What it weighs
For sizing shelf brackets, loading a car, or getting a freight quote. Green lumber weighs far more than kiln dried, so that is a control rather than a footnote.
6–8% moisture. What a hardwood dealer sells for indoor furniture.
= 0.75"
4 × White oak
49lb
Each piece
12.2 lb
In kilograms
22 kg
Per sq ft of face
2.9 lb
White oak at 46.9 lb/ft³, 7% moisture content. Each piece is 60" × 10" × 3/4", so 0.26 ft³ of material.
Before you pick it up
The whole load. All 49 lb of it. Worth checking against what the car is rated to carry before you drive to the yard, and worth knowing before a freight quote.
Before you drill. The shelf itself is 12 lb before anything goes on it. Size the hardware for the shelf plus its load, fix into framing rather than drywall anchors wherever the two disagree, and remember that a floating shelf loads its bracket as a lever — the further out the weight sits, the harder it pulls at the wall.
Working white oak
Closed pores make it the one to use for anything that holds liquid or lives outdoors. Quartersawn white oak gives you the ray fleck that Arts and Crafts furniture is built on, at roughly double the price of flatsawn. It is hard on blades and it will react with steel — wipe up swarf before it stains.
About lumber weight
- How much does a sheet of 3/4" MDF weigh?
- About 96 lb for a full 4x8 sheet. MDF is around 48 lb per cubic foot and a 3/4" sheet is two cubic feet, so the arithmetic is unusually clean. Hardwood plywood of the same size is closer to 80 lb and softwood sheathing closer to 72 lb — which is why cabinet carcases built in MDF get so much harder to carry upstairs.
- Does moisture content really change the weight that much?
- Enormously. Green walnut straight off the mill is around 90% moisture content and weighs about 60 lb per cubic foot; the same wood kiln dried to 7% weighs about 38. That is a sixty percent difference, and it is the difference between a load your car is rated for and one it is not. If you are hauling freshly sawn lumber, weigh it as green.
- How much weight can a floating shelf hold?
- That depends entirely on the bracket and what it is fixed into, not on the shelf. What this calculator tells you is the part people forget: what the shelf weighs before anything goes on it. A 48" × 10" × 2" solid oak shelf is around 23 lb empty. Size the hardware for the shelf plus its load, fix into framing rather than drywall anchors, and remember that a floating shelf loads its bracket as a lever — weight at the front edge pulls far harder than weight at the wall.
- What's the difference between board feet and weight?
- Board feet measure volume and are what you are charged for; weight is what you have to carry and ship. They are related by the density of the species, which varies by more than two to one across common woods — a board foot of white pine is about 2 lb and a board foot of hickory is about 4. Two orders of identical board footage can differ by a hundred pounds.
- How do I estimate freight for furniture?
- Start with the weight of the wood, then add the joinery hardware, the finish, and the crate — a plywood crate with bracing often adds 30% to 50% to the shipping weight of a table. Freight is usually billed on the greater of actual weight and dimensional weight, so a large light piece can be charged as though it were much heavier. Get the number here, then ask the carrier what they will actually bill.