Who built this
TimberWorks Studio is operated out of a 1,400-square-foot shop in Asheville, North Carolina, by a team of three: a furniture maker with 18 years of bench experience (mostly residential commissions), a finish carpenter who also teaches a community-college joinery class, and a woodturning hobbyist who keeps us honest about spindle and bowl work.
None of us are engineers. None of us are statisticians. We are woodworkers who got tired of opening seven browser tabs, three PDF chapters from the Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook, and a 12-year-old forum thread to calculate one shelf load — so we built the tools we wanted to use ourselves.
What this site is for
The calculators on this site solve the small, recurring problems that come up between the sketch and the first cut: how many board feet do I need, how much will this board move in August, what miter angle for a five-sided frame, how much poly do I need for this table, how fast should I spin this ½-inch roundover bit in cherry.
The tools are organized so you can plan a project end-to-end without leaving the site — measure stock (board foot, weight, cost), cut it (miter, dovetail, mortise, cut list, saw blade), finish it (stain, finish, sanding, drying, edge profile), and check the engineering (beam load, drawer slide, cabinet door, joinery strength, hardness, grain).
Who this site is for
- Hobbyists and DIYers building their first workbench, bookshelf, or cutting board and unsure what to order from the lumber yard.
- Apprentice and intermediate woodworkers who want quick reference for joinery math without rebuilding a spreadsheet every time.
- Working pros who need a second opinion on shop math during a bidding conversation, but not a structural engineering stamp.
- Teachers and students in woodworking programs who want a free, ad-light tool to demonstrate core formulas.
It is not for: structural engineering on a load-bearing timber frame, furniture design patent filings, or anything where a wrong number puts someone at risk of injury. We say this out loud because other sites don't.
Methodology — where the math comes from
We don't invent numbers. Every formula on this site is grounded in one or more of these sources:
- USDA Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook (FPL-GTR-190) — the reference for shrinkage coefficients, specific gravity, and modulus of elasticity that most of our calculators depend on.
- AWI Architectural Woodwork Standards (AWS) — for cabinet door reveals, drawer clearances, and joinery tolerances.
- Fine Woodworking and Wood Magazine back issues — for rules of thumb (tenon thickness ratios, glue open times, planer pass depths) that have been workshop-validated over decades.
- Manufacturer technical data sheets — Titebond, General Finishes, Festool, SawStop, and others, where we cite coverage rates, RPM ranges, and feed speeds directly.
Where the math is empirical and there's no published standard (for example, the "right" spring angle for a specific crown molding profile), we say so. Where a calculation has a wide confidence interval — wood movement across unusual species, beam load with unknown wood grade — we surface that as a warning in the result.
Editorial standards
We try to follow three rules:
- Every calculator has a "what this can't do" section. We'd rather tell you the beam load calc is approximate than have you trust it for a stair tread.
- We do not let sponsors change the math. The site may eventually run ads (see our Privacy Policy); sponsors will never see a calculator before you do, and they don't get veto power over results.
- We update formulas when we find them wrong. If a calculation drifts more than 5% from bench reality in our testing, we post a note at the top of the page explaining what we changed and why.
Known limitations
To be blunt about what we can't do:
- Wood is not isotropic. A board foot of curly maple moves differently than a board foot of plain maple. Our calculators handle common species well; exotic and figured woods are approximations.
- Shops are not labs. Humidity in your shop and humidity in the lumber yard where the wood was stored are different numbers. Always measure with a pin or pinless moisture meter — these calculators don't replace that.
- Structural calculations are conservative, not certified. The beam load tool returns a working load with a safety factor. It is not stamped engineering. For decks, joists, or anything that fails dangerously, hire an engineer.
Contact
Found a wrong number? Want us to add a calculator? Email hello@timberworks.studio. We read every message. The most common request (a board-feet calculator that handles metric lumber) is now live.
How this site is built
Every page is hand-written HTML with Tailwind CSS via CDN and inline JavaScript. No build step, no client-side framework, no tracking pixels. The site is fully static and works offline once cached. There are no comments sections, no user accounts, no databases — by design.