At Wooduchoose, we love anything to do with wood. in particular we embrace technology and tools that help those in the wood industry.
Wood weighing and wood weight calculators
What is a wood weight calculator? A wood weight calculator – is a way of estimating the weight of wood without a set of scales to physically weigh it (the only true way to find the weight of a particular piece or pack of wood). This is due to how variable wood can be. But there is often a need to estimate the weight of wood for lots of reasons.
There are thousands of wood species that we use for many different things. Each wood specie is unique in all of its characteristics including its density and weight. And it can be important to know the weight of a single piece of wood, or multiple wood pieces or packs, for lots of reasons such as; transportation, calculating weight loads in buildings, manual handling and much more.
Who users a wood weighing calculator? A wood weight estimation tool is needed by architects, designers, structural engineers, timber merchants, importers and exporters of wood, woodworkers, couriers and wood transportation companies. Simply anyone that is involved in the movement and/or placement of wood.
How to do you measure the weight of wood?
To calculate the weight of a piece of wood there are a few things to consider, we have discussed the specie density but the moisture content of the wood will dramatically effect its weight. Wood is normally used dry but there are often cases where ‘green’, fresh wood, very wet timber is used, transported, traded and worked on.
Therefore it is important to apply the moisture factor to a wood weight calculation. The calculation can become very scientific and precise, if you need to be very accurate, this will involve measuring the exact moisture content, with a moisture metre, and applying a formular to determine wood/water content of a piece.
We recommend – Wagner Meters
For the purpose of this discussion we will keep it simple and describe the way to calculate the weight of wood with a good math principles and industry understanding. We typically use – Green/Fresh (most moisture), air dried and kiln dried (normally driest). Please note though that wood is hygroscopic so it will absorb and release moisture based on its environment, hence the moisture content can differ over its life and even over its transportation and working period.
The maths:
Volume of wood X wood specie density kg/m3 X moisture content variable
Example:
A piece of kiln dried European beech – Fagus sylvatica (Fagaceae) 1000mm long x 200mm x 25mm
Volume = 0.005m3
Default density – 720 kg/m3 (source https://www.wooduchoose.com/wood-database/beech-euro/)
Moisture variation = 0 (in this case as kiln dried)
Weight = 0.005 x 720 x 0 = 3.6* kg (rounded to 4kg) approx. 9Lbs
Change this same piece to a wet/green section of wood:
Weight = 0.005 x 720 x 1.3 = 4.68* kg (rounded to 5kg) approx. 9Lbs
*Please note – as stated above. It is virtually impossible to be 100% accurate with this and the only true way to find the weight of wood is to weigh it on scales. Every piece of wood is unique and varies in its characteristics.
To simply the process we have developed our own tool to calculated the estimated weight of wood.
Wooduweigh has been developed to provide a simple to use, online, tool with some great added features – the ability to calculate multiple pieces of different sizes, all at once. You can also save, share and revisit your calculation with link copy.
So if you need to estimate the weight of wood for building design, transportation or for any reason try our tool.
For more information, visit www.wooduchoose.com/
