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Hit 10,000 board feet on my saw last week - didn't think it would hit me that way
I've been framing houses for about 8 years now, mostly in the suburbs outside Portland. Last Thursday I was ripping some 2x12s for a deck and my saw just stopped. Checked the counter and it rolled right over to 10,000 board feet cut. That number caught me off guard. I never really thought about how much wood I've pushed through one tool. It got me wondering - does anyone else keep track of their saw's mileage like that, or am I just weird about my tools?
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phoenixgonzalez1mo ago
Hold on a second. 10,000 board feet is a lot of wood, but that's not really how saw mileage works. A board foot is a volume measurement, 12x12x1 inch, so you cut 10,000 of those across all your different cuts. That's not the same as a running footage counter. Your saw probably has a built in counter, but it's tracking the number of cuts or the motor hours, not volume. I mean, a 2x4 has about 2/3 of a board foot in a 8 foot length, while a 2x12 is double that. So your counter hitting 10,000 is still impressive, you just cut a ton of wood by volume, not by linear feet.
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juliawalker1mo ago
Read an article in Fine Homebuilding a while back about a guy who tracked his contractor saw for 15 years. Had over 250,000 cuts recorded before the motor finally gave out. He said most saws can handle way more than people think if you keep the blade sharp and clean the dust out regular. Your saw hitting 10k board feet is solid proof you're taking care of it right.
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Gotta ask you something about that Fine Homebuilding article you brought up. Did that guy mention if he was tracking board feet or just the total number of cuts he made over those 15 years? Because I've always wondered what metric actually matters for saw wear and tear, especially with all that dust buildup inside the motor housing. The way I see it, a contractor saw running 250,000 cuts could mean anything from trimming tiny pieces to ripping full sheets of plywood, and that's a MASSIVE difference in stress on the arbor bearings and the trunnion assembly. You think most of those cuts were small stuff like crosscuts on 2x4s or was he doing heavy duty ripping that pulls way more amps? Seems like the real test would be motor hours under load rather than just cut count, you know?
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