Jimmy-

>
>I don't understand how to reference a particular field in a cursor - nor how to "declare a field in a cursor." for instance... would i say this:
>select table.field as cursorfieldname
>from table
>into cursor cursorname

You reference fields in a cursor just like you do a table. Indeed, "cursor" really refers to any record source once it's open, whether it came from a view, or a table. The thing is that unless you direct the SQL Select to something to hold the data, it just get's dumped in a browse..which isn't what you want.

SELECT data1.bundle as Total12;
FROM lumber!data1 <B>INTO CURSOR vwDATA1<b> ;
WHERE siz = szValue and grade = gdValue and length = 2;

[...snip]

tb2 = vwData1.Total12 + [etc]

FWIW, this logical structure looks problematic to me, but then you were asking about how you get rid of the browse windows popping up.