I did some calulations on cost per board foot for different widths and thicknesses of boards using the current price from Lowes.com (Home Depot's cost is almost identical).
A board ft is a wooden board 12" long, 12" wide and 1" thick. Now these are before machining the resultant 1x board is actually 3/4" thick, a 2x board is actually 1-1/2" thick. Widths are 1/2" to 3/4" less than what is stated, ie: 1x4 is 3-1/2" wide.
Using the formula:
NumFt is the number of feet of the board required to make 1 bd ft.
Example 1: it takes 3 ft of a 1x4 to make one bd ft.
ie: 3 * $0.7725 = $2.3175 per bd ft.
Example 2: it takes 1-1/2 ft of a 2x4 to make a board ft
ie: 1.5 * .40 = $ 0.60 per bd ft.
Board Ft price at Lowes.com on 05/15/17
| Size | Lowes price | $ per lin ft | NumFt | $ per BdFt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1x2x8' | $5.73 | .72 | 6.0 | 4.32 |
| 1x4x8' | $6.18 | .77 | 3.0 | 2.32 |
| 1x8x8' | $12.12 | 1.52 | 1.5 | 2.27 |
| 2x4x8' | $3.20 | .40 | 1.5 | .60 |
| 2x6x8' | $5.56 | .70 | 1.0 | .70 |
| 2x8x8' | $6.14 | .77 | 0.75 | .58 |
| 2x8x10' | $7.76 | .78 | 0.75 | .59 |
| 2x10x8' | $6.85 | .86 | 0.6 | .51 |
This leads me to believe that resawing 2x boards into 1x is by far the most economical approach to wood projects, with one caveat, the quality of the resawn board.