A Dummy Converts Board Feet to m² - The Freelance Files MMCXCVI

board feet

Try as we might, we just can't forgive the freelancers we catch prattling on about topics they'd never even heard of before accepting their "assignment"; at least the ones who make it pretty obvious from what they write that they still didn't after doing the writing. We notice that particular shortcoming quite frequently among the people who pounded out content for the former eHow.com, content Leaf Group has sine distributed among its many niche sites. One such spreader of bull is Charlotte Johnson, whom we caught pretending to know "How to Convert a Board Foot to a Square Meter" for HomeSteady.com.

Although we hadn't seen Charlotte for several months (this is her twelfth trip to the DotD podium!), it only took one sentence for a staffer to realize that Johnson was – as usual – out of her depth with this topic. According to Charlotte,

"A board foot is a standard measurement of lumber that indicates the length, width and thickness of a board that equals a total of one square foot."

No, Charlotte, the board foot is a measurement of volume: 144 cubic inches, equivalent to a volume 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 inch... or 6 inches by 12 inches by 2 inches... or 3 inches by 4 inches by 12 inches. You get the point (maybe). Not only did Charlotte blow the definition by omitting the importance of  the thickness, she also forgot to explain that you cannot convert a volume (board feet) to an area (square meters). Johnson compounded the evidence of her ignorance by intoning that,

"You could have various possibilities that equal one square foot, such as a board that is one inch thick, 12 inches long and one inch wide. Another possibility is a board that is six inches long, two inches wide and one inch thick."

Neither of those is a board foot... No, eager to "earn" her stipend (eHow contributors were paid flat fees for their output), Charlotte then forged ahead to provide "instructions" for said conversion, steps that reduce to,

1. "Multiply the length times the width of the boards." – You forgot thickness, Charlotte.
2. "Convert your square inches to square feet by dividing by 12." – Don't you mean divide by 144?
3. "Convert square feet to square meters by multiplying by 0.09294."

According to Charlotte, then,

"...one board foot equals 0.09294 square meters..."

...which, to be frank, is utter bullshit. One square foot is 0.09294 m², but one board foot is... well, it takes a lot more than what Johnson seemed to think to perform the conversion. If, however, you insist of attempting to perform the conversion, you'll have to first settle on a thickness for the output. We'll use 2.5 cm as an example, because it's about the same as an inch.

1. Calculate the number of board feet. needed for your job. For our example, we'll use 600.
2. Convert volume in board feet to cubic feet: 600 / 12 = 50.
3. Convert cubic feet to cubic meters: 50 ft³ * 0.0283 = 1.415 m³ (there are 0.0283 cubic meters per cubic foot)
4. Factor in the desired thickness of the material: 1.415 * (100 / 2.5) = 56.6 m² of material 2.5 cm thick¹.

What our Dumbass of the Day forgot – and, probably, never even knew – is that to perform any conversion between board feet and metric volume, you have to include a thickness. But, then, we already figured out that Charlotte knew squat about lumber... and we already knew she was on shaky ground when it comes to math.

¹ A word of warning: in the US, a board foot is calculated using the nominal dimensions of the wood, but a pine 2-by-4 is really only 1½-by-3½. Metric calculations of lumber volume use actual dimensions, not nominal.

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