Originally Posted by
Rod Sheridan
Really? Cubic meters seems like such a big unit. For instance, yesterday I bought a board that's 7" by 8' by 1" thick. That's five board feet. If I'm doing my conversion correctly, it would also be .0083 cubic feet. Liters would be a unit more like the usual size of boards. That board would be 8.3 liters. Of course, we'd all be confused when we buy lumber and Coke with the same unit.
Jamie, and how many board feet do you buy when you buy firewood? Or do you buy them by the cord in the US?
Similarly, when you're buying a single board of the dimensions you stated you'd buy it as a board with the dimensions you stated. The price would likely be calculated in cubic meters because that's how wood is traded, however small the number would be. To you it would still be a board 8 feet long, or 1000 8 feet long boards.
Liters is used for volume (mostly fluid) but is actually not a part of the official SI system. Instead cubic decimeter is used and it is equivalent to 1 liter (1/1000 of a cubic meter). If the unit level is too small or too big you can use one higher or smaller. Similarly, you know that a distance from Berlin to Paris is not expressed in light years or millimeters.
When you buy wood in quantities other than a size of a match then you will definitely buy it by cubic meters. That's how cabinet makers and builders buy. So 100bf a hobbyist would buy is roughly 0.25 cu meters. I think it's quite a manageable number. Also, using the number such as .0083 cubic meters is an attempt to transplant the SAE standard to metric realities, and if correct, the number no more ridiculous than 4.67 b/f
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