Liters to Board Feet (L to bf)

1 liter equals 0.4237760007 board feet (rounded).

1 liter = 0.4237760007 board feet

How to convert liters to board feet

To convert liters to board feet, multiply the number of liters by 0.4237760007. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply board feet by 2.359737216.

board feet = liters × 0.4237760007

Example: 10 liters = 4.237760007 board feet.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

Liter (L)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One cubic decimeter (1,000 cm³). The everyday metric unit of volume for drinks, fuel and cooking.

The liter was born in revolutionary France. In 1795 it was introduced as a republican unit and defined as one cubic decimeter, while the gram was tied to a cubic centimeter of water. The name comes from the older French litron, itself descended from a Byzantine Greek unit of weight, not volume. A small revision of the decimeter in 1798 left the first liter about 1.000974 of today's cubic decimeter, and in 1879 the international metric authorities adopted the liter with the symbol l.

The liter then took a strange detour. In 1901 it was redefined as the space taken up by one kilogram of pure water at its densest, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, and that muddled definition lasted until 1964, when it was restored to exactly one cubic decimeter. A capital L was added as an alternative symbol in 1979 because a lowercase l is easy to mistake for the digit 1, and NIST says L is the symbol to use in the United States. A liter of water is close to a kilogram, which is why a one-liter bottle feels like a kilo in the hand.

The liter is the reference unit for volume on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST Guide to the SI, Chapter 5: units outside the SI

Board Foot (bf)

US customaryTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

144 cubic inches, a board 1 ft × 1 ft × 1 in. The standard unit for lumber in North America.

Lumber buyers in North America price timber by the board foot, the volume of a board 1 foot long, 1 foot wide and 1 inch thick. That is 144 cubic inches, one twelfth of a cubic foot, or about 2.36 liters. Thousands of board feet are written MBF, a shorthand common in sawmill and timber sale contracts.

A quirk makes the unit slightly slippery. Rough lumber is measured at its full sawn size, but planed softwood such as a retail two-by-four is counted by its nominal dimensions even though the finished board is smaller, so the calculated footage overstates the wood actually present. Hardwoods are measured at actual size and avoid this gap.

Foresters also estimate how many board feet a log will yield using log rules such as the Doyle rule, which allow for taper, saw kerf and waste. In Australia and New Zealand the same quantity was called the super foot or superficial foot until the 1970s. Related timber units include the cord, the Hoppus foot and the stere.

1 board foot = 2.359737216 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Board foot; Wikipedia: Stere

Related conversions

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