Kerf
Kerf
Total board feet and dollars across a whole lumber haul — glove-friendly, fully offline, in lumberyard notation.
Coming soon to theApp Store
Kerf is a board foot and lumber cost calculator built for the moment you are standing at the lumberyard rack with gloved hands and no signal. Enter width, thickness, and length — in real lumberyard language, with 4/4, 5/4, and 8/4 thickness notation and fractional inches — and see board feet and dollars priced as you type.
Unlike a single-screen calculator, Kerf totals a whole haul. Group boards into a named project, watch the running board-foot and dollar tally grow, add a waste percentage and tax, and get one grand total before you reach the register. Finished projects export as a clean cut list in PDF, CSV, or plain text.
Everything runs on the device: no account, no network calls, no login. Airplane mode at a job site changes nothing.
A live board-foot and dollar readout sits above the keypad, updating with every digit. Price per board foot, per piece, or per linear foot.
Quarter notation (4/4, 5/4, 6/4, 8/4), rough versus surfaced stock, and fractional inches down to 1/32 — no decimal gymnastics at the rack.
Add board after board to a named project and watch the running total in feet and dollars. Edit any line later.
Roll a waste percentage and sales tax into the grand total, so the number on your screen matches the bill at the counter.
Share any project as a PDF, CSV, or plain-text job sheet — a shopping list for the yard or a quote for a client.
Large keys, an always-present backspace, and zero network dependence. It opens straight to the keypad and just works.
Width, thickness in quarters, length — for example 7½ by 8/4 by 96. Board feet and cost appear as you type.
Each board joins a named project like "Walnut Bench," and the running total updates in feet and dollars.
Set a waste allowance and tax rate once; the grand total reflects them automatically.
Walk into the yard with a clean job sheet — PDF, CSV, or text — instead of a guess.
A board foot is a volume unit: thickness in inches times width in inches times length in inches, divided by 144. A 1-inch-thick board that is 6 inches wide and 96 inches long is 4 board feet. Kerf does this math live as you type, using the thickness notation and fractions lumber actually comes in.
One board foot is the volume of a board 1 inch thick, 12 inches wide, and 12 inches long — 144 cubic inches of wood. Hardwood is usually sold by the board foot rather than by the piece, which is why pricing a haul means totaling board feet first. Kerf keeps that total running across every board you add.
Lumberyards state hardwood thickness in quarters of an inch: 4/4 ("four-quarter") is 1 inch, 5/4 is 1¼ inches, 8/4 is 2 inches, always measured on the rough board. Kerf takes thickness directly in quarter notation with a stepper for 4/4, 5/4, 6/4, and 8/4, so you enter boards the way the yard labels them.
Multiply each board's board feet by the price per board foot, then add every board in the pile, plus tax. That is tedious by hand for a mixed haul, which is exactly what Kerf automates: per-line costs, a running project total, and a grand total with waste and tax rolled in — so you know the bill before the yard does.
Yes. Kerf runs entirely on the device with zero network calls — no login, no connection check, no popup gate. It works the same in a metal-roofed lumber barn or a job site with airplane mode on.
Kerf accepts fractional-inch input down to 1/32 for width and length, alongside quarter notation for thickness. You enter 7½ as a fraction, not a rounded decimal, so the math matches the tape measure.
Most woodworkers add somewhere between 10 and 30 percent over the net requirement, depending on the species, board quality, and how defect-sensitive the project is. Kerf lets you set a waste percentage per project and folds it into the board-foot and dollar grand total automatically.
Rough lumber is measured at full sawn dimensions; surfaced (planed) lumber has lost thickness and width to the planer, though board feet are traditionally charged on the rough size. Kerf tracks rough versus surfaced per board and groups them in the cut list, so your tally reflects what you are actually paying for.
Yes. In Kerf every project is a cut list: each board with its dimensions, board feet, and cost, plus adjustments and a grand total. Export it as a PDF, CSV, or plain text and hand the yard a job sheet instead of reading numbers off your palm.
An 8-foot 2x4 is nominally 5.33 board feet (2 × 4 × 96 ÷ 144), using the nominal 2-by-4-inch size. Construction lumber is usually priced per piece rather than per board foot, and Kerf supports per-piece and per-linear-foot pricing too for exactly that case.
Yes. Kerf includes a unit toggle covering board feet to cubic meters and linear feet, and imperial to metric input, which matters when buying imported stock sold in metric dimensions.
Kerf saves every haul as a project — "Walnut Bench," "Oak Shelves" — with its full board list, board-foot total, and cost. The Projects tab sorts them by date, feet, or dollars, so you can check what a similar build cost you last time.
Walk into the lumberyard with a cut list and a total, not a guess.
Coming soon to theApp Store