How Many Board Feet In a 1x8x8
3.625 board feet
- Actual size: 0.75" x 7.25" (nominal 1x8")
- Length: 8 ft
Methodboard feet = (thickness x width x length in feet) / 12, using the ACTUAL dressed dimension.
Using the nominal 1x8" number instead of the actual dimension would overstate this by a meaningful margin — see /reference/nominal-vs-actual-2x4/.
An 8-foot 1x8 contains 3.625 board feet — following the same pattern as every 1x board at this length, where board feet equals half the actual width in inches (7.25" wide, so 3.625 board feet).
Why this one specifically
1x8 covers shelving and stair-tread-blank stock, sitting between the narrower 1x6 and the wider 1x10 and 1x12 in the same family — a useful middle reference point when comparing how board-foot count climbs with width at this fixed thickness and length.
What moves the number
As with any 1x board, this uses the actual 0.75" x 7.25" dressed dimension rather than the nominal 1" x 8"; the gap between nominal and actual is smaller in absolute terms for 1x stock than for 2x stock, but it's still real and still the correct figure to use for pricing or a cut-list total. A quick way to sanity-check any 1x-at-8-foot board: divide its actual width in inches by two, since the arithmetic reduces to exactly that at this specific length and thickness.
Compare against the 1x6x8 and the 1x10x8 for the neighbouring widths, or the matching weight at how much a 1x8 weighs, and run other lengths through the board foot calculator.