Tallvinr r 3r.., |madr

lnr ROWING up in a hardwood lflumber yard, i leamed arithmetic by tallying lumber. Once I got the hang of it, I thought it was simple. Like many other things, though, as I got older, tallying became more complicated.

If you think tallying lumber is simple, you could be mistaken, too. In the hardwood rnarket today, lumber is measured in two ways - ei0er based on a NET TALLY or a MILL TALLY. If you buy hardwood and you don't know the difference, you could be in for a big surprise.

Hardwoocl lumber is usually dried in a kiln. There, hot air and steam are circulated among the evenly separated tiers of lumber according to a carefully devised schedule. In the drying process lumber loses much of its moisture and considerable weight. (See side bar) The greatest shrinkage occurs tangentially - across the width of the boards - and the least longitudinally - along the length. The board footage also shrinks from as little as 3Vo to as much as 87o Or more, depending on the species.

A "net tally" is a count of the actual product you receive as it is measured after kiln drying. In a net tally there is no addition for kiln drying shrinkage - the percentage of footage that is theoretically lost when hardwoods are dried.

A "mill tally," on the other hand, is a measufe of the lumber before it was dried, and before it shrank in a kiln. It is a count of the footage that was originally sawn and NOT an account of how much footage you received.

A generation ago hardwood was commonly sold based on its measurement before kiln drying. That meant that when one was tallying dried lumber, one had to add a percentage to account for the footage lost in the kiln. When tallying as little as 50 board feet at my father's lumber yard, we would add three feet for shrinkage. (we always nored the addition on the customer's copy of our piece tally.)