BOARD MEASURE 
139 
stick of timber sixteen inches in diameter and twelve inches in 
length shall constitute one cubic foot, and the same ratio shall 
apply to any other size and quantity. Each cubic foot shall con¬ 
stitute ten feet of a thousand board feet. 
This rule is extensively used in scaling spruce in Maine, 
New Hampshire, and Vermont. A broad caliper bar is 
stamped with the figures, and the stiff iron jaws attached 
throw out J inch from the diameter for bark. The diam¬ 
eter is taken in the middle of the log, and in ordinary 
practice logs of any length are measured as one piece. 
The values given by the rule run parallel to actual cubic 
contents and the rule is therefore a fair one as applied to 
pulp wood. It is not a satisfactory measure of the yield 
of logs at the saw, small logs being for that purpose over¬ 
valued and very large logs undervalued. As with cubic 
measure, however, its values could be readily converted 
into board measure by the use of different factors for logs 
of different sizes. 
It is now the uniform practice wherever the New Hamp¬ 
shire rule is in use to take 115 feet by the rule for 1000 
feet of lumber. 
SECTION IV 
BOARD MEASURE 
1. General. A board foot is a piece of sawed lumber 12 
inches square and one inch thick, or any piece, as 3 X 4 
or 2 X 6, which if reduced to 1 inch thickness has 144 
square inches of area. It is properly the unit of sawed 
lumber, and there must always be more or less difficulty in 
adjusting it to the measurement of logs. 
There are a large number of rules in the country to-day 
purporting to give the contents of logs of given dimensions 
in feet, board measure. Among these rules there is wide 
variation in the value given to logs of the same dimensions. 
In the manner of their use, too, there is a good deal of 
divergence, resulting sometimes in dispute and loss. 
The figures of eight rules in extensive use in the United 
States and Canada — the Scribner, the Doyle, the Deci¬ 
mal, the Maine, the New Brunswick, the Quebec, the 
