Buying Hardwood on Tally: How to Read the List Before You Pay

Ask a mill or an importer what they have available and you will often get one word back: a tally. If you have only bought lumber off a rack, with a sticker on the end of each board, that word does not explain itself. It is worth understanding, because buying on tally is how most hardwood above the retail shelf actually changes hands, and because the tally is the document you are paying against.

I import and sell Ecuadorian teak lumber out of a warehouse north of Chicago, and I write my own tallies. So this is how it works on my end, not a textbook version of it.

A tally is a list of boards, not a description of a pile

A tally is an itemized record of what is physically in the lot. Each board, or each bundle, gets a line: thickness, width, length, and the footage those three numbers produce. Add the lines and you have the footage of the lot. That is the whole idea. The tally is the inventory, written down, board by board.

The reason it exists is that hardwood does not come in uniform pieces. A tree produces what it produces. Boards come off in whatever widths and lengths the log allowed, and a seller who tried to sort everything into tidy standard sizes would be throwing away most of the wood. So instead of standardizing the boards, the trade standardizes the paperwork. The tally carries the variation, and the buyer decides whether that variation works for the job.

Random width and random length is the normal condition

When someone tells you a lot is random width and random length, they are not being evasive. They are telling you the truth about what a log does. A single log might yield boards from narrow through wide in the same run, and lengths that step up and down depending on where the defects fell.

This matters more than most first-time buyers expect, because two lots with identical footage can behave completely differently on the bench. Footage tells you how much wood you are buying. It does not tell you whether the pieces are the right shape for what you are building. A shop laying up wide panels and a shop cutting narrow stock for face frames want opposite things out of the same number, and they should be reading the tally differently.

How the footage gets calculated

A board foot is a unit of volume: one inch thick, twelve inches wide, twelve inches long. Thickness is quoted in quarters, so four-quarter is nominal one inch, eight-quarter is nominal two. Multiply thickness in inches by width in inches by length in inches, then divide by 144, and you have the footage of one board. Every tally line is that same arithmetic.

Two things to watch. First, the quarter figure is a nominal designation, not a caliper reading, and the two are not the same number. Ask what is actually on the board rather than assuming the nominal figure is a measurement. Second, find out how widths were taken. A board that tapers is a judgement call, and different sellers make that call differently. Neither approach is dishonest, but you should know which one produced the number you are paying against.

Gross tally and net tally

These two phrases get used loosely and they are not interchangeable. Gross generally means the footage as the boards measure. Net generally means the footage after something has been deducted — a defect, a section that will not make the cut, an allowance agreed between buyer and seller.

If a seller quotes one number and delivers against the other, the difference lands entirely on you. When you get a tally, ask plainly which one it is. A seller who cannot answer that question quickly is telling you something about how carefully the lot was written up.

Check the tally against what shows up

This is the part people skip, and it is the part that protects you. When the wood arrives, pull boards at random and measure them against their lines. You are not auditing the entire lot. You are testing whether the document describes reality. A handful of checks across the range will tell you whether the tally was written carefully or written optimistically, and if the first few agree, the rest usually do.

Do this before the lumber gets distributed around a shop and mixed into other stock, because after that there is nothing left to compare. Photograph the bundles as they come off the truck. If something is off, you want the conversation while the evidence is still stacked in one place.

What a tally will not tell you

A tally is a measurement document. It reports dimensions and footage. It does not tell you how the wood will look when it is worked, how the color runs through the stack, or whether a particular board will suit a particular job. Those are questions for a photograph, a sample, or a visit.

I would also rather describe the boards I have than lean on a shorthand label to do it for me. If you ask me what is in a bundle, you will get a description of the wood, and the footage on the tally will be the footage that is there.

My teak lot is a full container, and I can send a tally on any part of it. If you want to talk through what shape stock your job actually needs before you look at a number, that is the more useful conversation, and it is the one I would rather have first. Reach me at (773) 584-7334 or info@platinumluxuryteak.com, or through the trade page.