Dimension & Conversion Reference

This reference covers everything on the site that isn't a species page or a joint page — dimension conversions, sheet-goods sizing, fastener charts, finish and abrasive data, and the shop-specification pages that don't fit anywhere else. It splits into a few real groups, and knowing which group a question belongs to is the fastest way to find the right page.

Dimension and conversion pages

This group answers one recurring question in different clothes: what does the number on a tag, a plan, or a receipt actually correspond to in real, measured inches. Nominal-versus-actual pages cover the gap between a softwood board's printed name and its true dressed size — a 2x4, a 2x6, a 2x8, and the rest of the common dimensional sizes, plus the separate 1x-board and 4x4/6x6-post families that lose material differently than the 2x series does. The rough-lumber quarter system covers the parallel hardwood convention, where 4/4, 5/4, 6/4, and 8/4 describe rough thickness before any surfacing rather than a name a mill cuts toward. Sheet-goods pages do the same job for plywood, MDF, OSB, and hardboard/particleboard — nominal thickness against what a real sheet measures, and standard sheet dimensions before a cut list gets built around an assumption that turns out wrong at the store. The metric-to-imperial page and the board-foot-to-linear-foot and board-foot-to-square-foot conversion pages round out the group, covering the unit mismatches that come up whenever a plan, a supplier, or an imported hardware spec is working in different units than the rest of a project.

The common thread across all of them: none of these numbers are things you should estimate from memory once a project's budget or a joint's fit depends on getting them right, because the gap between a nominal name and a real measurement is rarely a clean, round number, and it rarely rounds in the direction a quick mental guess assumes.

Moisture and movement targets

Two pages here answer "where should this wood's moisture content actually be" — by region (the typical indoor equilibrium moisture content ranges across different US climate zones) and by end use (adjusting that baseline for a piece heading outdoors, into an unheated space, or into fine interior furniture that will live in a heated, humidity-controlled home). Neither page tells you how much a specific board will move — that's what the wood movement calculator and the species pages' shrinkage figures are for — these two answer the separate, upstream question of what target moisture content a piece should actually be built toward in the first place, which is exactly the number reading moisture content says a meter reading is meaningless without.

Fastener and hardware sizing

Wood screw gauge sizing, pilot hole sizing, pocket-hole screw length, screw length by joint thickness, and biscuit/domino cutter sizing all answer variations of the same practical question: what hardware size actually matches the material thickness in front of you, rather than whatever size happened to be in the bin. Undersized fasteners in a thin joint split the wood; oversized ones in a thick joint waste holding power and risk breaking through the far face. These pages exist specifically so that decision is a lookup against real numbers instead of a guess based on what looked about right on the last project.

Finish, abrasives, and shop consumables

Wood finish types, finish coverage rates, and sandpaper grit progression cover the materials side of a project that isn't lumber at all but still needs planning — how much finish a given coverage rate actually requires for a project's surface area, and what grit sequence actually removes the scratches the previous grit left rather than skipping straight to a fine grit and polishing over machine marks that are still there underneath.

Cutting and clamping specifications

Saw blade kerf reference and saw-blade tooth-count guide feed directly into the cut list optimiser — kerf width is a direct input to that tool's waste calculation, and getting it right for the actual blade in the saw is the difference between a layout that fits and one that comes up short by exactly the amount shop math you'll use every week shows a cut list can silently lose to the saw itself. Dust collection CFM requirements and clamp-pressure-and-clamping-guide round out the shop-spec group — equipment sizing questions that come up once per tool purchase rather than once per project, but that are just as easy to get wrong by guessing.

Grading and hardness reference

Hardwood lumber grading, softwood lumber grading, and plywood veneer grades explain what a grade stamp or a yard's grading terminology is actually promising about a board or a sheet — how much clear material a grade is expected to yield, not a statement about overall quality independent of that yield. The Janka hardness scale explainer covers the same hardness figure that appears on every species page, in more depth than a single species entry has room for — what the test actually measures, why it doesn't move in lockstep with density, and how to read a hardness number against the specific wear or dent resistance a project actually needs rather than as a single ranked "best wood" list.

Yield, waste, and cost planning

Lumber yield and waste factor guide covers the realistic percentage of rough stock that becomes finished, usable material across different grades and species characteristics — the same yield concept buying rough lumber: what you actually pay for and domestic vs. exotic: cost per finished piece both work through with specific worked numbers. This page is the general reference behind those worked examples — the range to plan a budget around before you have a specific species and grade in hand to run the exact numbers on.

Walking one project through several of these pages at once

A single build rarely needs just one reference page — it's usually a chain of them, in a specific order, and seeing that chain laid out once makes it clearer why the group is organized this way rather than as one long undifferentiated list. Take an outdoor bench built from nominal 2x lumber: start with the nominal-vs-actual page for the sizes actually being bought, since a cut list built against the printed "2x6" instead of the true 1.5" x 5.5" will come up short exactly the way why a 2x4 isn't 2x4 describes. Check moisture content targets by end use next, because outdoor furniture has a very different target than an interior piece, and building to the wrong target means the wood keeps moving well after assembly. Move to fastener sizing once the joinery is decided, matching screw gauge and pilot-hole size to the actual dressed thickness from the first step, not the nominal one. Finish coverage rate comes last, once the finished surface area is known, to figure out how much of whatever exterior finish the design calls for actually needs to be bought. Four pages, four different groups above, used in sequence for one project — which is the normal way this reference actually gets used, rather than any one page being read in isolation.

What's sourced, and what's a stated estimate

Most of the numbers on this reference layer are stable, low-variance figures — a nominal lumber dimension is a published industry standard, a sheet-goods size is a manufacturing convention, a fastener gauge-to-pilot-hole ratio is mechanical, not regional. Where a number genuinely does vary by region, supplier, or year — cost-related figures most of all — the page flags it as a planning estimate rather than letting it sit next to a fixed dimension standard as if the two carried the same certainty. The species pages carry the same discipline for the one field that varies the most there (typical cost per board foot); this reference layer applies the identical standard to anything here that shares the same problem, such as the yield and waste-factor ranges, which are realistic planning bands rather than a guarantee for any specific board or supplier.

How this differs from the explainer pages listed below

Reference pages are built to be scanned for a specific number — a table, a conversion, a size chart — and read in under a minute. Explainer pages, listed separately below this group, take on a broader question that doesn't reduce to a single lookup: why board feet, linear feet, and square feet answer genuinely different questions, how green lumber differs from kiln-dried beyond the moisture number itself, what actually distinguishes a miter angle from a bevel angle. If you're not sure which kind of page you need, a reference page is the right stop when you already know the specific number you're after; an explainer is the right stop when the question is closer to "why does this work the way it does."

Browse the reference pages below, or start with nominal vs. actual 2x4 if you've ever been surprised by what a lumberyard receipt actually charged for. If a project spans several of these groups at once — most do — bookmarking the specific pages a build actually touches, rather than this hub page itself, is the faster habit once you've learned which handful of pages you keep coming back to, project after project after project.