Throughout history, humans have developed and refined methods of measuring. For the volumes of some common shapes, they have derived formulas. One such formula is that for the volume of a conical frustum. The conical frustum is not usually on a short list of common geometric shapes, but students encounter it in their everyday experience. In the timber industry, a piece of raw timber is often considered an approximate conical frustum, and its volume is an upper bound of the amount of usable wood contained within. In this article, the authors describe an exploration that involves the volume of a conical frustum and that has been designed to help students "recognize and use connections among mathematical ideas." Specifically, they highlight the ideas of using and understanding formulas to measure volume, using "symbolic algebra to represent and explain mathematical relationships," and understanding the "meaning of equivalent forms of ... equations ..." (NCTM 2000, p. 296). (Contains 8 figures.)