in surfacing thus did not represent a change in
measurement but only a refinement of the original rough green lumber. The board measurement
of lumber less than 1 inch thick (rough green) was based on the surface dimensions of
length and width."

Sounds to me that if a mill bought 1000 board feet of green logs, then by golly they wanted everyone to be sure that whatever came out of their mill was the same 1000 board feet--even if it had shrunk, or been turned to sawdust in the milling of boards.

On page 9 of the report, concerning matters from 1922:

"The August 12 American Lumberman contained an article by Mr. William A. Babbitt,
at that time manager of the National Association of Wood Turners, which took issue with the
universally held view that standard sizes for lumber should be related to an inch. Mr. Babbitt
compared the discussion of board thickness to the Schoolmen’s discussions of the Middle Ages
about the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. His contention was that the
thickness of a board is related to conservation and the heart of the matter was utility.
The simple fact is that the customs and precedents of the lumber industry were so wedded to
“measurement” rather than ‘utility” that Mr. Babbitt’s ideas did not make much headway. This
matter will be discussed in greater detail later."

How prophetic for 1964. We are indeed discussing this in greater detail--and 85 years later! It really is a FAScinating article, with goodly chunks of tongue-in-cheek humor, and wry commentary that are not commonly found in government publications. Maybe it was a '60s thing.

PGJ