184 The Farm Woodlot 



waste in sawing, and would be considered 6 ft. B.M. 

 The two-inch plank would not really make two inch boards 

 if sawn, because an eighth or sometimes a quarter of an 

 inch, — according to whether a band saw or a circular 

 saw is used, — is lost in sawdust. But this is not taken 

 into account in measuring the thicker pieces. And so 

 it is evident that there is more waste in sawing inch 

 boards than in thicker material. The prices of lumber 

 are usually quoted at so much a thousand feet board 

 measure; written 1 M. B.M. 



Lumber (which is an Americanism for boards) is meas- 

 ured by means of a lumber rule on which there are six or 

 eight scales, one for each common length, on which the 

 contents of one-inch boards are calculated for all widths. 

 The scaler must estimate or measure the thickness of each 

 board and throw away all fractions. Thus, the scaler 

 comes to a sixteen and a half foot plank. He turns to the 

 sixteen-foot scale and measures the width. If it is twelve 

 and a half inches wide, he looks opposite the twelve-inch 

 mark in the sixteen-foot scale and finds the figure 16 — 

 the contents in board feet of a one-inch board twelve inches 

 wide and sixteen feet long. He finds that the plank is 

 two inches thick. He doubles the figure given on the 

 scale and writes down 32 ft. B.M. as the contents of the 

 plank. He disregards the extra half inch in width and the 

 extra six inches in length. Hence the cutting of odd widths 

 and lengths is always a loss to the owner. The most 

 convenient time for scaling lumber is just as it comes from 

 the saw and before it is piled. 



Fence posts are sold by the piece and are graded, accord- 

 ing to the length and the diameter at the small end, into 



